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"We've crunched the numbers. We know we are saving a lot of money using the Giva Service Management Suite versus other enterprise-class knowledge base and help desk software products.
- William McDonald, CIO, Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP

Schulte Roth & Zabel's Results Using Giva's Cloud IT Help Desk

The Giva Service Management Suite™ provided SR&Z with:
  • 60 percent higher ROI than competing help desk software applications
  • Tools to maintain an 80 percent first call resolution rate
  • An 85 percent increase in attorney satisfaction with IT support and the ability to maintain a 4.9 customers satisfaction rating from attorneys out of possible 5.0
  • 100% uptime using the Giva Web-based help desk solution 24 hours/day
  • Integrated real-time reports to monitor processes and reduce call volume by focusing on root cause
  • A cost effective help desk solution that does not require programming for customizations
  • Continuous product enhancements for ever-changing help desk software needs

About Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP

Schulte Roth & Zabel is among the top 100 law firms in the world. The firm was awarded #1 Law Firm Help Desk in the USA in 2009 and 2008 from an independent survey performed by AmLaw Tech, the technology supplement to The American Lawyer. From 2006 through 2010, SR&Z was ranked the #1 Law Firm Help Desk in New York City.
About Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP
Quickly logging major problems that affect many attorneys and getting the situation escalated to the right service group that can fix the problem is a critical role of our help desk, and Giva HelpDesk streamlines this process.
Giva HelpDesk has many pre-built reports ready for us to use, making it very easy for us to run reports hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and on the fly in real time.
Giva HelpDesk has greatly contributed to raising our level of customer satisfaction with our attorneys. The Giva help desk solution has been a valuable tool in our impressive turnaround and continued success.
- William McDonald, CIO, Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP

Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP Case Study

William McDonald, CIO, Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP
Danny L. Morse, Technology Support Manager, Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP

The Challenge

The attorneys at SR&Z have access to many applications and services to keep them productive. If attorneys are not productive, then we may miss critical deadlines in litigation and securities. With senior attorney billing rates at a premium, time is of the essence in a firm like ours. We also had low customer satisfaction with our internal help desk. We knew that keeping our team members satisfied and productive was the key to the future of our firm, and we knew that quick ticket resolution would be essential to significantly increase customer satisfaction.

The Solution

Quickly logging major problems that affect many attorneys and getting the situation escalated to the right service group that can fix the problem is a critical role of our help desk, and Giva HelpDesk streamlines this process. For example, the Giva help desk solution sends an automated e-mail notification to the assignees when tickets are created, and it maintains the history of each ticket in a separate field for easy viewing of previous actions taken. Giva HelpDesk has made the assignment and tracking of a ticket a simple and efficient process.
The Giva help desk solution automatically generates a customer satisfaction survey when each ticket is closed. This has been instrumental to our marked improvement in customer satisfaction. When this option is enabled and a ticket is closed, the system automatically emails a survey to the customer requesting feedback, including a numeric rating and comments. By showing an earnest interest and acting on employees' feedback, from the smallest 'How-To' question to a severity level 1 service issue, we have greatly increased the level of service we deliver to our customers.
By following up on employee comments, both positive and negative, we were able to keep our customer satisfaction numbers consistently rising. Now we maintain a high standard for service. Every survey asks, "Would you like a manager to contact you?" This is invaluable as it helps managers and supervisors effectively communicate with our employees, whether it's for outstanding or below satisfaction service.
Giva HelpDesk has many pre-built reports ready for us to use, making it very easy for us to run reports hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and on the fly in real time. This has enabled us to carefully monitor key help desk metrics so we can modify our processes as needed and proactively address root causes of problems.
Many menus and selection criteria are available to fully customize each report. We can also download the reports and make refinements or download the raw ticket data and perform additional analysis with other analysis tools. While the report templates do not allow for unlimited customization, Giva is always open to suggestions for improvements and has implemented our suggestions in a very timely manner without any charge.
Giva also helped us implement some help desk industry best practices, such as establishing service level agreements and root cause analysis for calls to the help desk. Giva also provided added value by making suggestions on implementing the features in its knowledge base and help desk software that would have the most benefit to our organization.

The Result

Giva HelpDesk has greatly contributed to raising our level of customer satisfaction with our attorneys. The Giva help desk solution has been a valuable tool in our impressive turnaround and continued success.
We chose the Giva On Demand Software option and have been able to significantly lower our costs. We estimate that we have generated a 60 percent higher ROI from the money we invested in Giva over two years versus using an in-house help desk solution.
Since April 2001 we have been using Giva HelpDesk to log all calls. It gives us accountability and provides us management reporting capabilities. We now maintain a first call resolution rate of over 80 percent and a customer satisfaction rating of 4.9 out of a possible 5.0. Thanks to Giva HelpDesk, over a two-year period, we have been able to significantly increase employee satisfaction with our IT help desk.
Giva HelpDesk has been very reliable—we have not experienced any downtime using the application 24 hours per day since April 2001. Even during the August 2003 blackout in New York City, Giva HelpDesk was available. After the blackout, we had one less application to bring back online.
Giva continues to make improvements on its help desk software. Giva has consistently accepted our feedback and generally provided us with new functionality or suggested an acceptable alternative solution to meet our evolving needs. This continues to make Giva a very cost effective solution—especially since we do not have to dedicate developers to maintain the application.
By collaborating with customers, Giva gets a wide variety of ideas and creative insight enabling it to develop useful solutions for the real world. The folks at Giva continually push our creative boundaries, seeking innovative approaches and strategies to achieve the highest standard of customer service. We are well satisfied with our decision to deploy Giva HelpDesk and Giva KnowledgeManager.
We were initially skeptical of an application service provider approach. However, Giva HelpDesk and Giva KnowledgeManager are superb and we have easily integrated them into our firm. Working with Giva, we deployed the help desk software suite in about five days. Giva has the fastest time to deployment of any application that we have implemented on an enterprise-wide basis. It's reliable and full of many innovative features not available in other products we've evaluated.
Giva Easy Three Click Reporting gives us great information about our organization and is very easy to use. With the information available from Giva, we now know why calls occur and have been able to take systemic related steps to reduce the overall call volume.
We've crunched the numbers. We know we are saving a lot of money using the Giva Service Management Suite versus other enterprise-class knowledge base and help desk software products.
Over the past 5 years, we have been receiving regular visits from our Giva account managers. They take a strong interest in how we are using Giva solutions, our level of satisfaction, and are always looking for product feedback from SRZ. The follow-up from these visits has been excellent. Our feedback has been accepted and implemented on a timely basis. Giva cares a great deal about our ongoing needs and requirements.
Giva has exceeded our expectations in all areas.
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