UW-IT Metrics

Last updated: May 1, 2024

Customer Experience Operational Metrics

UW-IT continuously gathers, interprets and shares data to track performance and solve complicated IT challenges in support of the University’s mission. The metrics showcased below are a few examples of how UW-IT is using data to regularly measure its performance in key areas.

The mission of UW-IT’s Customer Experience division is to consistently deliver a positive customer experience and to serve as an advocate for customer needs across the University. Customer Experience supports about 70 percent of the approximately 19,000 monthly customer requests submitted to UW-IT via phone (206-221-5000) and email (help@uw.edu). CSS utilizes two key performance indicators to track its customer service performance in support of its customer-focused mission:

First Response Achievement

This metric measures the percentage of newly submitted Requests or Incidents submitted by a customer that are responded to by staff within the time standards shown below. The overall target for this metric is 80 percent.

Request First Response Criteria: Incident First Response Criteria:
Priority 3 (Urgent) – 3 Business Hours Priority 1(Critical) – 2 Hours (24×7)
Priority 4 (Elevated) – 6 Business Hours Priority 2 (High) – 4 Hours (24×7)
Priority 5 (Standard) – 1 Business Day Priority 3 (Moderate) – 1 Business Day
Priority 4 (Low) – 2 Business Days
Priority 5 (Lowest) – 5 Business Days

Customer Update Achievement

This metric measures whether staff are keeping the customer informed about the progress of their Request or Incident once the first response has been completed, using the standards shown below. The overall target for this metric is 80 percent:

Request Customer Update Criteria: Incident Customer Update Criteria:
Priority 3 (Urgent) – 3 Business Hours Priority 1(Critical) – 2 Hours (24×7)
Priority 4 (Elevated) – 1 Business Day Priority 2 (High) – 4 Hours (24×7)
Priority 5 (Standard) – 2 Business Days Priority 3 (Moderate) – 1 Business Day
Priority 4 (Low) – 2 Business Days
Priority 5 (Lowest) – 5 Business Days

Customer support performance results improve during the COVID-19 pandemic

The following graphs show UW-IT’s Customer Experience division’s customer service performance metric results from before (2019) and throughout the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 and 2021). As the graphs show, customer support teams stepped up to improve their customer support performance scores throughout the challenging circumstances brought on by the pandemic.

Overall First Response Achievement:

Overall Customer Update Achievement:

UW-IT 2021 Customer Experience Survey results

The 2021 UW-IT Customer Experience Survey sought to better understand how UW-IT is perceived across the UW. More than 70,000 students, faculty, researchers and staff were invited to take the survey. Survey topics aimed to address customers’ awareness, usage and experience with 42 services, support interactions and communications. UW-IT’s last customer experience survey was in 2015.

The majority — 81 percent — of people reported an overall positive experience with the services, communications and support provided by UW-IT, according to the more than 5,500 faculty, staff and students who took the 2021 UW-IT Customer Experience Survey in April 2021. 

To ensure confidentiality and impartiality and to leverage metrics capabilities, the survey was administered by University of California San Diego’s Tritonlytics team.

Before making the report (linked below) available to the University community, UW-IT shared the findings internally. The improvement recommendations presented in the report were vetted by UW-IT’s leadership. They were then shared with UW-IT Service Owners and Service Managers as part of a process to ensure their participation in Action Plan improvement activities.  

Action plans and recommendations from survey findings

To improve the UW customer experience, UW-IT leaders are spearheading five Action Plans to address key findings and recommendations from the 2021 UW-IT Customer Experience Survey results. 

Two Action Plans will address communications and documentation to support better awareness of services, and to make customer-facing information on tools and services more clear. A third Action Plan aims to review customer support ticket handling and resolution processes; a fourth is clarifying Software Licensing’s strategy regarding Adobe products.

The fifth Action Plan will improve awareness and understanding of the UW Phones service’s full scope of offerings to faculty/instructors and staff, with a focus on softphone technologies available for remote workers.

Full results report and summary