Riverside Group has implemented helpdesk software from House-on-the-Hill to support its 2400 staff.
Following its 2006 merger with English Churches Housing Group, Riverside is one of the UK’s largest housing associations with more than 50,000 properties for rent and shared ownership. The group’s IT group has 40 staff, half of whom work on the IT helpdesk and in other technical support roles, handling support calls from staff at 300 sites across England.
The move to new offices in Liverpool triggered the decision to update its helpdesk software. Debbie Anacoura, IT technical support manager, Riverside Group, said, “We had a package from Computer Associates which had been very expensive to maintain and was reaching the end of its maintenance agreement.”
After short-listing five helpdesk suppliers, Riverside selected House-on-the-Hill’s SupportDesk. Debbie Anacoura said, “All of the products did pretty much the same thing, but House-on-the-Hill was much less expensive than the others.”
Using SupportDesk, first-line helpdesk staff can now resolve incidents themselves or assign calls to second-line support specialists who deal with specific geographical areas, while SupportDesk automatically routes escalated calls to the relevant expert. The product also allows multiple issues affecting the same individual to be combined in a single document, with the call closed only when all related activities have been completed.
Debbie Anacoura said, “Our previous product was Java-driven and very CPU-intensive. SupportDesk is easy to use and perfectly suited to our needs.”
Technical support managers use SupportDesk to generate reports such as the number of calls logged, areas covered, how many calls were opened and closed each month, and if any incidents breach internal service level agreements.
Debbie Anacoura said, “The merger with English Churches caused massive challenges as it had 200 sites nationwide so a lot of our IT support work had to be carried out remotely. However, the service from House-on-the-Hill has been fantastic. There are great benefits for the end-users because they now get confirmation that a call is logged and instant feedback on the status of their problem. We know what’s happening at every step.”
