The Success Story of Lörrach Trade School

Why Zammad?

Surely this sounds familiar to you: A teacher would like to show a presentation or a video in class. He connects to a projector - but it doesn't work. "Who's in charge of this stuff?" he wonders. He pokes his head into the neighboring class and asks his colleague. "Not me, anyway," he says. So he asks the computer science teacher - who, after all, knows about technology. "Me neither," he says. "Ask the janitor." The janitor finally takes care of it by putting it on his ever-growing to-do list, where it eventually moves further and further down. The result? The teacher missed half of his lesson, and the projector is still broken. Johannes Schlosser, a teacher of electrical and information technology at the school, knows of cases where such defects were not fixed even after months.

So yes, even in a trade school there is a lot of correspondence. To avoid situations like the one described above and to better master collaboration, the Lörrach Trade School has been using Zammad since the end of 2019. For them, it serves as a kind of to-do list that is also transparent for customers (who, in their case, are primarily teachers and school management). Tasks can be delegated in a prioritized manner. In addition, everything is documented, which takes a lot of work off the staff.

Although the main users of the system are the students, teachers, and school IT, Zammad also helps with communication and collaboration with external IT service providers, all of whom have been given an agent role. "Thanks to the helpdesk, we can hand off tasks to them with one click and still keep track of who is currently taking care of what and what the processing status is," explains Schlosser.

To return to the example with the projector: With Zammad, the teacher can write an email to the helpdesk. A ticket is then created and assigned to an agent. The teacher is automatically informed who will now take care of it. All further steps are now documented in the ticket and the progress is transparent for everyone involved: error analysis, repair, replacement, how long it will take for the replacement to be available, etc. Most people find it relieving to be regularly informed about progress.

But why did the school choose Zammad of all companies? "We wanted a system that had a simple and intuitive operation. It shouldn't have any "overhead," such as accounting functions, because our school wouldn't use that," says Schlosser.

The Switch

Before switching to Zammad, all requests were received by mail by Johannes Schlosser, who collected them in an Excel spreadsheet and assigned them to his colleagues in a weekly meeting. The result? It was cumbersome, time-consuming, led to long response times, and sometimes requests were even lost. In addition, it was difficult for Schlosser, as the person in charge, to keep track of the status and arrangements of individual tasks.

The switch to a helpdesk was therefore a big step, and a huge relief: "Before, we didn't have a software solution at all. That's why we were initially concerned that, as with other ticketing systems, there would be a high level of complexity and a long learning curve. But it all worked out well."

Schlosser took part in one of Zammad's workshops for beginners. "I was then able to pass on the knowledge to my colleagues, so we were able to get started immediately."

There were no concerns about making the wrong decision. "Before Zammad, we handled everything only by informal email communication or by phone. So the change was not a problem - it could only get better," Schlosser says. And so it was. "But what's excellent above all is that all solved problems can be documented in the tickets."

But it's not just the automatic storage of all processes that pays off - the administrative effort has also been greatly reduced. "We opted for a hosted plan with Zammad. As a result, we have no maintenance effort at all," says Schlosser. The team is completely satisfied with the decision, which is also confirmed by a survey among the employees.