Download PDF

City IT Staff Finds a Better Way to Stay Engaged Internally

Hampton is one of seven cities in Virginia’s Hampton Roads metropolitan area – an area that includes Norfolk, Newport News, and Virginia Beach. With 146,437 residents, Hampton is the sixth largest city in Virginia. The city’s Office of the Commissioner of the Revenue assesses personal property and administers business taxes. Its Office of the Treasurer collects both real estate and personal property taxes.

Mission-critical tax application requires immediate support

Like most cities, the city of Hampton, Virginia relies on tax payments for much of its revenue. That’s why the city’s tax assessment and collection software must remain in top condition. This sophisticated application performs a wide range of financial processes to support such tasks as changing tax assessments, calculating tax rate schedules, and collecting fines and payments.

The development staff works hard to respond quickly to IT requests from the Commissioner of the Revenue and Office of the Treasurer. The city’s traditional IT help desk made it impossible for city staff to collaborate with developers or monitor the status of their trouble tickets, and was not well-suited to support extensive application development.

“We needed a way to get our internal clients more involved in their tickets, rather than just having them phone in requests to IT,” says Leslie Fuentes, director of IT, City of Hampton, Virginia. “We hoped that with an online support solution, everyone involved in a ticket would be able to share information and track it through to completion.”

Online support solution dramatically enhances communication

Immediately after implementing Zendesk, staff within the city’s revenue and treasurer offices began using Zendesk to submit support requests.

“With Zendesk’s intuitive interface, it’s easy for city staff to enter their tickets, comment on issues and even re-open tickets if necessary,” Fuentes reports. “Even though I’m in another building, I can see everything that’s going on between my developers and our internal clients.”

With complete visibility into support tickets, nothing slips through the cracks

All support requests for the City of Hampton’s tax assessment and collection software are now streamlined through a standardized workflow in Zendesk.

With Zendesk, they are providing more customer support for the city’s main source of revenue.

“Since our old help desk made it such a hassle to log tickets, it was tough to show that we were providing a valuable service,” Fuentes explains. “With Zendesk, it’s easy to quantify exactly how productive and efficient we really are.”

As tickets proceed through the system, Zendesk provides clients and developers alike with an instant view of progress. Notifications keep everyone informed of major changes.

“I can always see exactly how much progress my developers have made just as city staff and managers can see all of their requests and how we’re prioritizing them. Everyone has embraced Zendesk as a way of staying in the loop,” says Fuentes. “We’re also considering rolling out Zendesk to our IT help desk and finance department to streamline the contract workflow in our procurement department. With Zendesk, the possibilities are endless.”