How the University of Iceland brought scattered support into focus

Supporting a university community across many services

The University of Iceland serves a community of around 14,000 students and 2,000 staff across five schools, 27 faculties and a member University (University of Iceland at Hólar). Its service department supports a wide range of needs, from student requests such as transcript enquiries to room bookings, general community questions, and services connected to the University’s hotel and campus store.

The team handles enquiries in Icelandic and English through in-person visits, phone calls, chats, and requests. With eight agents currently working in the service center, keeping track of those conversations and making sure requests reach the right people is central to the day-to-day operation.

Demand also changes with the academic calendar. Late August and September are the busiest periods along with January. While July is traditionally much quieter and the request drop by almost 50% from an average month. The increase from July to August is about 45% and if you look at the difference from Jan to Jul we are looking at about 95% increase in Jan.

Replacing scattered inboxes with a shared service platform

Before Zendesk, the University’s IT department used Jira Service Desk, while other service teams relied on shared Outlook inboxes. Information and requests were spread across different places, making it harder to see the full picture, track volumes, find past conversations, and transfer work when needed.

The University adopted Zendesk as part of a broader move toward more user-centered services. The service department became an early pilot group and helped prepare colleagues for the change. The transition also required a shift in habits: some teams were used to managing requests directly from their own inboxes, while Zendesk made requests more visible and transferable across the operation.

Today, Zendesk Support gives the team a shared place to manage service requests and conversations. The setup has grown to include 88 groups, 62 active service email addresses, and 230 routing triggers. The team is continuing to bring services onto the platform and aims to simplify how the community gets in touch over time.

The change has made it easier to search for information, follow request volumes, and pass work between colleagues. Just as importantly, the team says staff do not want to return to the previous inbox-based approach.

“It’s just so much easier for them to deal with all the requests and do their work properly.”

David Skulason, Head of Department, University Centre Service Desk, University of Iceland

Helping people find answers for themselves

As the University moved information into a more consistent structure, it developed a knowledge base of nearly 500 published articles. Zendesk Guide gives the team a place to make practical information easier for students and staff to find, while a content policy helps decide what belongs on the public website, in the knowledge base, or on the intranet.

Visitors on the knowledge base went from roughly 13 thousand in the year 2024 to over 100 thousand in the year 2025. In the year 2024 around 17 thousand documents were issued through self service and went to over 50 thousand in the year 2025. The Service desk saw that the number of requests stayed roughly the same between the years 2024 and 2025 even though more services were added to their workload. That is believed to be linked to the information on the knowledge base being increased and customers are getting their answers there instead of having to send in a request.

The team has seen early signs that self-service is reducing incoming requests, though the full impact is still being confirmed. For example, between the first three quarters of 2025 and 2026, views of the help article on course and exam enrolment and withdrawal nearly doubled (+97%), even though student numbers fell by 10%. Over the same period, requests on the same topic dropped by 32%, or around 24% fewer per student. Results like this suggest self-service is already taking pressure off the service team in high-volume areas.

The next step is helping more of the University community use the support portal to check request status and consult the knowledge base. The goal is to make it easier for people to see progress and find answers, rather than relying on a simple email exchange for every question.

Making service more visible and easier to manage

Zendesk has also given the service department clearer information to support operational decisions. The team uses reporting to understand demand and explain service needs to stakeholders. When existing dashboards did not provide updates quickly enough for some use cases, the University created custom API integrations to make selected service metrics available in real time.

The platform now supports a broad service setup, with multiple groups, email addresses, and routing rules. The longer-term ambition is to make access simpler for the community while routing enquiries to the appropriate teams behind the scenes.

The service department recorded 11,193 in-person guests, around 12,000 phone calls, 3,100 chats, and 19,000 requests as of September 2026. On an average day, the team handled about 46 guests, 67 phone calls, 24 chats, and more than 100 requests. The figures illustrate the range and volume of support the team coordinates; with the busiest period being late August through September.

Extending the Zendesk Suite

Zendesk Support is the operational foundation for the University’s request handling, while Zendesk Guide supports the growing knowledge base. The University is also moving its chat service toward Zendesk Messaging and exploring Zendesk Talk through a planned demonstration of the current call center solution.

These next steps reflect the University’s wider aim: to make service easier to access and easier to manage, even with limited staffing and many different service needs. The team has also expressed interest in exploring AI once it has the right resources and implementation support in place.

A more organized experience for agents and the community

For the University of Iceland, the value of Zendesk is not only in managing high request volumes. It has helped bring previously scattered processes into a shared operation, made service activity easier to understand, and supported a more consistent way of handling requests across teams.

The team describes its experience with the platform as positive, particularly because agents are happier and find it easier to do their work well. With more groups continuing to join the service model, a larger knowledge base, and further Suite capabilities under consideration, the University is building on that foundation to make support more accessible for its community.

“Our reps are much happier dealing with all the requests this way. It’s just so much easier for them to do their work and do it properly.”

David Skulason, Head of Department, University Centre Service Desk, University of Iceland