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“No two days are the same,” says Mariska Hoogerdijk, senior service desk employee for the ROC Mondriaan education group, of her job. With her team of 5 she supports 27 schools comprising about 2,200 employees and 22,000 students.

FLYING COLOURS AT ROC MONDRIAAN

Text: Timme Hos

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Mariska Hoogerdijk, senior service desk employee for the ROC Mondriaan education group

Photography: Aad Hoogendoorn

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The ROC Mondriaan, which offers vocational training, general

education and job-related courses, has its headquarters in the Dutch

city of The Hague. Hoogerdijk and her team share the fourth floor with

other services, such as HRM, Finance and IT.

On the other floors, the students attend their lessons. This means

that the service desk has a view of the Hair and Make-up course’s

salon chairs. “It’s not unusual for a student to walk in looking to cut

someone’s hair,” says Hoogerdijk with a laugh. “That’s one of the fun

things about sharing a building with the students.”

Supporting the campusesHelping out students – from future soldiers to beauticians – is not

the service desk’s most important task. “Our main task is helping

the employees with all their problems and questions,” explains

Hoogerdijk. This is no mean feat for an educational institution with 27

schools in and around The Hague, spread over 17 locations and divided

into 6 campuses. “For each campus, we support the same ‘club’ of IT

specialists, caretakers and their supervisors,” says Hoogerdijk.

Regardless of the call type received by the service desk, Hoogerdijk’s

team picks it up. “If we can’t resolve it, we send it to the relevant

operator group.” There are about 50 operator groups active at ROC

Mondriaan. Some things are put straight through to an external

organization. “Like when something severe has happened, such as

a big leak,” says Hoogerdijk. “But we also put printer malfunctions

through to third parties.”

Getting started with TOPdeskEarly last year, the service desk started looking for a new software

package to meet ROC Mondriaan’s needs. “We were looking for a

broad facilities management package for creating and monitoring

calls, subletting contracts, long-term maintenance planning and

managing all our inventories. But above all: a user-friendly package

that does not require a lot of bespoke work,” says Hoogerdijk.

They soon chose TOPdesk. Hoogerdijk was the project leader for

the implementation process. “As the service desk’s senior employee, I

use TOPdesk intensively. Due to less than ideal experiences with our

previous call management package, I had a good idea of what we were

looking for.”

TOPdesk was implemented step by step. All employees were

registered in TOPdesk via a link with the HRM data. Once that was

complete, the required links were created, branches and locations

(including inventories) were registered in TOPdesk and the work

processes were analysed and described.

ROC Mondriaan went live with Call Management last year, with

the caretakers and IT specialists as the main operator groups. The

TOPdesk consultant was initially responsible for the training, but

WE SOLVE OTHER LOCATIONS’ PROBLEMS HERE

IT’S FUN THAT THE SERVICE DESK SHARES A BUILDING WITH THE STUDENTS

CUSTOMER IN FOCUS 9

Hoogerdijk soon took over. “That was quite easy for me, because I

have a good idea of TOPdesk’s benefits, making communicating this

straightforward,” says Hoogerdijk.

A spontaneous launchA little more than six months on, what are her thoughts on TOPdesk?

“It’s great that we can do more ourselves here at the service desk,”

says Hoogerdijk. “This is where we resolve problems at other locations;

it is very efficient. For instance, if there is a problem with the plumbing

that the caretakers cannot fix, we put it straight through to our

Property department.”

The Self Service Desk has been up and running for about four

months, and people are already making good use of it. “I recently

created an overview to see how we are doing. Things are going well:

the number of calls registered via the Self Service Desk already equals

the number we receive through other channels.”

The introduction of the Self Service Desk was more spontaneous than

initially planned, as Hoogerdijk explains. “We weren’t officially live yet,

but the IT department had already prepared the link to the Self Service

Desk for everyone. Everyone just started clicking the icon and creating

calls. I really liked seeing that; after all, TOPdesk is very accessible.”

Looking forwards with TOPdeskIn November, ROC Mondriaan started using TOPdesk’s Reservations

Management module. “We want to use this for the various locations’

meeting rooms,” says Hoogerdijk. “People can make their own

reservations using the Self Service Desk. The reservation arrives at

the central desk, which takes care of the rest of the process. Internal

customers are gaining more and more insight into the entire process,

and you can tell that this is appreciated.”

Hoogerdijk also wants to take a closer look at how processes

can be registered in Change Management. “Imagine someone new

commences here,” says Hoogerdijk. “They would need an email

account, but that can only be created once they have a login code. We

want to map out step-by-step plans like that.”

Even if more and more activities are registered, Hoogerdijk still never

knows what the day holds for her when she starts work each morning.

“For instance, we had a problem with the network yesterday,” says

Hoogerdijk. “Everything was down: all locations, all power, telephones,

network. At times like that the service desk receives questions like,

‘What should we do with the students? Should we send them home?’

It is this kind of variety that I like about my job. The atmosphere at the

service desk is also great, definitely now things are so much easier and

smoother with TOPdesk.”

ROC Mondriaan in numbers

5 service desk employees

27 schools in and around The Hague

Around 55 operator groups

Around 2,200 employees

Around 20,000 students

Around 1,500 calls per month,

of which 750 are registered via the SSD