Crow Canyon’s SharePoint Help Desk Relieves Outsourced IT Headaches at ZCL Composites


The Challenge

ZCL Composites is a Canadian manufacturing company that specializes in petroleum tanks, water storage tanks, and aboveground corrosion-free storage tanks. Based in Edmonton, Alberta, ZCL has over 300 employees working in 12 manufacturing plants spread coast-to-coast. The company services over 80% of the Canadian petroleum equipment market, providing storage solutions for fuel, chemical, petroleum, and oil products.

With so many people relying on the safety and stability of ZCL products, coupled with the logistical intricacies of implementing large-scale storage solutions, it should come as no surprise that ZCL’s IT Department fields a considerable number of inquiries on a daily basis.

ZCL’s IT Department used to be completely outsourced to a third-party service provider. According to ZCL’s IT Manager, Mohit Robinson, the result was a complete lack of communication between the end users and the outsourced IT Support team. Due to an overly cumbersome process, ZCL management found it difficult to follow what kind of work was being done and how long it was taking. The lack of structured communication-centric tools had an effect on both the customer experience and also the ability of management to gain insight into the business itself.


The Solution

A major turning point for ZCL Composites was the introduction of the Crow Canyon’s Help Desk Ticket System for SharePoint. Fortunately for ZCL, Mohit had prior experience with Crow Canyon and knew that the solution would be the most appropriate answer to ZCL’s dilemma.

“We ended up trying Crow Canyon and it integrated very well, the price was right for us, and once we put it in the ease-of-use was so great that it just stuck with me. There was not a lot of complicated processes required. I think we got the system up and running in just a couple of hours and we hit the ground running.”

– Mohit Robinson, IT Director, ZCL

The SharePoint-based Help Desk system enabled ZCL’s users to submit their own tickets; auto-generated e-mails facilitated the communication process between Mohit, his team, and their customers. “People just send tickets. We don’t have to run around chasing anyone and it’s all through e-mail, so everything is documented,” Mohit said. “If there is any user concern, I can always follow-up. If I see a ticket that’s been open more than a day, I can just click on it to get an idea of what’s going on. It’s a very communicative software.”

A major benefit for ZCL has been the statistical analysis capabilities included in the Crow Canyon Help Desk Ticket System. Before Crow Canyon, the outsourced solution was unable to provide meaningful customer service metrics. The situation has changed 180°, as ZCL is now able to use help desk statistics to understand how their customers are interacting with the support personnel. This data has enabled ZCL to create relevant self-help videos so that users can troubleshoot their own problems. In addition, the satisfaction survey capabilities have allowed ZCL management to see how effectively their IT Help Desk is servicing customers.

Mohit found that he and his management colleagues at ZCL benefited greatly from Crow Canyon’s outstanding support at all times:

“Crow Canyon has a really great support team. From a knowledgebase standpoint, if I ask something, the response is clear, either ‘Yes it’s doable’ or ‘No, but we’ll look into it and get back to you.’ For example, we just had an issue with our upgrade where our URLs were getting truncated. I called Crow Canyon… and it was fixed within 24 hours.”

– Mohit Robinson, IT Director, ZCL

ZCL Composites was able to take control of its help desk by empowering the support team to directly engage with customers instead of relying on a third-party outsourced solution. Crow Canyon’s Help Desk System for SharePoint enabled ZCL to implement a communicative process that supported transparency between both customers and support personnel. In sum, everyone was able to get on the same page and benefit from improved service levels.

A positive outcome of this arrangement was that ZCL could now understand exactly what was going on at all times via statistics, survey capabilities, and customer metrics.


ZCL Composites Logo

About

ZCL Composites manufactures underground and aboveground fiberglass storage tank options that can be used for a variety of applications including the storage of petroleum, water, and wastewater. Now owned by Shawcor Ltd., they are a leading innovator in composite tank engineering, with nearly 40 years of direct industry experience.


Industry
Manufacturing

Solution
Help Desk for SharePoint