Universities function like mini-cities—each department with its own tools, teams, and ticket queues. IT, HR, Admissions, Finance, and Facilities often run separate help desks, causing duplication, longer response times, and zero visibility across departments. Over time, these silos create bottlenecks impacting everyone from first-year students to deans.

A growing number of campuses are taking a different approach: moving to a single, unified service desk model—and achieving measurable improvements.

The Challenge: Fragmented Support Structures

Clovity’s analysis of 4.2 million support tickets across 50 U.S. campuses revealed that the average university runs over five separate help desks. Each operates with distinct tools, workflows, and reporting, leading to:

• 12 minutes lost per ticket due to tool-switching and manual handoffs

• Poor SLA visibility across departments

• Difficulty generating audit-ready logs (crucial for FERPA and NIST compliance)

• High costs, with average resolution at $35 per ticket

For institutions processing thousands of tickets per term, these inefficiencies add up quickly.

What Changed: One Portal for All Requests

Several leading universities consolidated onto a single Jira Service Management portal that routes all support requests—regardless of department—through one interface. The benefits were immediate:

• Resolution time dropped from 9.4 hours to 6.6 hours

• Cost per ticket fell to $22

• Audit prep time shrank from 3 weeks to 4 days

• Self-service resolution rose, with 42% of tickets handled without staff intervention

For example, one public flagship university replaced six separate systems with a centralized portal linked to a Confluence knowledge base and chatbot. In one semester, their backlog decreased by 41% and CSAT scores improved by 18 points.

How It Works: Three Layers of Success

1. People

   • Secured executive sponsorship and appointed change champions in each department

   • Conducted training sessions to demonstrate the benefits of a unified support model

2. Process

   • Standardized service catalogs and SLAs across all queues

   • Automated routing for common requests (e.g., password resets, room bookings) into a self-service portal

3. Platform

   • Configured JSM with queue-specific automation, real-time dashboards, and built-in audit tracking

   • Leveraged a shared Confluence knowledge base to deflect FAQs and reduce agent load

The Result: Faster Tickets, Lower Costs, Happier Campus

By rollout’s end, campus IT leaders weren’t just responding faster—they were leveraging real-time data to continually refine support. Students and staff enjoyed a single point of contact and clear accountability. And the metrics proved the model’s success.

📧 Contact us at sales@clovity.com or visit 🌐 atlassian.clovity.com to get started today.