7 Help Desk Tools Or Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the reslt of trying to do today s jobs with yesterday s tools. Marshall McLhan Key Findings Help desk atomation featres are common and are sally part of a commercial integrated help desk atomation system. Online tools for help desk staff members to se in assisting clients are less common, thogh implementations are nder way and others are widely planned. Web access to online help docments is common, bt few help desks offer access to a knowledge base or atomated troble-ticket tracking system. While intelligent learning and adapting freqently asked qestions (FAQ) systems are very ncommon, their growth rate seems high. Only abot 35 percent of respondents say their instittions se self-service tools effectively to redce demand for help desk services. Up to a point, the more sch tools they deploy, the more sccessfl respondents feel they are. We saw in Chapter 5 that a help desk is mch more than a piece of frnitre. Or respondents se telephones and e-mail most freqently as tools to provide help desk services, bt they spplement those with a variety of other technology-based tools. In this chapter we look at the tools help desks se internally as well as those they make available to their clients for self-service. The Atomated Help Desk Higher edcation has adopted information technologies to enhance teaching and learning, research, and administration, and those technologies become more pervasive every year. Similarly, higher edcation help desks have adopted IT-based tools to manage their own operations and to better serve their clients. Sometimes these tools stand alone, and sometimes they are bndled into integrated help desk atomation systems. While most integrated systems or respondents se are vendor spplied, both open sorce and homegrown systems appear to have a place. Atomation of Help Desk Fnctions Majorities of or respondents reported that they had flly implemented the atoma- 2007 EDUCAUSE. Reprodction by permission only. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 65
tion of each of the five help desk fnctions we inqired abot: call logging, call roting, call escalation, call database, and qery and reporting tools for the call database. Figre 7-1 shows the implementation stats of each. While nearly three-qarters of respondents reported having flly implemented a call database, 8 in 10 responding that way said they had flly implemented corresponding database qery and reporting tools. Presmably the remainder se more primitive methods for extracting information from their call databases. Or respondents reveal good intentions, however, becase only 3.6 percent of or srvey poplation had not planned call database qery and reporting tools, the lowest percentage for any of the help desk fnctions we asked abot. Atomation of call logging and roting was also common. Call escalation was the least freqently atomated of the fnctions we asked abot. However, as with call roting, more than 85 percent of respondents were at least planning to atomate it. Almost a third of respondents (32.8 percent) had atomated all five of the fnctions we asked abot. Fewer than a fifth (18.7 percent) had atomated none. For more than two-thirds of respondents (69.1 percent), these atomated help desk fnctions were part of an integrated help desk system. Sch systems help overcome some of the difficlties that can arise in making disparate tools even best-of-breed tools do what s needed. As Samel Levy, vice president and CIO at the University of St. Thomas, pts it, We have several good tools (ticketing system, reqest for services, inventory database, and event resorce schedler) that aren t as integrated as we wold like. That means that or data are located in several different tools, so the process for reporting on those data is complex and we have several different tools to enter reqests into. Integration (or replacement) of those tools throgh a broader cstomer relationship management strategy will be or next step. Among or online srvey respondents, we fond that in general the more atomated 100% 90% Figre 7-1. Stats of Help Desk Atomation Percentage of Instittions 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 72.4 10.6 59.5 18.8 11.1 18.1 5.9 3.6 Call database (N = 442) Call database qery and reporting tools (N = 442) 67.0 10.3 11.9 60.4 9.2 51.2 16.8 15.5 17.7 10.8 14.9 14.3 Call logging (N = 445) Call roting (N = 444) Call escalation (N = 441) Help Desk Fnction Atomation flly implemented Atomation implementation in progress Atomation planned for ftre Atomation not planned 66
featres an instittion had adopted, the more likely it was that those featres were part of an atomated system. We speclate that this is becase the featres we asked abot are commonly bndled into integrated commercial help desk systems. When asked what their approach to implementing an integrated system for help desk atomation had been or wold be, a strong majority of respondents said they sed or wold se a commercial vendor software prodct (see Figre 7-2). Comparatively few selected the open sorce, homegrown software, or other responses. Another 15.8 percent had not yet determined which approach to se, and abot half that many said they had no plans to implement an atomated system. These findings sggest that most respondent instittions are willing to accept whatever constraints come with commercial systems rather than implement and maintain potentially more flexible homegrown or open sorce systems. Help Desk Staff Tools The atomation tools discssed above are generally for help desk staff and management sage, and most are related to help desk administration rather than to the information and other services the help desk provides. We also asked abot the content-oriented tools that help desk staff se. While none approached biqity, most help desks were at least planning to implement additional tools for help desk staff sage. We asked abot a range of tools that the central IT help desk staff might se in assisting their clients, inclding a Web site for staff access to help docments; tools for remote access to sers devices (these are perhaps more correctly known as remote control tools, bt remote access was the phrase sed in or qestion); a single online stats monitor for mltiple systems; online stats monitors for individal systems; a knowledge base or expert system; and a large-screen video command center integrating system stats monitors with related help desk resorces. As Figre 7-3 shows, only the first two of these tools had been flly implemented by as many as half of or respondents. Other, 1.6% No plans to implement, 8.0% Use commercial vendor software, 63.7% Approach not yet determined, 15.8% Use open sorce software, 4.7% Use homegrown software, 6.2% Figre 7-2. Crrent or Planned Approach to Implementing an Integrated Help Desk Atomation System (N = 449) EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 67
Implementations of a Web site for help docments were in progress at 3 in 10 respondent instittions and were planned for an additional 11.7 percent, leaving very few respondents not planning to implement this tool. By comparison, the pattern for remote access tools is lagging a little, with only 2 in 10 reporting implementations in progress, a similar nmber planning them for the ftre, and 11.5 percent not planning to implement sch tools. Responses were fairly niform for individal and mltiple online system stats monitors. In each case, abot a qarter of respondents had systems flly implemented, between 15 and 20 percent had implementations in progress, abot a qarter were planning them for the ftre, and arond 30 percent were not planning them. A knowledge base or expert system was in place at slightly fewer than a qarter of respondent instittions bt was nder way at abot a third. Another near-third had ftre plans for sch systems. Only 13.8 percent of respondents did not plan to implement a knowledge base or expert system. The large-screen video command center is the rarest of these tools, being in place at only 5.3 percent of respondent instittions. Even fewer of or respondents had implementations nder way, althogh 2 in 10 said they were planning them for the ftre. At Berry College, in Mt. Berry, Georgia, CIO Timothy Farnham has installed sch a command center. The idea is for the help desk people to know abot network problems, for example, as soon as the network people do, so they can respond to callers qestions intelligently. At the University of Delaware, where Frank Eastman is camps IT associate II, the classroom technology spport grop ses an integrated command center to oversee the technology components of 150 centrally managed classrooms. We discovered that in the first one or two semesters this system was operational, we were able to respond to and resolve 50 percent of spport calls from these classrooms immediately, said Eastman. If the implementations in progress and the planned ftre implementations are sccessfl, they will represent nearly a fivefold Figre 7-3. Stats of Help Desk Staff Tools Percentage of Instittions 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 55.5 29.2 48.6 21.8 26.2 25.9 22.9 15.7 19.7 26.7 26.6 32.0 31.3 5.3 3.2 21.4 70.0 20% 10% 0% 11.7 3.6 18.0 11.5 31.4 27.8 13.8 Web site for help docments (N = 445) Remote access tools (N = 444) Stats monitor for mltiple systems (N = 420) Stats monitors for individal systems (N = 432) Knowledge base or expert system (N = 441) Video command center (N = 434) Flly implemented Implementation in progress Planned for ftre Not planned Help Desk Staff Tool 68
increase over the present level of implementation of video command centers. Nevertheless, 70 percent of or respondents had no plans to implement this powerfl bt expensive help desk staff tool. As Table 7-1 shows, abot a qarter of or respondents had implemented none of the help desk staff tools we asked abot. Another qarter had implemented one, and yet another near-qarter had implemented two. Percentages decreased dramatically for fll implementations of larger nmbers of tools. Only one respondent instittion had implemented all six. In all, 70.5 percent of respondent instittions are sing two or fewer of the help desk staff tools we asked abot. The mean for the entire srvey poplation is 1.78 tools ot of 6 (standard deviation 1.443), or abot 30 percent. Assming or list of tools has genine relevance to help desk service delivery, this finding sggests that the average help desk is ndereqipped. Client Spport Tools Many help desks provide a variety of online tools and resorces for their clients to se to resolve their own IT-related problems. Self-help tools can effectively extend the help desk s hors of availability, allowing clients to get answers to their qestions when the help desk is not staffed. Even dring the help desk s normal operating hors, the availability of self-service resorces can redce demand for direct interaction with the help desk staff while keeping service availability and qality high. Help Desk User Tools To rond ot or srvey of help desk tools, we asked abot for online tools that help desks sometimes provide: a Web site for ser access to help docments, a Web site for ser tracking of troble tickets or incident stats, a Web site for ser access to a knowledge base, and an intelligent learning and adapting FAQ system sch as RightNow Service. Sbstantially the most commonly reported of the ser tools we asked abot was a Web site for access to help docments (see Figre 7-4). More than half of respondents had flly implemented one and another qarter had implementations in progress. Of the remainder, only 3.5 percent had no plans to implement sch a tool. Jst over a third of respondents had implemented Web sites on which sers can track the stats of their help desk calls; another 2 in 10 had sch implementations nder way. Nearly a third planned sch Web sites for the ftre, while 14.2 percent had no plans to implement them. Web-based incident tracking is a common featre of integrated help desk atomation systems; with almost 70 percent of respondent instittions now sing integrated systems, we expect this featre to become more common in the ftre. Slightly fewer than one-qarter of respondents had implemented Web sites for client access to knowledge bases. While a similar Table 7-1. Nmber of Help Desk Staff Tools Implemented (N = 454) Tools Flly Implemented Percentage of Respondents None 22.7% One 24.9% Two 22.9% Three 15.6% For 9.0% Five 4.6% Six 0.2% EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 69
100% 90% 80% 35.4 23.5 6.8 8.6 Figre 7-4. Stats of Central IT Help Desk User Tools Percentage of Instittions 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 56.0 27.0 19.1 31.3 22.2 40.5 26.6 57.9 20% 10% 0% 13.5 3.5 14.2 13.8 Web site for ser help docments (N = 452) Web site for sers to track incident stats (N = 444) Web site for ser knowledge base (N = 442) Intelligent FAQ system (N = 428) User Tool Flly implemented Implementation in progress Planned for ftre Not planned nmber reported having implemented a Web site for help desk staff access to a knowledge base sggesting that a single knowledge base does doble dty the overlap between these two poplations was only 58.4 percent, indicating that knowledge bases tailored to one poplation or the other were fairly common. Comments from Perry Hanson, vice president and vice provost for libraries and information technology at Brandeis University, help explain the relatively low implementation rate for knowledge bases, especially at smaller instittions. Or IT organization keeps talking abot the potential of knowledge bases. I have not seen that people actally se them. In my experience, people prefer a hman being to answer their phone call on the first ring. Usally the person is calling becase they re anxios. There is a whole care and feeding element that is part of a help desk operation. At Indiana University, where the central IT help desk serves abot 40 times the roghly 2,000 clients served at Brandeis, the experience with knowledge bases is qite different. There, Dennis Gillespie, spport center manager, sees the knowledge base as the most important online tool available to his clients. It has a lot of by-in from the instittion, he states. There are 13,000- pls docments in the Knowledge Base for anyone in the world to review. We have approximately 30 million hits a year, and as many as 25 percent of them are from non- IU sorces. Few respondents reported flly implemented, intelligent FAQ Web sites, and a majority had no plans for them. Okanagan College in British Colmbia has implemented the EdQA prodct from CstomFAQs. When asked if the prodct had met expectations, Dave Harris, director of IT services, replied with a strong affirmative. EdQA has broght s both cost savings and service improvements withot a dobt. It has a service reqest component that we really vale. We re sing the prodct not jst for IT, bt to provide online FAQs and service reqest capability for other departments. 70
While crrent adoptions of this technology are low, the relative percentages of in-progress and planned implementations sggest its growing poplarity. If all in-progress implementations are sccessfl and all planned ones are carried to frition, it will reslt in a fivefold increase in this technology s higher edcation market penetration. Abot two-thirds (65.9 percent) of respondents have implemented none or only one of the help desk ser tools we asked abot. The average nmber implemented is 1.20 (standard deviation 1.111) of 4, or 30.0 percent, which is nearly the same as that for help desk staff tools reported above and similarly sggests that the average help desk may be nderproviding tools for its sers. Self-Service Tools While we didn t refer specifically to the for help desk ser tools discssed above as examples, we did ask in an adjacent srvey qestion for respondents level of agreement with the statement that their instittions effectively employ ser self-service featres to redce central IT help desk demand. Respondents were more likely to disagree at some level (total of 43.8 percent) than to agree (total of 34.0 percent). As Figre 7-5 shows, strong disagreement otweighed strong agreement by more than a factor of two. Straight disagreement and agreement were more evenly matched. At less than a qarter of responses, netral ones made p the remainder. This bimodal distribtion of responses hints at well-developed opinions on either side of netral. Self-service tools are one mechanism for disintermediation ctting ot the middleman in IT services. Disintermediation has been cited since at least 1996 as a key trend in higher edcation IT. 1 If responses to or qestion abot self-service tools accrately depict the state of disintermediation in IT help desk services, and if disintermediation is a good thing, it appears that higher edcation IT help desks are not doing enogh of it. As a conterargment, thogh, the term reintermediation has recently crept into the higher edcation IT vocablary, describing a retrn from a technology-mediated emphasis on prodctivity, efficiency, and cost savings to a hman-mediated emphasis 40% 35.3 35% 30.2 Percentage of Instittions 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 8.5 22.1 Figre 7-5. Agreement Abot Effective Use of Self-Service Featres (N = 447) 5% 3.8 0% Strongly disagree Disagree Netral Agree Strongly agree Level of Agreement EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 71
on ser-friendliness, service qality, and convenience. 2 As Timothy Farnham pts it, As yo do more things online, yo get frther from the ser. So yor PR and yor goodwill tend to dry p. People love the attention and little personal extras they get from a personal call. We ve got to be carefl that we don t lose that. Agreement that the help desk ses selfservice tools effectively to redce service demand is significantly associated with the nmber of help desk ser tools the respondent s help desk has implemented. As Table 7-2 indicates, respondents implementing no help desk ser tools had a mean level of agreement not qite halfway between disagree and netral. Mean agreement increased as the nmber of help desk ser tools increased, to a peak halfway between netral and agree at three tools implemented. At for tools implemented, mean agreement dropped a bit, althogh this may be an artifact of an nsally small sample size. As we observed earlier in this chapter, only a third of respondents had implemented more than one of the help desk ser tools we asked abot. This low adoption rate is srprising in view of the finding illstrated in Table 7-2, which sggests that implementing even one sch tool significantly affects respondents belief that they are sing self-service featres effectively to redce demand. Smmary and Implications Help desk atomation featres were in widespread se throghot or respondent poplation, with strong majorities of instittions adopting or planning to adopt each of the five we asked abot. This endorsement of the featres we chose to ask abot likely relates to commercial help desk management software vendors typical bndling of those featres, along with others. More than 60 percent of respondent instittions told s they were sing or planning to se sch an integrated system. Respondents showed less progress in implementing tools for help desk staff to provide spport. Althogh implementations of these two tools a Web site for access to help desk docments and a set of tools for remotely accessing (and controlling) clients compters are nder way or planned at many more respondent instittions, only abot half of or respondents now provide them to their help desk workers. We fond an even lower apparent priority for deployment of stats monitors to apprise help desk staff of the health of the IT systems they spport; more than a qarter of respondents reported no plans to deploy them. Integrated video command centers were less commonly sed, with well over two-thirds of respondents having no plans to implement them. Most of the instittions we srveyed had at least one online spport tool in place for Table 7-2. Mean Agreement Abot Effective Use of Self-Service Featres, by Nmber of Help Desk User Tools Implemented Nmber of Help Desk User Tools N Mean Agreement* Std. Deviation None 143 2.37 0.962 One 151 2.85 0.957 Two 87 3.16 1.109 Three 52 3.54 0.851 For 14 3.43 1.284 Total 447 2.85 1.063 *Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = netral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree 72
help desk clients. Perhaps becase they are relatively easy to constrct and maintain, Web sites for client access to online help docments were common and, when implementations nder way are completed, will be nearly biqitos. Web sites for sers to track the progress of help desk troble tickets and Web-based knowledge bases were somewhat less common, bt 85 percent or more of respondents were at least planning them. The freqency of crrent and planned se of these client spport tools contrasts interestingly with the relatively less aggressive implementation and planning for help desk staff spport tools. We srmise that it reflects help desk priorities, with higher priority going to tools that directly serve clients and lower priority to tools benefiting help desk staff. Of the client spport tools we asked abot, only intelligent FAQ systems were in place, in progress, or planned by fewer than 40 percent of instittions. Perhaps the prchase price of these complex commercial software prodcts is prohibitive, or many see the potentially brdensome process of poplating and maintaining them as too mch of a drain on help desk staff resorces. Nevertheless, these tools in-progress and planned implementations far exceed crrent implementations, positioning this next-generation help desk technology for strong growth. In self-appraising their se of self-service ser tools to redce demand for help desk services, or respondents gave themselves srprisingly low marks. Only abot a third agreed or strongly agreed that they did so effectively. This cold be related to the nmber of help desk ser tools (from or brief list) respondents had implemented, in that those who had implemented more ser tools gave themselves somewhat higher marks. Even so, those who had implemented the most help desk ser tools seemed to agree only halfheartedly that they sed them effectively, perhaps becase they lack confidence in sch tools basic efficacy in the higher edcation IT environment. While it appears that or respondents have some help desk atomation basics, many of them provide their staff and sers with relatively primitive tools, relying on inexpensive bt labor-intensive Web content rather than smart, dynamic FAQ systems, for example. This postre may simply reflect economic imperatives, bt it may also stem from perceptions that next-generation technology isn t sfficiently matre, or from the instittions desire to preserve a high-toch relationship with clients. Nevertheless, respondents apparent dissatisfaction with their self-service tools, combined with high planned for the ftre responses in many areas we srveyed, sggests that many instittions are aware they cold be doing a better job of eqipping their help desks with today s tools. Notwithstanding this chapter s emphasis on tools, it is important to keep the help desk toolset s role in perspective. The University of St. Thomas s Samel Levy pts it this way: Tools are necessary for reporting and tracking bt do not ensre excellent service. We have been able to overcome the limitations of or incident tracking tools by interfacing personally with or clients. In this context too, then, the message comes throgh that help desk services are abot commnication. Endnotes 1. Carol A. Twigg and Diana G. Oblinger, The Virtal University (Washington, DC: Joint Edcom/IBM Rondtable, 1996), http://www.edcase.ed/ir /library/html/nli0003.html. 2. James L. Shlman, Shades of Prple or Will Collaboration Arond Technology Ever Really Save Money? in Aspen Symposim 2005: Exploring the Ftre of Higher Edcation, ed. Mareen E. Devlin (Cambridge, MA: Form for the Ftre of Higher Edcation, 2005), 5.2, http://www.edcase.ed /ir/library/pdf/ffp06w.pdf. EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research 73