Unified School District creates digital connections with ServiceNow

Aligning to a single plan

As one of the top 10 largest districts in the nation, this unified school system serves over half a million students, parents, guardians and community members on the West Coast of the United States. Its services extend far beyond the classroom and include numerous social programs, such as housing support, afterschool programs and transportation.

Previously, each school was left to its own devices to manage the overflow of phone calls, emails and comments coming from families as the pandemic grew. This approach resulted in schools using various combinations of applications to track correspondence, including email, spreadsheets, online ticketing systems, phone and chat. In many cases, information on these interactions went unsaved, resulting in a tremendous lack of visibility at the district level.

The added pressure from parents and guardians who could not physically visit schools to voice concerns prompted the district to find a digital solution that could unify its disparate systems and processes. A centralized Enterprise Service Desk could be a simplified entry point for frequently asked questions and concerns as well as a single source of truth to track requests and correspondence.

Partnering with a trusted advisor to build true customer service

With the stakes so high for the unified district and its students, failure to act wasn’t an option. Already set on ServiceNow as its platform of choice, the school district worked with NTT DATA for advisory assistance.

The first step in the collaboration was defining the environment, culture, constraints and aspirations to create the right solution that would be sustainable for years to come. This extensive gathering of requirements happened over the course of six weeks, with in-depth conversations with multiple levels throughout the organization.

NTT DATA’s ServiceNow experts gained a deep understanding of the importance of a sustainable solution by staying as close to out-of-box as possible to guarantee the solution would withstand future platform upgrades. Together, NTT DATA and the school district developed a tailor-made solution that would set up the school system for success for years to come.

Prepped, planned and ready to roll

With the advisory phase completed, the teams had a clear target area to hit the ground running and focus on the actual implementation of the proposed solution.

The ServiceNow blueprint uses ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) to optimize how the district receives and responds to requests. This allowed the school system to move from reactive to proactive service for students and their families. With this solution in place, it will be able to easily identify areas that need more attention. For example, a school within the district may have many requests for Russian language translation or experience an unusually high number of late school busses.

By establishing the Knowledge module in ServiceNow, the school system has new reporting and metric capabilities so it can make continuous improvements long after the initial rollout.

Revolutionizing service for students and their families

The new solution will also integrate seamlessly with the district’s existing telephony system, Amazon Connect, so information on callers can be located and shared with its agents. This will cut down introduction time and empower agents to anticipate callers’ needs to provide a super-simple experience for users calling into the school.

Rather than the system placing them on multiple holds as their call gets routed to the appropriate office, all routings will take place on the system’s back end, so calls will automatically be routed to the right team or offloaded to self-service.

Already using the Self Service and Virtual Agent modules in ServiceNow to handle Tier 0 requests, the school system has begun filtering out a sizable chunk of work for its agents. Right now, Tier 1 requests are routed to agents, while Tier 2 requests filter to specialists.

This framework makes the process more efficient for everyone involved: parents or guardians who are busy with work can get information quickly or provide feedback without sitting on hold, and agents have more time to focus on requests that require their complete attention.

Empathy above all else

Looking to provide service in a way that was both intuitive and human, the school district diverged from a traditional routing pattern by prioritizing empathy above efficiency. That empathy serves as the foundation of its new CSM system. For example, it didn’t want a new system to waste parent or guardian time by filtering them through self-service if they needed specialized attention.

Making data-based decisions

Beyond the newly streamlined service, the unified school district will soon have access to a comprehensive view of requests across its school system. Along with the artificial intelligence/analytics capabilities in the NOW platform, this data will enable the district to track patterns and make decisions using real-time data to better allocate resources and serve the community.

Lastly, the district set up a mobile app to give community members another form of sending correspondence and finding information on the go.

Stepping into the future with ServiceNow

With the blueprint done, the school system now has a clear and concrete roadmap to achieve its goal of providing a modern and simple user experience. Empowered with the right tools, the district is now in the process of implementing the CSM solution with NTT DATA’s team.

With a unified experience for employees, students, and their families — the school district’s partnerships are stronger at a time when fostering connections has never been more important.