The Portland Bureau of Transportation transforms employee service

The Portland Bureau of Transportation is the Oregon city’s largest bureau. It employs roughly 920 people and is responsible for managing Portland’s transportation infrastructure, which includes roads, sidewalks, bike lanes, and public transit.

The Bureau’s Personnel Services Division provides employee service for 135+ hiring managers and supervisors, known collectively as partners, and guides them through the hiring process and personnel changes. From the creation of a new position to the day the role is filled, the division’s six-member team manages the processes to make it all happen.

Sharing an inbox with no visibility

Personnel actions come with a lot of requests and moving parts: schedule shift changes, position reclassification, creation and abolishment, promotions, separations, organizational movements are a few examples. Everything has a form, a process/workflow, requires an SAP action to meet required processing deadlines.

Until recently, the team managed requests from a shared inbox on Microsoft Outlook and tracked interactions using spreadsheets. Incorrect or missing information on paperwork and/or emails caused delays. Plus, the team received a lot of repetitive FAQs, diverting their attention from other requests.

But the biggest issue was lack of visibility. Because information was scattered through long email strings, partners had little to no visibility into the status of their requests, leading to confusion, bottlenecks, and back-and-forth communications.

Improving employee service with Zendesk

The City of Portland has been a Zendesk customer since 2019. Still, PBOT vetted five different technologies to find the perfect solution. For Judy Baker-Johnson, PBOT’s Personnel Services Supervisor and Zendesk Project Manager, it was apparent that Zendesk Enterprise Suite was the obvious choice.

“When we demoed Zendesk and the tools, I knew that’s the one we wanted,” she says.

Today, PBOT uses Zendesk as its Personnel Action Request System (PARS) to manage all personnel workflows and requests. To automate the approval process, the Bureau also integrated SweetHawk with Zendesk. In the past, the process was manual and error-prone; partners had to fill out and submit a PDF form just to process approvals. Now requests move seamlessly from one person to the next. The only pdf used in their process are those requiring a signature by the City’s Human Resources Bureau.

“Our partners love the approval app,” adds Baker-Johnson. “Some would stop me in the hall just to say how happy they are to have it.”

Migrating yields double-digit results

Despite the complexity inherent in government operations, the Bureau migrated all of its processes, built out a comprehensive knowledge base, and onboarded all of the partners to Zendesk within a year. Today PBOT has nine workflows in Zendesk, including requests to create or reclassify a new position, hire/promote, and separation requests for retiring or separating/terminated employees, etc.

The bureau’s investment is paying off. In addition to improving the service experience for partners, PBOT increased its overall productivity by 35 percent and improved visibility into the status of requests by 95 percent, leading to speedier resolutions, and reducing “check-in emails” from partners.

Improving case status transparency

PBOT’s newfound visibility comes from the Zendesk custom request statuses feature, which lets both the services team and partners know exactly where each request stands and who’s responsible for taking action. No one is digging through email or chasing information, and partners are proactively taking ownership to keep their requests moving.

“The ability to track where a ticket is and how long it’s been sitting in a status is huge for us,” says Baker-Johnson. “It’s one of the reasons we chose Zendesk.”

Streamlining form completion

Productivity improvements come from the custom ticket forms feature that makes it much easier and faster for partners to complete requests. Unlike manual paperwork, each form adjusts automatically based on the request type, so managers only see the questions relevant to their needs.

The forms also include links to relevant resources and content, so partners can find answers on their own without having to contact the services team.

Getting complete required details

Another time saver is automated triggers that ensure partners provide all of the necessary information to complete a request. For example, name change requests require including a social security card. Requests where the individual hasn’t obtained a new card will be temporarily denied and the partner receives a message explaining why a card is required, without the service team ever getting involved.

“We’re each saving about an hour and a half a day just because we’re not repeating and asking for the same information,” adds Shivon Nolan, Zendesk Project Lead.

Helping partners help themselves

Partners can bypass the services team completely and help themselves using the new centralized knowledge base and self-serve capabilities. Before, content was scattered across multiple external websites, making it tedious to find information. Using the Zendesk help center, PBOT built a local knowledge base as well as a ‘front door’ to content on disparate sites, so content is just a click away.

Spreading news of success

The team learned just how the partners feel about PARS when the system was temporarily shut down for updates. “We immediately got emails asking when it was coming back,” recalls Baker-Johnson. “That spoke volumes about how much they appreciate it.”

Moving forward, PBOT plans to implement more workflow automations and use the platform’s powerful reporting and data to further streamline and optimize processes.

But the City of Portland is just getting started with Zendesk. The success of PARS has attracted attention. Upon request, the PBOT team demoed the platform for Portland’s Public Works bureau and met with the Deputy City Administrator for the Public Work Service Area.

Chris Snow, the Bureau’s Zendesk Administrator, sums it up: “We just love Zendesk; we want it to do everything. It’s helped us build a system we’re proud of.”