Airport Parking and Hotels Strengthens Relationships Through ITSM Collaboration

Background

A family-owned and operated business for the past 36 years, Airport Parking and Hotels (APH) has focused on delivering the highest standards of customer service in airport parking and airport hotels to UK travelers. The magic of word of mouth marketing cannot be any more evident than in APH winning the Best Airport Parking Company title at the British Travel Awards from 2010 – 2015.

Challenges

APH had been using Zendesk for a number of years, but challenges constantly arose. One of the key aspects missing to the solution was usability. Lacking a clear and intuitive user interface, the team at APH was unable to ensure that workflows and support tickets were easily understood across the team.

“We found [Zendesk] would not always do what you asked it to do. For example, you would successfully change the state of a ticket in the system,” said Simon Morris, Business Intelligence and Systems Support Administrator at Airport Parking and Hotels. “However, if you went back into it at a later date, the ticket status showed it had not changed.”

The frustration grew with the solution as users would email support, but if the email was answered outside of support, it often ended up lost in the system. As the team and organization grew, it was abundantly clear that they needed a solution that allowed them to collaborate better, not only in IT, but across department lines.

“[Zendesk] could not fulfill all of our department’s needs. It was purely an IT-based help desk,” Morris said. “We needed to be able to use a ticketing solution in finance, HR, customer service, damages, and receptions. With three sites, we wanted to pull them together like we haven’t done before.”

Morris began his search for a new IT service desk solution that would give the organization improved usability, ease of integration, and great support, with minimal impact as they move to a new solution.

Solution

Airport Parking and Hotels explored their options, having conversations and demonstrations with Samanage throughout the decision making process. The customer service and support, from day one, was one of the game changers for APH’s decision to choose Samanage.

“We chose Samanage due to the exceptional support we received and the ease of use,” said Morris. “The inventory management system was a feature we knew could make us more successful. As a company, we have not had anything like that before and it has changed the way we do things.”

Benefits

One of the immediate benefits was the ability for APH to take control of their ticketing system. They said goodbye to lost email ticket submissions and an inconsistent service desk system. “We got rid of support emails instantly and made use of the portal,” said Morris. “We also farmed the support desk out to a number of our third parties who regularly log support tickets with us, and this has sped up support times.”

With Samanage, they were able to focus on streamlining processes over multiple sites, as well as building and strengthening relationships internal and external to the organization through increased visibility and accountability. “We use Samanage to log customer complaints and vehicle damage, which previously was a paper process and things sometimes went missing. With Samanage there is a trail and we can see what has happened and what needs to be done,” said Morris. “We have improved third party business relationships, and also cut costs with Samanage at the helm of our business.”