The Challenges That Come with Maintaining IT Support Systems
Smart cities are connected. So, when the city’s resources experience problems with internet connectivity, the city needs to be made aware. The quickest way to become informed of issues is, of course, to monitor those resources. However, sometimes, some problems are not apparent to government workers. In this case, the city must ensure residents can report issues to municipal staff. The best way to do this is to use web form reporting systems to make residents feel heard. This system must take into issue reports and resident experiences to relay vital information to the correct team. From there, the government in question would need an internal process to be triggered that would alert them to the need to liaise with their service provider. SimplyCast offers the IT Support use case as one of its many use cases that aid smart cities in addressing issues promptly and communicating with vendors.
Finding a means to help both sides of this communication can be tricky. Primarily, it is important to allow residents to report issues. Communication with Vendors can be manually triggered, but residents need to be able to communicate automatically. Depending on the issue they are experiencing, government employees may need to communicate with different vendors. By implementing different filters and automation rules, government workers can automatically filter out common issues and auto-respond to some common issues. Some of the benefits associated with developing a solution like this can include:
- Communication Improvement: Residents can rely on their government if their concerns can be heard and responded to. Ordinarily, this is done via older methods of communication. To move the city into smart city territory, digital communications need to be adopted. By doing this, residents can more conveniently engage with municipal services and develop a sense of satisfaction. Improving communication between residents and their municipal staff is better for everyone and builds trust in government.
- Issue Prioritization: If many issues come in at once, it can be difficult to prioritize problems correctly. Municipal staff must ensure each support request is assessed according to the situation's urgency. This can include the affected resources, the number of people affected, and other factors. Automated tools can review the details and automatically assign priority, ensuring that when tasks are delivered to the municipality, they are already assigned a priority.
- Automatic Follow-up Communication: Message consistency can go a long way toward building trust. Templating follow-up messages that let residents know that their issue is being worked on and alerting them to a resolution enables this consistency to exist. Messages will remain the same across many types of issues, and communication will occur without the need for phone calls or email chains. These messages can also include any instructions a resident may need to follow to fully resolve the issue, such as clearing caches or restarting a device. Automating these ensures a clean, consistent look in messaging across all IT support tickets.
These are a few potential benefits of an IT Support system. SimplyCast provides a profoundly effectual IT Support Request application that performs at a high standard to ensure that any requests are followed up on and resolved as smoothly as possible.
Introducing SimplyCast’s IT Support Technology
SimplyCast uses various enhanced IT support request response tools that help smart cities address all requests genially and efficiently. IT support systems can easily adjust to any scenario needed, ensuring good responsiveness. We have helpful tools that allow residents to report various issues in one place. Support requests can then be directed to the right staff member and placed in the correct workflow. Once the request is verified and the work has begun, a notification will automatically be sent to the resident. This process can repeat when the issue has been resolved.
An important part of our solution is our suite of automation tools. By setting certain triggers and decisions, information on the form can be used to route requests and send responses back to the residents who send them. This allows staff to focus their attention on resolving the IT issues the resident is having.
How Simplycast’s IT Support System Works
SimplyCast’s IT support system refines resident ticket creation through the use of advanced tools and templating. When a resident creates a ticket, the issue is quickly prioritized and assigned to the correct municipal staff. When the issue has been accepted, a message is sent to the resident to let them know that their IT issue is being investigated. Depending on the issue, they may receive a resolution quickly, or an automated notice that the issue has been escalated. The tracking system then compiles information provided by residents and municipal staff. This allows government workers to review the issue after its resolution to take preventative action and avoid similar issues in the future.
SimplyCast’s IT support system provides users with a comprehensive and complete look into the topics surrounding technical and networking issues to aid in the operation of the city and improve city-resident cooperation.
How Simplycast’s It Support Request Tools Resolve Resident Challenges
SimplyCast’s IT support request solution improves the city’s capability when it comes to responding to IT support requests. Some of the ways that these tools improve IT support capabilities include:
- Faster response times: The advanced technology on our platform streamlines the city’s response to network issues. Municipality staff can manage tasks without issue and keep an eye on issues that have gone unresolved long-term. This enables the city’s staff to easily show major outages or access problems. Additionally, this should allow larger problems to reach a quicker resolution. These quicker response times result in less overall downtime and improve trust in the city’s ability to provide.
- Improved relationships: By keeping consistent uptime, smart cities enable residents to trust that services will be consistently available. When residents can trust that the city staff have their interests in mind and can access services, trust in the city government rises. This trust further empowers city officials to support infrastructure and make investments where necessary, improving relations with residents even more.
- Efficient communication: Sending pre-constructed alerts for planned maintenance and automatically following up on support requests helps keep everyone on the same page. By improving the quality of conversation with residents and increasing transparency, residents are provided higher quality service and trust that their issues will be resolved.
- Easy Access to Information: No matter how many support requests are logged by residents, staff can easily check pipelines to show the status of issues and provide manual feedback on requests; this can rapidly highlight process choke points and critical network issues or find areas where reaction speed is too slow. This allows them to alter their perspective to target specific problems that can cause the most stress for residents.
These are, of course, just a few of the benefits that SimplyCast’s IT Support Request solution has. IT support issues are complex and cover almost every aspect of building a smart city. As such, IT support solutions need to be equally multi-faceted and expansive. However, this also means that each city’s IT requirements will be unique. We look forward to discussing each unique case and building a smarter world.
