Hello, Habre! Our colleague Artem Ibragimov is engaged in technical support of the client’s personal account (PCA) of the First Freight Company. Previously, we told how we formulated the requirements and created a prototype of the LKK using the example of one of the service functions – online submission of an application for transportation. Today we will talk about the work of technical support, prompt solution of tasks and improvement of LKK.

How a user can report a problem

The LKK user has four ways to report a problem and assign a task to a technical support specialist.

1. Telephone is the most common method (less than 1% of all requests);

2. Mail – (34%);

3. PGK self-service portal created on the ITSM platform (17%);

4. Interface of the client’s private account (48%).

Users contacting technical support can be conditionally divided into external (directly the clients themselves) and internal (mainly client managers). The clients themselves do not have access to the self-service portal and our internal first line, they start their appeals and incidents in the LKK interface, from where the appeals enter the portal to the ITSM system.

There is a dependence of the type of tasks and the next group of its assignment. A user from LKK can send tasks to both the second and third lines, depending on the topic. The first line of support (calling by phone or sending a letter to the common box of technical support of PGC) records the request and transfers it to the second or third line of support directly to LCC. We are currently working on strengthening the role of the first line and transferring some requests from the second line to it, which will help to solve tasks faster and also reduce the company’s technical support costs.

The second line is internal employees of PGK, who are distributed territorially among branches in different cities: Moscow, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok. They are mainly engaged in issuing access and consulting.

If there are incidents in the operation of the system, non-standard situations, then the tasks are transferred to the third line of support, the services of which are divided between the employees of the Areal subcontractor team, which participates in the development of the LKK, and the full-time technical support specialist of the PGC, which is territorially located in Ulan-Ude. Due to the difference in time zones, the third line, like the second, actually works from the very morning.

Most of the tasks for the third line are related to one-time complaints about the incorrect operation of the system or suspected errors. Any suspicion of even the smallest bug goes to the third line.

Tasks can appear immediately on the third line. Monitoring configured with the help of Zabbix+Prometheus monitors the “health” of the service and quickly informs the team about significant deviations.

Issues that require developer involvement are sent to Jira as tickets. We start a task in Jira, and on the ITSM platform we simply indicate the connection with this task. When the fix goes live, we close the issue and all tickets related to that issue.

No matter how the task comes, specialists receive it in the form of a request on the ITSM platform. A ticket has its own priority, degree of impact and urgency, as well as a number of additional supporting attributes necessary for further analysis. We evaluate the quality of technical support mainly by the ITSM system.

Task types

We distinguish four types of tasks in the ITSM system, which have their own deadlines and ways of solving them.

1. Service request (SSR). To solve such a task, it is enough to get a consultation on the second line, because the request usually does not have a problem related to the operation of the system. This includes access administration. We are currently working on transferring these tasks to the front line.

2. Incident. It is in the care of the third line, because the problem is related to the incorrect operation of the system.

3. The problem is the cause of the incident. Each incident has its own root problem, which can combine several identical incidents. Each issue has its own conclusion, which is described in Jira and duplicated in the body of the issue.

4. Request for change (CFR) – proposals for improving the product. Such tasks are related to fixing bugs, usually such an appeal carries a request from a business. For example, add a night theme to the interface, include the functionality of calculating a new kind of rolling stock, etc.

The LCC working group includes business customers, development team leads, a project manager, analysts, and technical support specialists, all of whom provide suggestions for system development. However, any user has the opportunity to submit an idea for improving the LCC, which will be considered by the product team. Representatives of the commercial department decide whether the proposals will be implemented.

SLA

The terms of consideration of requests regarding the LCC correspond to the strategic goals of the PGC. The terms of the SLA (term of application implementation) depend on the problem. For example, if the client has problems with the application facility, this type of request is automatically given a high priority SLA of 4 working hours. During this time, we have to solve the most painful issues that directly affect the company’s bottom line and customer loyalty.

For critical incidents, a special workflow and SLA, as well as a special emergency regulation, have been established. Specialists should solve such tasks not in 4 workers, but in 4 astronomical hours, regardless of the time of day – this is the general standard for the company. Of course, such situations are rare.

Service metrics

LCC is presented within the company as a service with its own service levels, escalation chains, etc. Every month, the development team reports to the company’s management on the same service metrics that the company considers to be the main ones and distributes despite all its own services. The metrics are universal for all of the company’s digital products.

The dashboard is configured in the Qlik corporate system, which collects data from the ITSM system and builds reports based on it. These reports correlate with the indicators prescribed in the IT strategy. In addition, tasks are constantly monitored in real time, for which the capabilities of the ITSM system are used.

Returning to the functionality of the PGC self-service portal, the user who sets the task has the opportunity to reopen the task if he is not satisfied with the answer. And also evaluate in the “appraisal evaluation” section. Each rating of “2” is analyzed, the conclusions are recorded in the comments to the incident in the ITSM system, and if necessary, measures are taken.

Separately, we will mention the metric by the source of the request. We have a strategic goal by the end of 2023 – 60% of all applications should be submitted through the portal or through integration solutions (LCS), that is, applications should come through automatic channels, without involving the phone and e-mail. Currently, 65% of users apply through automatic channels. For comparison, in the second half of 2022, this indicator barely exceeded 50%.

The growth of appeals

The increase in the number of complaints about problems in the system is related to the frequency of releases issued by the LCC. We release releases every two weeks, but of course hotfixes can be released more often.

Cases

Finally, we will share examples of cases that were successfully resolved during the improvement of the system.

• After PGK delivered its servers, LKK began to “fall off” much less.

• The largest increase in the load on the LCC occurred in 2021, when almost all clients of the PGC began to file applications in the system. We “treated” the problem by increasing service capacity and optimizing requests.

• Returning a user request with an “invalid transaction” error. After finding out the reasons, it turned out that the manager did not click on the “valid deal” item. The company conducted direct training of managers, explaining that all points must be unlocked in time, otherwise users will have problems.

• Disruptions in the work of the LCC became more frequent last fall, most often the reason was the growing load: at the end of the month, users submit more applications, more people load the system. This problem was solved by optimizing and increasing memory.

We continue to develop LKK. It becomes more convenient, faster and “smarter” for its users. Our experts will continue to share the results of their work with you. If you want to join the PGK IT team, respond to our vacancies on IT/Digital – PGK|Careers.