LANSING (WWJ) – Michigan Virtual University and Lansing-based Spectrum Broadband LLC have renewed their longstanding partnership to deliver improved help desk services to MVU customers.
Spectrum won the contract as the result of a nationwide competitive bid process by achieving the highest score on vendor qualifications, implementation planning and pricing.
Service Level Metrics define performance rates for incident handling by the help desk and these SLMs increase over time.
The renewed multiyear contract engages Spectrum to serve customer inquiries about MVU and its K-12 educational programs. As one of the largest virtual schools in the U.S., the Michigan Virtual School offers more than 150 online courses, including unique courses like Chinese and CareerForward, an online career exploration course. Michigan LearnPort offers over 1,000 courses, recording more than 40,000 enrollments and supporting more than 70,000 user accounts annually. Typical annual help desk contact volume exceeds 20,000 incidents.
“MVU made it a priority to keep this business in Michigan,” said Kirby Milton, MVU vice president of operations. “The ability to leverage existing expertise with new and expanded toolsets will allow for even better assistance to our customers, and improve their overall service experience.”
With the new partnership comes a new technology to support improved services. The new software, called Kayako Fusion, offers dramatically improved ticketing features, customizable fields and expanded reporting to improve analysis and results.
Customer-facing improvements are another advantage of the new Kayako Fusion help desk application. With its interface, anyone can access a knowledge base that includes the most frequently asked questions to search for answers. Previously, customers had no means to access help desk tickets after calling the helpdesk and could not add information or track the status of their incident. A new online chat tool will increase customer options for real-time issue resolution.
“I’m excited for all of the new tools and features that will be available to our users,” said Darick Oswald, service level manager for the MVU Help Desk.
Users may call toll-free at (888) 880-2840 or email mivuhelp@mivu.org to request help, or they may create and submit their own inquiry and access live chat by visiting help.mivu.org. Go to http://www.mivu.org/Help/tabid/175/Default.aspx for more details about resources and hours of operation.
MVU is a private, nonprofit Michigan corporation established by the state of Michigan in 1998 to serve as a champion for online learning. It is the parent organization of the Michigan Virtual School, Michigan LearnPort, and Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute.
Spectrum Broadband is a Lansing-based company that is building high capacity fiber-optic lines directly to businesses and homes, providing service 20 times faster than cable, allowing its customers to lead the way in consumption of emerging technologies such as high definition video and rich media education.
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