From help desk and resnet to "Best Service Center in Town"

ABSTRACT

Rice University used to divide personal computer support between the Help Desk staff, consultants and students workers at the colleges resulting in inconsistent service and low help desk morale. During the last two academic years we embarked on a number of reforms. In this paper we describe the restructuring of the support model for undergraduate students and the way it improved support for the entire campus. We also describe some of the details of the new support model and the techniques we use to train and develop student workers. We will share some details of our new operations including the hiring, training and evaluation processes for students, documentation and training materials and workflow procedures. The results we have experienced from restructuring the Help Desk and ResNet relationship have been impressive as shown by metrics, surveys and personal experience.

REFERENCES

• 1: Foshee Chatfield, C., Lane, D., McKinin, K., Serakiotou, N. 2008. Rice's Three-in-One Wiki. Educause Southwest Regional Conference.
• 2: Niki Serakiotou , Aime Diaw , Thomas Bui , Richard Roberts , Carolynne White, (Wiki + ResTechs) = (fresh documentation + organic knowledge management + training materials + good, cheap technical writers), Proceedings of the 36th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services conference, October 19-22, 2008, Portland, OR, USA [doi>10.1145/1449956.1450009]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.1 Project and People Management
          Subjects: Staffing

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.1 Project and People Management
          Subjects: Training; Management techniques (e.g., PERT/CPM)

General Terms:
Management

Keywords:
help desk, residential college support, restechs, service operation, student workers, support