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Nothing tests Computeam’s IT service desk quite like the first week of September.

In the first four days of term, staff in the schools and trusts we support logged around 2,000 tickets with us directly. Spread across the working day, that's roughly 50 new requests an hour, or about five every six minutes.

September brings in more than three times the volume of any other month. Many of the requests are routine, founded on those start-of-year changes that every school knows all too well: new staff needing accounts, pupils moving up a year group, and devices coming back out of storage after a long summer.

Routine or not, every ticket has the potential to impact a classroom – so the speed of our response is second only to the quality of the fix itself.

A man with a beard smiles while typing on a keyboard at a desk with monitors.

Holding our service levels at triple the volume

Triple the usual demand would normally put real pressure on response times. But, throughout the start of term, we responded to 99% of tickets and resolved 97% ahead of our agreed service levels, both comfortably ahead of the benchmarks we set ourselves.

For a teacher logging a problem first thing in the morning, it means the request is picked up and dealt with in the time we've promised, even in the busiest week of the year.

Putting the summer to good use

Much of the work behind those figures happened before term started. While schools were closed, our team deployed automation tools for our highest-volume requests: creating new user accounts and resetting passwords. In September, those tickets arrive in large numbers and the minutes quickly add up.

Compared with last September, the time our team spends on routine tasks has fallen by 12%. This gives our engineers more of the day free for problems that require human judgement – which, ultimately, helps keep support costs down for the schools and trusts we work with.

A student typing on a keyboard at a computer desk in a classroom setting.

What schools told us

Net Client satisfaction (CSAT) saw a record increase in September and stayed above 93%. Anything over 80% is considered “Excellent” in CSAT measures, so we’re very proud of this in what is, by some distance, our busiest month

The earlier starts helped. Throughout September, the service desk opened from 7:00 a.m., and dozens of teachers used the extra time to get issues resolved before their first lesson. In fact, feedback from our clients on early opening has been so strong, we’ve decided to retain the 7:00 a.m start until further notice.

Across the whole year

September is the absolute peak, but the desk stays busy all year. In a typical year, we resolve around 145,000 tickets, counting requests logged directly by school staff alongside those that reach us through other routes.

We support around 600 schools and MATs, and we’re proud to say that our rolling 12-month net client satisfaction score stands at 92.7%, graded “World Class”.

If you look after IT in a school or trust and want to talk about support, our team would be glad to hear from you.

Existing clients can reach the service desk on 0800 862 0123, by email at support@computeam.co.uk, or through the client portal.

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