Hu-Friedy Chooses Crow Canyon to Run Efficient Support Help Desk

If you have ever sat in a dentist’s chair, chances are you have come into contact with a Hu-Friedy product. Hu-Friedy is a global leader in dental instrument manufacturing, with over 10,000 instruments and products. With a mission to “help dental professionals perform at their best”, dedication to precision, quality, and service runs throughout all departments in the company.

Critical to that service commitment is making sure the 450-plus employees of Hu-Friedy are operating at maximum efficiency. From sales to fulfillment to customer service and supply chain management, all systems need to be working together seamlessly. Delivering this level of service is the responsibility of Bob Boatwright, Manager of IT Technical Operations, and his five-person Service Desk team.

The Service Desk team must provide a fast response and resolution to each of the hundreds of Service Request tickets they receive each month. Requests run the gamut from hardware and telecom needs to software issues regarding SAP or Microsoft applications. Once a ticket is entered into the system, the end user expects that it will be handled promptly and effectively. Today those high expectations are routinely met using Crow Canyon’s Help Desk for SharePoint. However, Bob and the team recall a time when the process was much more challenging:

“Before Crow Canyon, users had no way of knowing if a ticket was received, let alone what its status was. Now, users of the system can enter a ticket and see the progress of it as it moves through to completion. This saves everyone time, both the users and our service desk team.”

– Bob Boatwright, Manager of IT Technical Operations, Hu-Friedy

Prior to using Crow Canyon’s software, the support team had a single email address for all IT-related questions, issues, and needs. Emails were coming in from all directions at the rate of hundreds per month. Members of the IT team had to open, read, and manually categorize each email, a cumbersome and time-consuming process.

With multiple people working the emails, it was difficult to know who was working on what, leading to multiple hands on some tickets and others falling through the cracks. “I thought you took care of that,” was a common lament.

One of the first areas Bob targeted, after joining Hu-Friedy two years ago, was streamlining the way service tickets were handled. He was confident that his team could achieve a much higher performance level if the right tools and infrastructure were put in place. After working through the list of needs and wants from his team, he began his search.

One requirement for the new help desk solution was clear: it had to work with SharePoint. Hu-Friedy employees were already familiar with the popular Microsoft platform. So the search began by reviewing software providers with solutions already integrated with SharePoint.

Several providers were evaluated. Some proposed large, complex systems that required their own dedicated server — a deal-breaker for Hu-Friedy. One offered a completely customized solution, highly tailored to fit their needs. But developing it would require a lot of extra time and input from the team. Other providers made lots of promises but didn’t follow up with their proposals and were unresponsive when asked questions.

When Hu-Friedy reached out to Crow Canyon, they got the response they were looking for — a fully developed Help Desk solution, tightly integrated with SharePoint, and easily adjusted to fit his needs without additional development.

“The Crow Canyon people came across as highly professional from the start. They had plenty of references, so I was able to speak with people who had been using the software and had solved many of the same issues we had.”

– Bob Boatwright, Manager of IT Technical Operations, Hu-Friedy

The Crow Canyon professionals went to work to install a seamless set of integrated processes, including ticketing, categorization, assignment, status and performance tracking. Organization of tickets and visibility over who is responsible was vastly improved, reducing confusion and ensuring that attention is spread evenly among tickets.

The entire Service Desk Team was impressed with the skill level of the Crow Canyon team and their willingness to do what it takes to keep them satisfied.

“They get the job done without nickeling and diming us, as so many vendors tend to do.”

– Bob Boatwright, Manager of IT Technical Operations, Hu-Friedy

The software has several features that help ensure each ticket is properly categorized and indexed for resolution. One of the most helpful is an alert/escalation mechanism that lets the assigned technician know when a ticket has been untouched for a period longer than the service level agreements allow, prompting them to respond and take action.

“There may be an open ticket under someone’s ID, but if they haven’t taken action it, the Crow Canyon system alerts them. They can then either put in a comment or close it out. This feature has been hugely helpful.”

– Bob Boatwright, Manager of IT Technical Operations, Hu-Friedy

Hu-Friedy recently rolled out a “self-service” enhancement, which allows users hands-on access to the system to open their own tickets and keep tabs on progress towards resolution. The ability for users to check on the status themselves has dramatically reduced the number of status-update calls to the support desk.

The Hu-Friedy IT organization is highly satisfied with the transformation the software has made to support and service levels to users of the system.

“The benefit of using the Crow Canyon solution cuts across so many areas, that I would simply say it has one hundred percent transformed the way we handle service requests.”

– Bob Boatwright, Manager of IT Technical Operations, Hu-Friedy