With the growing university population, it became no longer efficacious for the traditional helpdesk system to handle the increasing volume of IT queries. Typically, website FAQs addressed general or commonly encountered issues but might not cover the full range of diverse and complex IT problems faced by users. The static FAQ format also made it challenging for users to engage in dynamic back-and-forth conversations for specific queries that fell outside their predefined answers. This led to longer response times and delays in issue resolution. As a result, users were left waiting for extended durations, contributing to a decline in overall satisfaction and productivity among students, faculty, and staff across the campus. Similarly, if a user submitted an issue through the online service catalogue, the turnaround was at least one business day.

Additionally, the manual nature of the traditional helpdesk system made it difficult for the IT team to prioritise and address urgent queries promptly. The cost of operations continued to rise at an alarming 5% yearly, making it unfeasible and uneconomical to keep increasing operation staff to meet users’ needs. With limited human resources, it became increasingly challenging and effort-intensive to provide consistent support throughout the day, let alone during busy periods such as course registration or examination seasons when there was an overwhelming influx of IT queries.

With these pressing needs, NUS knew that there had to be a transformative user engagement solution that could streamline the IT support process, optimise the allocation of IT resources, and enhance customer experience, whilst shifting towards a more sustainable paradigm.