Goodwill Industries Applies HEAT® to Increase Per-Analyst Call Volumes and Lower Resolution Times

World's largest nonprofit provider of education, training, and career services for people with disadvantages scores high marks in a customer satisfaction survey

Rockford, Illinois (August 8, 2007) – Every 57 seconds, each business day, Goodwill Industries places someone in a job. It’s one of the world’s largest nonprofit providers of education, training, and career services for people with disadvantages.

Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin and Metropolitan Chicago, besides being the largest Goodwill organization on the continent with 22 retail stores across the region and 4,000 people employed across a wide range of jobs such as packaging, assembly, laundry and food service, also ranks as one of the most efficient. For three consecutive years, it has received a 4-star rating out of four stars from Charity Navigator, America's largest independent evaluator of charities in terms of fiscal efficiency. Of 5,131 charities evaluated by their peers, only 7.9% have received at least three consecutive 4-star evaluations.

The IT department at Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin and Metropolitan Chicago provides technology support to about 1,000 network users across 45 sites. The team troubleshoots everything from office software to retail cash registers to Goodwill staff trying to order food online at a Navy base.

“Our official mission is to provide reliable, efficient, and cost-effective information technology services to support operations throughout Goodwill,” said Cindee Malczewski, Support Services Project Manager. “Our staff is very much aware that we are a part of a greater mission to help our communities and our society. Our role is to provide the technology and the support the different business units need to operate effectively and efficiently.”

Until 2003, Support Services tracked IT work orders in a very basic IT support application. With its end user base growing continuously, the team found it hard to process requests in a timely manner, and track and measure activities. The department needed more automated capabilities to increase the number of calls each analyst handles. Out of four solutions the team evaluated, HEAT® Service & Support™ from FrontRange Solutions proved to be the most feature-rich application, as well as the most adaptable to Goodwill’s needs.

“We liked the look and feel of HEAT, but more importantly, we saw how it could easily be configured to meet our changing needs,” Malczewski said. “We also felt it would be an excellent tool for process improvement, a key corporate goal for Goodwill.”

Ticomix assisted with the implementation, training and ongoing support. “Ticomix was an excellent partner in our HEAT implementation,” Malczewski said. “They gathered information on our business practices and asked about our vision for the future. They then brought a team onsite to set up the software, business rules and configurations. Our Ticomix project lead was a very valuable resource.”

After go-live, Ticomix provided personalized support as questions or issues arose. Goodwill staff members attended HEAT administrator training through Ticomix, and various team members now regularly attend HEAT User Groups facilitated by Ticomix. 

With HEAT software in place, Goodwill improved both incident and problem management. The knowledge bases empower analysts to resolve more issues on the first call, and to shorten call times. Comparing the first quarter that Goodwill implemented HEAT, Q1 2003, to Q1 2007, the team reduced average resolution times from 1.36 days to .62 days. “It’s faster to process calls and resolve problems upfront with the same staff because we can easily search and find the answers we need,” Malczewski said.

In that same timeframe, the number of work orders increased by 77 percent. However, the staff only grew 18 percent, from 17 to 20 members. Each staff member now handles 149 work orders on average, compared to 99 per quarter before – an improvement of 50 percent. Ultimately, that means the IT team does its part to keep Goodwill’s outstanding efficiency ratings and customer service high.

“Our IT department has made great strides in the quality and quantity of support we provide since implementing HEAT,” she said. “In our most recent survey, 93 percent of our end users reported that they were either satisfied or extremely satisfied with the quality of work our IT department does for them.”

As expected, Goodwill found HEAT exceptionally simple to configure to its changing needs. The team tailors HEAT as it identifies specific process improvement objectives. “We have so much control with HEAT,” Malczewski said. “With a lot of canned software, you can’t do this or that. I can make HEAT do just about anything I want it to do. The process is very easy; actually, I would even call it fun.”

About Ticomix 

Ticomix provides premier technology solutions and services to small to medium-sized enterprises in the areas of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Service Desk. In addition to being named one of FrontRange Solutions’ top five HEAT® Partners in 2005 and 2006, Ticomix is a leading provider of award-winning GoldMine® for CRM, ITSM® built on the ITIL® framework for complete service management, IPCC® for communication management, and IM® for comprehensive asset management. Through numerous events such as quarterly user groups, ongoing training classes, and annual conferences geared toward GoldMine®, HEAT®, and ITSM® users, Ticomix continues to show their dedication and support to the CRM and Service Desk communities. For more information, call 866.TICOMIX.

Contact:

Emily Seagren
Ticomix, Inc.
815.636.1499
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it