cogdogblog: IT Helpdesks: Theory And Practice Comments and Trackbacks

CDB Entry: IT Helpdesks: Theory And Practice

Fri, 04 Feb 2005 11:31:07 -0700

I keep a pad of frequently called numbers near my office phone- there is a number next to a label called "Helpless desk". In theory, this is how our helpdesk works. I go to a web site and fill submit...

comment by: Paul

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 05:43:53 -0700

Cog,

I feel so 'busted' after reading your help desk rant... it is all true. In defense of some of the more understaffed situations of the world, we (IT people-without-horns) would love to provide true technical support of the nature you describe. Instead, too much of our day is spent handling situations where some well meaning user has screwed up their PC so badly that re-constructing system files, deleting spyware, removing exe's, and following up on phishing victims dominates help desk activity...and heaven forbid that the call comes from a Ph.d (who only uses e-mail)...our immediate reaction is, "Oh, you have a Ph.d., please, don't touch anything!" And you MUST be joking about allowing root access to the server... one misplaced rmdir command? Arggggh!

As I end my weak defense here...outsourcing help desk activity is becoming more popular...and as an added educational benefit, it should spawn an increased demand in foreign language studies for those who choose to use it!

As for me, I give our 1 to 3500 student ratio, help desk a lot of slack... (but love venting over the lack of support).

comment by: Alan Levine

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 06:33:01 -0700

Thanks for writing Paul, and have to say this is largely a vent not at the people of the IT help desks, but more the larger faceless entity they end of representing and the poorly managed, poorly structured organization (here) they work in.

In fact our help desk department did everything they could, they took the request, logged it and sent a notice to the appropriate staff. The problem is that the various IT departments that these things are routed to seem to have no accountability to the users or the help desk folks (and this is an IT department for a central office where there are no students),

So may hats are off to the folks in the trenches dealing with thousands of requests-- it is the malfunctioning organizations I rail against.

Trackback from "Daily Tribute"

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 05:44:23 -0700

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Trackback from "It HelpDesks:"

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 21:07:09 -0700

Excerpt: I keep a pad of frequently called numbers near my office phone- there is a number next to a label called "Helpless desk". In theory, this is how our helpdesk works. I go to a web site and fill submit...
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Trackback from "A Bad Help Desk Experience Gets Blogged About"

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 11:57:34 -0700

Excerpt: It's so important to have good help desk interactions with your customers. Why? Because the bad ones get blogged about. Alan has a typical post about a poor experience with his corporate help desk. Many of the frustrating aspects of his experience a...
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