Sanja Tadic and Martin Borchert

Heading for Success: Customer-Focused Service Improvement at Griffith University in Australia

Griffith University has 25,000 FTE students and 7 sites across 5 campuses, in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. This article discusses two large projects Griffith's Information Services team is currently working on – the Service Quality Improvement Program and the Digital Respository Project.

Sanja Tadic, Manager, Information Services and Martin Borchert, Associate Director, Access Services, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia

Information Services staff work across Griffith's five campuses, providing integrated services that span traditional library, flexible learning and information technology infrastructures. A key element allowing us to deliver such diverse services is the provision of a client-centered help center which we call "InfoServices".

The InfoServices team provides university students and staff, as well as members of the general community, with reference, information technology, and information literacy support and training face-to-face, online, and by phone and email.

The Service Quality Improvement Program

We began implementing the Service Quality Improvement Program about a year ago. The aim has been to leverage the advantages of an integrated structure to offer a superior service that can provide Griffith with a distinct competitive advantage. One obvious advantage linked to high quality services is student retention.

The program is based on the implementation of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) principles and management practice in our services. Flowing from this is the implementation of an integrated service desk tool for the management and delivery of requests for support and information from InfoServices.

The program develops and brings together the people, vision and standards, business rules, processes, technology and collaborations required to provide a single point of contact. Benefits to clients and InfoServices alike include improved incident, problem and knowledge management; tracking of logged calls; provision of self-service resolution to clients via a knowledgebase; improved consistency of service; and clear communication via posted announcements.

The whole program has been a fairly big shift in the workflow of the Griffith Information Resources team. Previously our traditional structure meant students had to go to different places to get different kinds of help and support. Now they can just go to one place which acts as a single point of access for all services.

It has also been a significant change in terms of skilling up InfoServices staff. We have trained a large number of people in a diverse range of areas – from information

literacy, to library support, to IT support. Already we’ve seen the benefits: this streamlined approach has made life a lot easier for our clients. The next change we’re implementing is the service desk tool to make managing requests and reporting incidences a lot easier. InfoServices aims to absorb 80% of client queries at their first point of contact. Queries we cannot answer are escalated to either second or third tier support groups. With our new service desk tool we’ll be able to record all requests and services we’re providing. Likewise clients will be able to review the status of their requests online and see how they are progressing. This will help us to better manage client expectations. We classify incidents from levels 1-5, with level 1 being the most serious. We also have the capacity to post information on the status of incidents. This creates efficiencies, keeps our clients informed and means we have fewer follow-up calls. The important thing is to always keep the client informed.

We measure client satisfaction using different surveys throughout the year. These help us to measure our performance and gauge how close we are to our goals. So far results have been better every year.

The Digital Repository Project

The Digital Repository Project, developed by a team of six staff, provides improved return on investment from our digital collections of library and learning materials. It will make managing and using such collections easier for Information Services and academic staff. Students and academics will access many repository services using the familiar Learning@Griffith interface and will not need to learn a specialized interface.

The project primarily provides improved “invisible” content management systems and processes supporting development of our digital library collections and flexible learning program, Learning@Griffith, which uses the Blackboard learning management system. The project also offers some very interesting improvements in quality of service to students and academics.

Griffith has selected the Hive digital repository system and partnered with HarvestRoad to develop the system to meet Griffith’s requirements. Hive is an independent, open and federated digital repository system which supports document versioning, workflow management and customizable metadata schemas for multiple collection types. As part of the Digital Repository Project, Griffith is tailoring the system to automatically “push” relevant examination papers into appropriate Learning@Griffith courses. Our collection of more than 10,000 digitized journal articles and book chapters used for course readings is also being managed within Hive. Academics can search, select, check and “book” digitized readings to be available online for specified time periods and in accordance with copyright compliance requirements, via Learning@Griffith.

Hive is also being developed as a repository for the many and varied learning objects developed by Information Services education designers, in collaboration with academics, to be used in online courses via Learning@Griffith. Using Hive, academics can search and browse subject-based collections of learning objects, and can share, reuse and modify these for their own purposes.

One hundred percent of the university’s academic courses have an online presence at Learning@Griffith and 70% are actively using the service. We run faculty workshops for academics to give them the necessary tools to use these services. In addition, subject teams including educational designers liaise with faculty to implement course programs. There has been huge uptake of Learning@Griffith by academics and students. It’s a convenience that also greatly enriches the learning experience.

EXPLORE MORE

InfoServices at Griffith:   www.griffith.edu.au/ins

Learning@Griffith:    www.griffith.edu.au/ins/learningatgriffith/