6 CUSTOMER IN FOCUS

No two days are the same, says Mariska Hoogerdijk, senior

service desk employee for the ROC Mondriaan education
group, of her job. With her team of 5 she supports 27 schools
comprising about 2,200 employees and 22,000 students.
FLYING COLOURS AT
ROC MONDRIAAN
Text: Timme Hos
CUSTOMER IN FOCUS 7
Mariska Hoogerdijk, senior service desk employee for the ROC Mondriaan education group
Photography: Aad Hoogendoorn
8 CUSTOMER IN FOCUS
The ROC Mondriaan, which offers vocational training, general
education and job-related courses, has its headquarters in the Dutch
city of The Hague. Hoogerdijk and her team share the fourth foor with
other services, such as HRM, Finance and IT.
On the other foors, the students attend their lessons. This means
that the service desk has a view of the Hair and Make-up courses
salon chairs. Its not unusual for a student to walk in looking to cut
someones hair, says Hoogerdijk with a laugh. Thats one of the fun
things about sharing a building with the students.
Supporting the campuses
Helping out students from future soldiers to beauticians is not
the service desks most important task. Our main task is helping
the employees with all their problems and questions, explains
Hoogerdijk. This is no mean feat for an educational institution with 27
schools in and around The Hague, spread over 17 locations and divided
into 6 campuses. For each campus, we support the same club of IT
specialists, caretakers and their supervisors, says Hoogerdijk.
Regardless of the call type received by the service desk, Hoogerdijks
team picks it up. If we cant resolve it, we send it to the relevant
operator group. There are about 50 operator groups active at ROC
Mondriaan. Some things are put straight through to an external
organization. Like when something severe has happened, such as
a big leak, says Hoogerdijk. But we also put printer malfunctions
through to third parties.
Getting started with TOPdesk
Early last year, the service desk started looking for a new software
package to meet ROC Mondriaans needs. We were looking for a
broad facilities management package for creating and monitoring
calls, subletting contracts, long-term maintenance planning and
managing all our inventories. But above all: a user-friendly package
that does not require a lot of bespoke work, says Hoogerdijk.
They soon chose TOPdesk. Hoogerdijk was the project leader for
the implementation process. As the service desks senior employee, I
use TOPdesk intensively. Due to less than ideal experiences with our
previous call management package, I had a good idea of what we were
looking for.
TOPdesk was implemented step by step. All employees were
registered in TOPdesk via a link with the HRM data. Once that was
complete, the required links were created, branches and locations
(including inventories) were registered in TOPdesk and the work
processes were analysed and described.
ROC Mondriaan went live with Call Management last year, with
the caretakers and IT specialists as the main operator groups. The
TOPdesk consultant was initially responsible for the training, but
WE SOLVE OTHER
LOCATIONS
PROBLEMS HERE
ITS FUN THAT THE
SERVICE DESK SHARES
A BUILDING WITH
THE STUDENTS
CUSTOMER IN FOCUS 9
Hoogerdijk soon took over. That was quite easy for me, because I
have a good idea of TOPdesks benefts, making communicating this
straightforward, says Hoogerdijk.
A spontaneous launch
A little more than six months on, what are her thoughts on TOPdesk?
Its great that we can do more ourselves here at the service desk,
says Hoogerdijk. This is where we resolve problems at other locations;
it is very effcient. For instance, if there is a problem with the plumbing
that the caretakers cannot fx, we put it straight through to our
Property department.
The Self Service Desk has been up and running for about four
months, and people are already making good use of it. I recently
created an overview to see how we are doing. Things are going well:
the number of calls registered via the Self Service Desk already equals
the number we receive through other channels.
The introduction of the Self Service Desk was more spontaneous than
initially planned, as Hoogerdijk explains. We werent offcially live yet,
but the IT department had already prepared the link to the Self Service
Desk for everyone. Everyone just started clicking the icon and creating
calls. I really liked seeing that; after all, TOPdesk is very accessible.
Looking forwards with TOPdesk
In November, ROC Mondriaan started using TOPdesks Reservations
Management module. We want to use this for the various locations
meeting rooms, says Hoogerdijk. People can make their own
reservations using the Self Service Desk. The reservation arrives at
the central desk, which takes care of the rest of the process. Internal
customers are gaining more and more insight into the entire process,
and you can tell that this is appreciated.
Hoogerdijk also wants to take a closer look at how processes
can be registered in Change Management. Imagine someone new
commences here, says Hoogerdijk. They would need an email
account, but that can only be created once they have a login code. We
want to map out step-by-step plans like that.
Even if more and more activities are registered, Hoogerdijk still never
knows what the day holds for her when she starts work each morning.
For instance, we had a problem with the network yesterday, says
Hoogerdijk. Everything was down: all locations, all power, telephones,
network. At times like that the service desk receives questions like,
What should we do with the students? Should we send them home?
It is this kind of variety that I like about my job. The atmosphere at the
service desk is also great, defnitely now things are so much easier and
smoother with TOPdesk.
ROC Mondriaan in numbers
5 service desk employees
27 schools in and around The Hague
Around 55 operator groups
Around 2,200 employees
Around 20,000 students
Around 1,500 calls per month,
of which 750 are registered via the SSD