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I Tamed the Help Desk and You Can Too!

Presenter: Geoffrey Sperl, Wayne State University

With today's limited resources, managing a support center at a large university is difficult. Toss in a staff of inexperienced students and now you have to deal with their academic responsibilities and needs, along with support for thousands of customers. Who in their right minds would want that job?

For this session, I will present the secrets of our success at the Computing & Information Technology Help Desk at Wayne State University. Then we will discuss how our methods can be applied to your institution's support center.

Our Help Desk has moved from an underappreciated resource four years ago to a respected authority. Establishing both an annual retreat for the entire staff and a mentoring program for new employees helped create a dynamic team. Ensuring management is an active, visible presence has established positive employee performance. Encouraging the student staff to participate in problem solving and change management reinforces the fact that we are a team. Finally, everyone is allowed to evaluate the team's performance, which then helps the team to improve their technical abilities and responses to our customers.

With proper training and leadership you, too, can have a caviar help desk for peanuts.