Our IT service desk plays a crucial role in supporting approximately 35,000 users across health and care, including 24/7 services. Each month, we handle 8,700 telephone contacts, 1,000 live chat interactions, and 600 chatbot inquiries, logging 5,550 incidents and 11,250 service requests, with an average resolution time of just under two hours.

To further improve our service maturity, improve customer experience, and align with global best practices, we undertook the service desk certification (SDC) programme. This initiative enabled us to improve process standardisation, efficiency, and stakeholder engagement, resulting in a 3 Star customer-led maturity rating in our first audit. Seven out of nine benchmarked concept areas improved, with more than 60 criteria receiving higher scores than our initial assessment in 2023.

Background

Our IT Service Desk is built on a customer-focused, multichannel approach, ensuring seamless, efficient, and responsive support. Our commitment to service excellence means we constantly seek ways to optimise processes, improve efficiency, and improve the user experience.

While best practices had been followed for many years, we identified the need to align with a global service standard to drive continuous service improvement and strengthen our long-term strategic objectives. Although our service was performing well, a lack of fully documented evidence meant that our maturity level was not always demonstrable. By adopting the SDC programme, we sought to formally assess and improve our capabilities, ensuring we remained competitive and aligned with industry best practices.

Action

Our approach to meeting the SDC standard was structured, strategic, and collaborative. We undertook a comprehensive transformation process focused on defining, documenting, and streamlining our service delivery. One of the key challenges was ensuring that every aspect of our service was formally defined and recorded, consolidating fragmented documentation into a coherent, structured framework.

To improve service consistency, we implemented a governance structure that ensured standardised workflows across all areas. This was supported by stronger cross-departmental collaboration, with engagement from key stakeholders, concept owners, and working groups. Regular communication helped to align project goals with wider organisational priorities, ensuring that improvements were relevant, sustainable, and customer-focused.

A major focus was placed on enhancing customer experience. We took a user-centric approach, refining our service to be more responsive, accessible, and intuitive. By improving knowledge management, skills training, and customer engagement, we ensured that our IT Service Desk was not only efficient but also aligned with the needs of the users we support.

Impact

The adoption of the SDC programme has resulted in significant, measurable improvements in our IT service delivery. By standardising processes, we have eliminated inefficiencies, reducing duplication of work and ensuring a consistent approach across teams. Our structured improvement programme has reinforced our focus on customer experience, allowing us to tailor services to meet user needs more effectively.

We have also strengthened our cross-departmental relationships, creating a more unified approach to IT service management. Achieving independent validation of service quality through the SDC programme has provided external assurance that our service meets the highest industry standards.

Following the certification audit, we saw significant progress in our service maturity. Seven out of nine concept areas improved, and more than 60 individual criteria received higher scores compared to our initial assessment in 2023. This was an outstanding achievement, particularly for our first audit, demonstrating the success of our structured improvement plan.

Feedback

Our work towards achieving SDC has been widely recognised for its impact on service quality, customer experience, and operational efficiency. The structured approach we have taken has enabled us to improve service maturity, improve collaboration, and drive continuous improvement.

“I would recommend the Certification programme to other organisations. By formally assessing the capability of IT services against this standard, it allows any organisation to improve maturity levels and helps them to deliver excellent service and drive improvements.”

The feedback from the certification audit report further validated the progress we have made, highlighting our strengths in customer experience, knowledge management, and training. These areas will continue to be a priority for ongoing development, ensuring that the improvements we have implemented are sustained and improved over time.

The recognition of our 3 star customer-led maturity rating on our first audit is a significant milestone, but we see this as just the beginning. Our goal is to continue driving forward with the programme of work and achieve business-led maturity by the end of 2026. The improvements we have made so far demonstrate our ability to deliver exceptional IT support across the NHS, and we remain committed to further strengthening our services in the years ahead.

Commitment to ongoing excellence

As part of our long-term strategy, we are committed to continuous improvement and achieving business-led maturity by 2026. Moving forward, our focus will be on further enhancing customer experience and ensuring end-user engagement is as robust as client engagement, strengthening knowledge management and training, improving skills and competencies across all IT service roles, and refining service processes to ensure that efficiency, responsiveness, and scalability remain central to our IT service delivery.

We are proud of the progress we have made and remain dedicated to setting the gold standard for service excellence in NHS IT. Through our commitment to refining and enhancing our service, we will continue to provide the highest level of IT support to health and care organisations across the country.

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