Masters of the Support Ticket

IT hiccups are inevitable at a university the size of EPFL, with its community of 18,000 ultra-connected people. Common snags include an operating system that fails to update, an inbox that refuses to open, and a campus payment card that refuses to be topped up. Such bugs and service interruptions are an almost daily feature of life in the 21st century, and when they occur, EPFL community members can count on the experts at the 1234 tech-support hotline: a one-stop shop for IT-related requests.

“Our team handles around 1,200 support requests each week,” says Anthony Ciavardini, the head of the Service Desk (which runs the 1234 hotline). The 85 people on his team correspond to eight to ten FTEs and are mainly students working shifts of a few hours at a time. They handle support requests that come in by phone, by email or from users who go directly to the Service Desk in the MA building.

“Our department was expanded considerably around ten years ago and adopted a more professional approach,” says Lorenzo Fioravanzo, the manager of the 1234 hotline staff. “At that point, IT systems were already being used for almost everything at EPFL, from teaching to logistics, so we needed to be able to provide fast, effective and reliable tech support.”

Students must complete around 50 hours of training before joining the department “so that they can learn all about our IT systems and the different kinds of access,” says Fioravanzo. Hotline staff draw on a database of 13,459 articles spanning numerous IT applications as well as finance, HR, research and processes specific to individual schools and colleges.

Resolving each and every support ticket

Lily Gilibert, a master’s student in robotics, joined the 1234 hotline in February 2024. She gives some examples of the technical support they provide. “Many people contacted us after the migration to a more robust authentication process because they couldn’t configure the new system. We’re also contacted regularly by users having trouble with their email.” In another case, someone called 1234 because they couldn’t open a changing-room locker that they accidentally locked with their card. In this case, the hotline staff opened the locker remotely.

“Some of the problems are fairly simple to resolve, such as by asking users to reboot their workstations,” says Gilibert. “But others are more complicated and require us to take control of their workstations remotely.” Ciavardini says that around 45% of support tickets are resolved directly by 1234 staff. The others relate to problems that go beyond the students’ capabilities. “When that happens, we put the user in touch with an expert,” he says. “But no matter what, we provide users with a solution.”

Empowering the EPFL community

Ciavardini notes that the number of support tickets handled by the hotline has grown steadily in recent years. And that’s due not only to the increasing digitalization of society – and therefore of EPFL. “With many people now working from home, our job has gotten more complicated,” he says. While the increase in support requests is a sign that the EPFL community trusts the Service Desk and tech support in general, “it’s not something we should be proud of.”

Ciavardini continues: “A high number of requests means that EPFL users aren’t proficient enough with the applications employed at our School; they haven’t been sufficiently trained on some of the software.” In response, the Service Desk has outlined a medium-term strategy that includes making use of a chatbot “to help users find solutions on their own – before having to call 1234,” he says.

A learning experience

These chatbots would free up hotline staff to focus on requests requiring their specialized skills – with the upshot of making their jobs more enjoyable. “There’s a great dynamic on our team,” says Gilibert. She especially likes the fact that her colleagues come from a wide range of backgrounds, years and EPFL disciplines.

Fioravanzo notes that “the more diversity we have on our hotline staff, the better able we are to serve the many different kinds of users who turn to us for help. And for students, it’s a great job – not only does it offer flexible hours, but it also gives them an insider’s view of how complicated IT systems work.” The skills and exposure they gain will be useful later in their careers, particularly if they go into the business world.

Gilibert agrees that working on the hotline is an excellent learning experience. “At first I struggled with answering the phone, dealing with stressed users and coming up with solutions on the fly,” she says. But over time she became more confident – and better able to shrug off glitches when they occur. “One day, an EPFL restaurant manager wrote us, asking us to help him ‘allocate’ food sold at the cash register,” says Gilibert. “So we sent a technician to the restaurant to set up a more efficient food distribution system. But it turned out the manager meant ‘allocate’ in the accounting sense!” She and her colleagues had a good laugh, before moving on to the next ticket.