Revolutionizing User Experience through Proactive and Automated IT Support at NTU Singapore

To fundamentally transform NTU Singapore’s IT support model from reactive to proactive, ensuring a seamless and reliable user experience, which is a core institutional objective.

Key objectives:

• Eliminate Service Gaps:
  Provide 24/7 multilingual support to meet the expectations of a global university community.
  
  
• Enhance User Empowerment:
  Give users a suite of self-service tools to resolve issues instantly without human intervention.
  
  
• Optimize the Workforce:
  Reduce "resource drain" by automating repetitive, low-value tasks using AI, freeing highly-skilled human agents to focus on high-value, complex problem-solving.
  
  
• Proactively Prevent Disruptions:
  Use IoT monitoring to identify and resolve AV issues in common teaching spaces before they impact a lecture.
  
  
• Rapid Resolution:
  Use of expert remote assistance enabling field engineers to receive real-time guidance from specialists and use of location-based QR codes to provide instant access to fast-track IT/AV support, ensuring minimal disruption.

The project successfully achieved its strategic goals, delivering significant, measurable results across the entire ecosystem:

• Workforce Optimization & Efficiency:
  ServiceNow (with SimplifyNext and VEXT GenAI automation module and responses templates): Achieved an over 50% time reduction to resolve an incident, with >90% categorization accuracy and >80% response relevance.
  
  
• Service Accessibility & Resolution:
  AI-IVR (Voice Agent): Delivers 75% resolution rate for all issues it handles. It successfully manages 20% more calls that previously went unanswered outside office hours.
  
  
• User Experience & Reliability:
  Proactive AV Support: Resulted in a 55% year-on-year reduction in AV-related incidents, preventing nearly 300 classroom disruptions.
  
  
• Overall User Satisfaction:
  NTU’s IT support achieved a consistent >90% Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score and significant increase in positive feedback, rising by over 200%, demonstrates the project's profound positive impact on the user base.

Software:
ServiceNow (with SimplifyNext and VEXT Generative AI automation module and responses templates), Axiom IT Solutions AI Voice Agent (AI-IVR), Extron Global Viewer Enterprise (GVE) for AV monitoring and Co-pilot Studio for GenAI Support Chatbot.
Equipment:

AI-powered Meta Glasses, Extron Touch Panels with custom-built Self-Help Guides, IoT sensors in 275 common teaching and learning spaces.

University telephony system (integrated with AI-IVR), location-specific QR code system (integrated with ServiceNow).

The primary difficulty was the high-level systems integration. This was not a single-vendor, out-of-the-box solution. The complexity lay in making disparate, best-of-breed systems function as one seamless service:

Key challenges:

• AI-Model Training:
  Training the ServiceNow with SimplifyNext and VEXT GenAI automation module and preparing the responses templates based on our specific NTU data to achieve high accuracy (>90%) in ticket categorization.
  
  
• Third-Party Integration:
  Integrating Axiom's external AI-IVR with another third party telephony and operationalising support workflows (i.e. call-back) via ServiceNow.
  
  
• IoT at Scale:
  Connecting and standardizing the data feeds from >1000 IoT devices across 275 classrooms into a single, actionable GVE dashboard.
  
  
• New Workflow Deployment:
  Deploying and training staff on new hardware (Meta Glasses) and entirely new guidelines on support workflows that includes Responsible and Ethical Use, Transparency and Accountability and Data Governance and Security.

The Day the Lecture Didn't Stop

As the Professor focused on her upcoming lecture, she felt an unusual calm. Unbeknownst to her, the NTU IT team had already used monitoring dashboards to proactively detect and fix a subtle technical issue with the monitor before she even arrived at her class, ensuring a smooth start.

Later, during a tutorial, a student fumbled with the touch panel. "It's not connecting to my laptop," she muttered. Remembering the new self-help portal, the Professor guided her through the on-screen troubleshooting steps. Within seconds, the student's presentation appeared on the screen. "Wow, that’s easy!" she exclaimed. Word spread quickly. Students and faculty alike were discovering the ease of self-service. The support tickets, once a flood, had dwindled.

Even when a power surge affected several rooms, the dashboards showed a widespread issue . But the team was ready. Technicians were dispatched, one wearing Meta Glasses, receiving real-time visual guidance from a senior specialist back at HQ. A student remarked, "They were here in no time... and fixed it before our next class!"

The team has significantly reduced user-experienced downtime by implementing a multi-layered approach. Starting with pre-emptive overview dashboards, they actively monitor AV systems in common teaching areas, identifying and resolving potential issues before they impact users. For users who encounter issues, the team introduced self-help portal integrated into tutorial rooms touch panels, empowering users to resolve common problems independently and reducing support tickets by 10%.

Expert remote assistance through Meta Glasses enables field engineers to receive real-time guidance from specialists. This innovative use of technology ensures faster and more effective problem resolution. As a final tier, location-based QR codes in 275 teaching spaces provide instant access to fast-track IT/AV support, ensuring minimal disruption. This proactive approach ensures that even when downtime occurs, the team maintains sufficient capacity for rapid resolution.

The team has also revolutionized service request handling through automated service catalogues. These catalogues enable straight-through IT delivery for common requests, significantly reducing response times. When incidents are raised, the system leverages templated responses and AI-generated recommendations, providing efficient and accurate support.

NTU Singapore's integrated IT support system, is accessible through the Service Desk Hotline, online ServiceNow forms (via the NTU website), and the "ASK IT @ ServiceNow" platform, offers 24/7 support for the entire 350K NTU community. This system leverages responsive templates and AI-powered IVR, another first in Singapore IHL landscape.

This ecosystem was built and operationalized by our Digital Foundry, an internal program that upskills our staff to become innovators. This human-centric approach, combined with a "Self-Efficacy" program , ensures our staff have the empathy and confidence to manage the complex human interactions that technology cannot.

The project was developed and implemented entirely in Singapore. It was a strategic initiative led by the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) Shared Services team. The project involved collaboration with Singapore-based technology partners like Axiom IT Solutions, PAVE System Pte Ltd, 01 Computer Systems Pte Ltd and other Multi-National Companies like Extron and Microsoft.

While the implementation is physically located at the NTU Singapore campus, its reach is global, as it serves the university's entire community of 50,000 students and employees, and 300,000 alumni, wherever they are in the world.

Under the NTU Smart Campus vision, the University harnesses digital technology to support better learning experiences. This project is a key enabler of that vision, providing a reliable, world-class digital environment that serves as a competitive differentiator for attracting and retaining global students and faculty.