ITServices Customer Satisfaction Survey

Executive Summary

In April 2012, faculty and staff at Queen’s University were invited to complete a web-based customer survey regarding service satisfaction and improvement and regarding the importance of current, and new, technology and services. This summary presents a general overview.

The first section of the survey asked survey participants to indicate how satisfied they were with a selected list of 34 services. This section also invited survey participants to list, in order of importance to their work, three most important service improvements. The most important service improvements, occurring with the most frequency, are reported here. The second section of the survey presented participants with a preselected list of 12 services currently provided by ITServices. Survey participants were asked to rate the importance of each service to the performance of their role at Queen’s. Both section one and two of the survey asked participants to indicate if they used each service listed. The third section presented a list of 8 services not currently available from ITServices. Survey participants were asked to indicate how important each new service item would be in the performance of their current role at Queen’s. Finally, respondents were presented with an open ended question and invited to provide general comments. A copy of the survey may be viewed at:

http://www.queensu.ca/its/apps/itssrv/cs2012/results/survey.html

Selection of Services and Survey Development

The ITServices customer satisfaction survey was developed “in house” using an iterative process to ensure that the following conditions were objectively met: 1) the initial selection of services to include in the survey met a priori criteria developed by ITServices management, 2) further refinement of the survey was based on survey pilot data, and 3) survey scale characteristics were based on a consideration of survey research and applied practices. It was believed that meeting all three of these conditions would result in a short customer survey that was closely aligned with ITServices survey objectives and would yield the most useful results.

Services to include in the first two sections of the survey were derived from the ITServices Service Catalog located under the Services tab on the ITServices main web site. With well over 100 services, represented in over 20 categories in the service catalog, team members reduced the number of services.

Services were reduced based on the criteria of short-term interest and relevance to ITServices planning initiatives within the next year. A Survey Pilot was subsequently conducted with an invitation sent to Queen’s IT Administration Representatives to complete and comment on the preliminary survey. Pilot data regarding the wording of services and services listed resulted in a final list of 34 satisfaction survey items for section one and 12 importance survey items for section two. For section three, using a criterion of relevance to ITServices planning initiatives within the next year, team members created 8 survey items describing potential new services.

I. Demographic Overview

The survey invitation was distributed to 5,001 Queen’s faculty members (n=2,320) and staff persons (n= 2,681). As a thank you for completing the survey, participants were provided with the opportunity to enter a raffle for an IPAD 3 Tablet. Dr. Peter Galbraith’s (Faculty of Medicine) name was randomly selected with the assistance of Marg Hogan (ITServices) as the winner of the raffle. Appreciation is extended to Campus Computer Sales & Service for assistance in the selection of the IPAD Tablet.

A total of 530 individuals completed the survey, representing a response rate of 11%. Demographic data collected included primary affiliation (faculty or staff), primary workstation type and years employed at Queen’s University. These are presented in the tables below. Clicking on the table titles below will display table frequencies and percentages for all demographic variables or you may view a Graphical View of Demographics.

Survey Participation by Primary Affiliation

Role	Frequency	Percent
Staff	376	72.17
Faculty	145	27.83
Missing= 9

Survey Participation by Years of Employment at Queen's

Yrs. of Employment	Frequency	Percent
Less than 5 years	147	28.16
5-10	147	28.16
11-15	81	15.52
16 or more years	147	28.16
Missing = 8

Survey Participation by Primary Workstation Type for Work

Workstation	Frequency	Percent
Windows	421	80.81
Macintosh	93	17.85
Linux	7	1.34
Missing = 9

II. Satisfaction with Selected Technology and Services

Survey participants were asked to indicate the extent to which they were satisfied with a list of 34 technology and services along the scale range between 1=Very Dissatisfied and 6=Very Satisfied, using the following definitions:

1= Very Dissatisfied, 2= Dissatisfied, 3= Somewhat Dissatisfied, 4= Somewhat Satisfied, 5= Satisfied, 6= Very Satisfied

The table below of means and standard deviations is presented here for drawing attention to a smaller number of survey items. Of all the services listed on the survey, no mean response score fell below the mid-point of 3.5. These data indicate that customers who completed the survey are generally satisfied with the services they use, but are otherwise not very informative for decision making. The frequency distributions are far more informative and clicking on the survey item description presents more detailed information regarding the item response frequencies and percentages. Frequencies and percentages for all 34 survey items are presented in the Overall Frequency of Responses to Satisfaction Survey Items.

One caution in the interpretation of these results is the relatively small number of respondents who actually use each service (N). However, given the availability requirements and unique nature of some of the services listed (e.g., departmental level only, fee-based, optional service where alternatives exist, etc.), the lower personal usage numbers for individual faculty and staff are not unexpected. In addition, many respondents reported that they were not aware of many of the services listed on the survey.

Satisfaction with Services and Technology
Rank	Survey Item Number	Item Description & Link	N	Mean	Std
1	5	Payroll financing	229	5.34	1.01
2	6	Computer setup/config	227	4.81	1.26
3	7	Kiosks	127	4.80	1.23
4	3	Windows file sharing	135	4.76	1.16
5	11	Secure HD data deletion	74	4.73	1.20
6-29 omitted
30	28	Wiki	154	4.17	1.32
31	8	Computing site labs	91	4.14	1.30
32	23	Lecture capture	28	4.04	1.53
33	22	Moodle	188	3.98	1.33
34	31	Webpublish	114	3.85	1.51

Std. = Standard Deviations.

More detailed information, including frequencies and percentages, for all satisfaction survey items by faculty or staff role may be viewed in Comparative Frequency of Responses to Satisfaction Survey Items by Role.

Service Improvements

Respondents were provided with the option to list three most important service improvements. The top most important service improvements, occurring with the most frequency, are presented here. Of the 530 responses to the survey, 259 customers submitted service improvement comments. These data are extremely informative and useful for ITServices. Indeed, some of the suggestions were being implemented at the time the survey was distributed, others were in the planning stage and many are being examined and carefully reviewed by ITServices management.

Most Important Service Improvement Categories	Most frequent comments or suggestions
Support Improvements	Expand support to include “on site” assistance within departments; mechanisms for faster or express entry into 2^nd or 3rd level support; expand variety of supported services and resources.
Network Improvements	Expanded wireless network accessibility to additional buildings, and between buildings in outside spaces, across campus; develop new mechanisms where campus wireless signal strength and reliability can be monitored/assessed and fixed more efficiently.
Telephony/directory	Update online phone directory; expanded search capability and usability (include affiliations/titles, reverse look up, sounds like, etc.); explore ways to more efficiently deliver services for optimal turnaround time.
Communication Improvements	Respondents expressed a lack of awareness of some services listed on the survey (they requested more direct communication and introductory level description of services/tools); earlier notice of planned outages, service interruptions (mass voice mail notice), and service changes/advice (e.g. email migration); campus-wide clear “1. What and 2. Step-by-step how to” emails regarding viruses.

III. The Importance of Selected Current Technology and Services

Respondents were asked to indicate how important a list of 12 technology and services were in the performance of their role along the scale range (1-6) between 1=Not Important and 6=Very Important. Based on the table below, the three most important reported services were Access to Email from Mobile Devices, Single Sign-On and Unified Desktop (email/calendar). The least important current services reported were: Dialup, PDF copy of the Phone Directory and After hours IT support. The mean response scores are presented for drawing attention to a smaller number of survey items of particular interest.

Caution should be exercised in the interpretation of these results. For example, After hours IT support (mean= 3.06), which we know from ongoing requests and from previous surveys is generally regarded as highly important. We are confident that it would be ranked above the mid-point of 3.5 here if a personal fee to individuals was not also associated with the service. Similarly, some of the services listed are especially unique to a respondent’s specific role (e.g., Jeffery 156 classroom, in the case of faculty members) or increasingly rare, though essential when needed situational circumstances (e.g., Dialup). More detailed information, including frequencies and percentages, for all 12 survey items by faculty or staff role may be viewed in Comparative Frequencies for Faculty and Staff Responses by Role.

The overall survey item frequency distributions can be view for all 12 survey items in Overall Frequency of Responses to the Importance of current Technology and Services Survey Items.

ITServices Customer Satisfaction Survey

Importance Mean Response Scores (1-6) for current Services

Customer Services Measured	N Mean Std
Access to Email fr Mobile dev Single sign on Unified desktop QShare Q LDAP fr email Win srvr manag Phone fwd to mobile dev Pers. web space Jeffery 156 classrm After hrs support PDF Phone dir Dailup	404 5.16 1.31 484 5.11 1.18 411 4.77 1.49 321 4.60 1.48 194 4.51 1.51 200 4.18 1.69 263 4.03 1.70 231 3.44 1.87 70 3.34 1.92 256 3.06 1.69 424 2.98 1.88 161 2.07 1.75

IV. The Importance of New Technology and Services

Survey participants were provided with a list of 8 new services. Participants were asked to indicate how important these services would be in the performance of their role along the scale range (1-6) between 1=Not Important and 6=Very Important.

As indicated below, Wireless Network Access in outside spaces on campus appeared to be the most important new service overall, followed by Telephone voice messages delivered to your email inbox. New services of lesser importance in the performance of respondent roles were Communicate ITServices notices and news via Twitter and Facebook and Client focused data center for hosting campus users’ hardware. The mean response scores are presented for drawing attention to a smaller number of survey items of particular interest. Given the nature of the question, some of these results are not surprising given the diversity of IT needs among faculty and staff roles. The survey item frequency distributions are more informative. Frequencies and Percentages for the 8 new services listed on the survey are presented in Overall Frequency of Responses to the Importance of New Technology and Services Survey Items.

ITServices Customer Satisfaction Survey

Importance Mean Response Scores (1-6) for New Services

Customer Services Measured	N Mean Std
Outside wireless sp Voice msg to email Shared email lists Tablets in classrm E-bus manag tools Smart ph-classrm Client datacentre ITS to Twitt/Facebook	515 4.18 1.82 516 3.78 1.81 513 3.43 1.76 509 3.12 1.85 499 2.84 1.74 509 2.71 1.80 498 2.43 1.58 513 2.27 1.69

More detailed information, including frequencies and percentages, for all 8 survey items by faculty or staff role may be viewed in Comparative Frequencies for Faculty and Staff Responses by Role.