First Line of Defense
When campus customers need to report a facilities issue, their first line of defense is the Facilities Services One Call number where they’re greeted by a friendly and helpful member of the Work Order Management team. This customer service team has not always been a function of Facilities Services, but it’s now an integral part of how we interact with customers. Let’s take a look at how we got here and where we’re headed.
The Work Order Management (WOM) team launched in December of last year, as a part of Facilities’ efforts to restructure the process of work order execution. The team consists of three people, Allie McCosh, Amanda Johnson, and Sam Shiflett, with plans to continue expanding. They are responsible for answering phone calls to Facilities Services regarding maintenance and custodial issues, as well as dispatching messages to the proper teams. As their name suggests, they manage work orders from maintenance requests, acting as a liaison between campus and Maintenance.
Submitting Requests
When you experience a maintenance or custodial issue on campus, you have a couple of options. You may either contact 865-946-7777 to speak with a member of the WOM team or access the client portal. When you call the phone number, Allie, Amanda, or Sam will answer, or you will be placed in a brief call queue until one of them is available. The team member who answers the phone will ask questions to gain pertinent information about your issue so Maintenance & Repair knows what to expect when they go to address it. WOM will then create a ticket in TDX, which is a ticket system that allows them to keep track of calls and the different types of issues called in. Next, they enter the main work order in Dash, assigning it to the correct building foreman or shop foreman to handle the issue.
If you want to enter a work order request through the client portal, you simply log onto Dash and navigate to the page titled “Maintenance Work Request.” There, you create a request and enter the necessary information. The request is sent to the WOM team who then create a work order and a ticket and reroute the order to the proper team.
The work request on the client portal shows updates on the process of the work order. You can log in and see whether it’s waiting to be approved, in process, or closed. When you call to request a work order instead of using the client portal, you cannot see these updates. However, you will receive a reference number after the work order is created, which you can use to call and request a status update from WOM.
Building Relationships & Bridging Gaps
This has allowed the WOM team to quickly build relationships and bridge gaps that were previously difficult to address. When serving as the central work request point of contact for all of campus, there’s not much downtime during the day, but this team uses their team wisely to maximize customer satisfaction and improve departmental communication.
WOM received 4,300 calls in the first quarter of this year. When classes are in session, they get around 140-180 calls per day. Prior to the creation of WOM, there was only one person in charge of answering calls and dispatching to the Maintenance crew. As you can imagine, the call volume made it extremely difficult for one person to give each caller the time and attention deserved while still putting in the work orders and completing assigned administrative tasks. Now, the team of three can distribute the responsibilities so that everything can get done efficiently and with more attention.
After clear communication with the customer, the WOM team gets to work behind the scenes as the voice of Maintenance & Repair by connecting them to those who need an issue fixed. In the life cycle of a work request, WOM is the front end of the process, Maintenance and/or Utilities take care of the middle, and quality assurance is the back end. After a work order is complete, Sheena Rhea handles quality assurance to make sure the work is finished properly. Throughout the process, WOM keeps track of the work orders, providing updates to the customer when requested. They may do follow-ups as well to see the progress on a work order.
Continuous Improvement
In efforts to continuously improve, the WOM team has begun going on field trips, accompanying Maintenance as they carry out the work orders. WOM does this to get a full picture of the whole process, to see what goes on on the other side. They want to better understand how the maintenance processes work so that they can make the work order process smoother.
Though they just started, WOM is consistently trying to become more efficient, always looking for ways to improve communication and grow. Each team member is motivated by the common goal to increase efficiency in the work order process, to aid in navigating each step, and to ensure that interdepartmental communication is successful and resolute.