How hoster Cyberfusion improves support and productivity with Jira Service Desk

[#1]

Cyberfusion is a Dutch hosting company. Cyberfusion was founded in 2014 and specializes in exceptionally high-end web hosting for web agencies as well as high-load application hosting for larger companies. We are in a segment where quality is more important than price.

We have two types of customers:

• "One-man businesses" and small teams;
• Large, formal organizations and institutions, with many people involved in every request

Our challenge

For both types of customers, we aim to provide extremely professional and personal service. We handle tickets according to policies, while maintaining a sense of flexibility for customers.

In the past three years, we have switched ticket systems three times. No ticket system really fit our needs. These ticket systems had their own strengths:

• The first ticket system integrated with our CRM, but was limited in ticketing capabilities such as escalation and SLAs;
• The second ticket system was easy to use for agents, but lacked proper security procedures;
• The third ticket system was barely customizable, so we had to use workarounds to alter the customer experience

We acknowledged the need for a ticketing system that we can rely on for years to come. Switching ticket systems involves a lot of work and careful preparation and planning.

Finding a long-term solution

We aim at a balance between professional and personal service. We get more tickets as we grow, thus more work to migrate the longer we hold off switching.

We compiled a list of demands and wishes.

Demands:

• Custom SLAs
  - Set SLA goals for first replies;
  - Make exceptions for holidays and the like;
  - Resolutions get very accurate metrics;
  - Archive communications and how issues were resolved
• Self-hosted
  Cloud-based offerings are interesting for customers who want all server aspects to be taken care of. We need to keep the data on-premise on our own infrastructure,
• Customizable
  Many alternative ticket systems are barely customizable and require workarounds to achieve customization. Being able to customize the experience for both customers and agents is important as we aim for higher customer satisfaction.

Wishes / Nice to have:

• Portal for customers
  Because we primarily communicate via email, having a portal for customers is not a demand. But for customers who prefer to communicate via a portal, it would be nice to have a portal with a list of all customer tickets.
• Integration with a wiki system
  Many ticketing systems get shipped with a low-end knowledgebase, but we maintain an advanced and structured knowledgebase.
• Straightforward licensing model
  An advanced licensing model that charges you based on the amount of cars and pets you own is not uncommon in software. So be it if we found perfect software and its pricing is complex, but a straightforward licensing model is a big plus. That also speaks volumes about the transparency and culture of a company.

Searching for a new ticket system

We compiled a list of ticket systems that are able to fulfill above needs. We crossed off ticket systems by:

• Testing. How friendly is the ticket system for agents and customers out of the box?
• Looking through the amount of issues and security vulnerabilities. What severity do they have, how were they handled and how quickly were they resolved?
• Functionality. Does it integrate with a knowledgebase, our monitoring software, etc. We don't need it now, but we may in the future.
• Security. Can we restrict agents and if yes, to which degree? Nice to have: is LDAP authentication possible?

After crossing off many ticketing systems, we were left with two choices after weeks of testing. We let colleagues work with both systems for a few days. Everyone made the same call: Jira Service Desk is the software that we should use. It's important to find a supplier that keeps developing and that can grow with us. So when we grow and need more, our supplier should be able to accommodate that. No doubt about that with Atlassian.

Some functionality in alternative ticket systems require manual setup in Jira Service Desk. Setting Jira Service Desk up is more intensive, but every feature can be altered if needed. Jira is incredibly customizable, which is exactly what we are after.

Switching to Jira Service Desk

After weeks of preparation, we now host Jira Service Desk on our own infrastructure. We've setup:

• Custom SLAs;
• Custom issue statuses;
• Many customizations to accommodate our customers;
• Portal for customers and their organization;
• Integration with Confluence and Bitbucket

 Jira Service Desk: Clear statistics and agent performance insights

We started using Jira Service Desk in production in May 2018. We migrated knowledgebase content to Confluence. Not only the integration between Jira and Confluence is ideal, but Confluence on its own is excellent software.

We use Confluence both internally and externally. We have one internal Confluence space for decisions and retrospectives. Our public Confluence space is used for blog posts, instruction articles and troubleshooting articles. After exploring alternatives for our current version control system, we migrated our repositories to Bitbucket. In the future, we are looking to integrate our monitoring system Sensu to automatically create a Jira issue with relevant details for incidents. That way, we can act upon issues more efficiently.

We are now using Jira Service Desk, Confluence, Bitbucket and Trello. Productivity is higher than ever. We have the freedom to customize everything and take a different approach than Atlassian defaults if wanted.

In Atlassian we have found a partner that can facilitate our growth. When we need more, Atlassian can deliver it off the shelf.