Halfords, the leading UK retailer in the car accessories and leisure market, has implemented Hornbill's Supportworks service management software to support over 10,000 staff users and millions of retail customers. The IT service desk uses Supportworks to log all calls from staff using its IT, point of sale till and telecoms systems across all 467 stores. A second, external-facing customer service desk uses Supportworks to manage all customer service calls on products and services. Since implementing Supportworks, Halfords claims that both the IT and customer service teams have been able to improve systems performance and service delivery.

According to Nik Thompson, IT Service Desk Manager at Halfords: "We wanted a single service platform that we knew could support not just our IT service desk, but also our customer services team. We knew that Hornbill's solution had been successfully used by other organisations in this way - Supportworks' out-of-the box functionality makes it very easy to use and to adapt to the needs of each team."

"The benefits that we have seen from the reports are fantastic. We now have much better visibility of the information that we are gathering and are able to improve our service delivery and system performance by analysing and acting upon the data that we capture on Supportworks. Our area managers now have regular information on customer issues and these can be fed back directly to the stores to take action, enabling them to focus on customer service."

Halfords uses the reports built into Supportworks to provide call data information to manage and prioritise workload and resources across the team. The data from the reports has enabled the team to act proactively on issues and trends that it has identified and reduce calls as a result.

Following the success of Supportworks, the team has moved to the latest version and is investigating the possible use of the Customer SelfService portal for staff in the stores, enabling them to log their own calls. This will save time for employees and also reduce the number of calls to the service desk.

Gerry Sweeney, CEO of Hornbill Systems commented: "For large retailers like Halfords it is vital that business operations run efficiently - failure of IT systems can have a huge impact on customer service delivery, both in store and post sales. Supportworks provides a single technology platform that can be used across the business functions to manage and deliver service support. It is a management tool that enables both the IT and customer service team to effectively capture, log and respond to queries efficiently. Supportworks can help companies to operate in today's challenging times, maximising on their investment in IT when it is even more important than ever to empower staff to work smarter and get the best from existing resources."

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NOTES TO EDITORS

About Halfords
The Group employs in excess of 10,000 staff and sells over 10,000 different product lines, ranging from car parts and cycles through to the latest in-car technology, alloy wheels, child seats, roof boxes and outdoor leisure and camping equipment. Halfords' own brands include Ripspeed, for car enhancement and Bikehut, for cycles and cycling accessories, including the Apollo and Carrera brands. Two further premium brands were added during 2008: Boardman cycles and accessories, where Halfords has exclusive UK distribution rights, and URBAN Escape for camping equipment. Operating from 467 stores, including five stores in the Czech Republic, and 25 smaller format, neighbourhood stores, Halfords offers a "wefit" service for car parts, child seats, satellite navigation and in-car entertainment systems, and a "werepair" service for cycles. Halfords: shop in store, buy on line, or use the new "Reserve & Collect" service to acquire products on line at www.halfords.com