After Hours Help Desk: Who Does it best?
The reality is, computer use by students, faculty, and staff isn’t a nine-to-five activity. For example, many of the students in all our institutions work part and full-time jobs to pay for their educations. They are using their computers at night and on weekends. And with student success on the line, you need a Help Desk service provider that focuses on finding a way to support students who study in off-hours.
So, what does your institution need? Around-the-clock technical support for students, faculty, and staff is provided by inbound phone calls, outbound phone calls, and for call-backs to end-users, voice mail, email notification, and chat interface. Here are some of the practices, if followed, can make your decision of choosing a Help Desk partner easy:
- Interaction Management Process
Switching to this model can also help your institution cut cost significantly, Steve Swartz, CIO Fitchburg State University, who uses BlackBeltHelp to provide After Hours support to his end-user community, says, “Each institution pays a different fee based on how many interactions they use,” he adds, “which roughly corresponds to the size of the student body. Fitchburg’s savings calculated to approximately 14.8 percent per year. By adopting the Interaction Management Process, you can take advantage of a separate interaction management process which allows for a separation of incident metrics from requests for information. This allows for an easier consideration of tiering the Help Desk; which may be appropriate for some institutions.By following the interaction-based model, the objective is to provide the information to persons working with dedicated contact and ensuring service consistency. - Extension Of Your Help desk
If you are looking at outsourcing your help desk, the most important thing in your mind is that your end-user community should not feel the difference when they call your technical representatives for assistance. Here are the vital points to remember before making your decision:- Frequent calibration session between your in-house team and your offshore team. Communication channels merged into one.
- Automation of workflows enabling the tickets to be assigned to an agent automatically
- Dedicated quality analysts tracking the efficiency to evaluate agent performance
- Adapting Your Ticketing System
Technical representatives trained on various ITSM tools to open, create, and close tickets handled on a day to day basis. Top help desk providers in higher education space understand that it’s not easy to offboard a ticketing tool that your in-house team has been using for years. It requires an entire overhaul, from migrating your current workflows to creating new ticket queues to everything. Institutions want a team that can come in and adapts to the existing client ticketing system.
Anthony Banford is an esteemed executive with 19 years of experience in technology, consulting, and education. He begins his latest chapter as Chief Revenue Officer at BlackBeltHelp, aiming to innovate in the higher education support industry. His move follows a successful stint as Head of Revenue at StudentBridge since March 2023, where he significantly contributed to the company’s merger with Full Measure Education, enhancing its service offerings.
Todd Hollrah joins BlackBeltHelp bringing 25+ years of experience managing service delivery operations for several Fortune 500 clients around the globe. After a distinguished career as an executive in the BPO industry, Todd will provide critical insight into building an exceptional customer experience combining both live voice and automated solutions.
Inspired by a family computer that always needed fixing, Chris Uthe has submerged himself in business and technology for the last 20 years. His first company, a PC repair and networking business, was started at just 16 and successfully fueled a deep interest in solving problems as he helped business customers throughout his hometown adopt technology into their business. He would go on to successfully run a media & managed IT company before joining the Ed Tech industry with a successful 13-year tenure within an ERP/SIS company leading the Student Portal & Learning Management division. His last startup, EdSolio, helped to fuel the winds of competency-based education by providing a comprehensive view of a student’s work and achievements. Chris is now focused on creating successful learners by ensuring the highest quality help and support through the use of AI backed toolsets spending the last 3 years in the student engagement and support markets.
Quaiser Absar is the Chief Technology Officer and Director of Institutional Computing at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia.
Bringing in over 2 decades of experience with him, Manish has ensured seamless operations in terms of client delivery, reporting & analytics, quality, training, and transitions with a special focus on technical integrations to help reduce costs and improve the bottom-line.
Anthony has served higher education in diverse, leadership roles for over 30 years and has helped organizations thrive through his expertise in developing, analyzing, and executing growth strategies. Prior to joining BlackBeltHelp, he served in College Administration as well as in leadership roles within Blackboard Student Services and Ellucian, Inc.
Accomplished IT Specialist and Manager with extensive experience in a higher education setting and demonstrated abilities to effectively manage both student and professional staff. Self-motivated problem solver, who is skilled in managing many issues and prioritizing their importance to find resolutions in a timely and effective manner. Possesses strong abilities to adapt to new technologies by extrapolating from existing experience. Possess first-rate communication and collaboration skills to work with diverse groups effectively.
Lila Buytendorp has been serving as the Director of User Services at Moraine Park Technical College (MPTC) since 2000. In this role she is responsible for staff & lab desktop computing and end user support. She guides and supports technology based on the curriculum needs and ensures technology is implemented to support the emerging needs of the college. She builds and supports integrated systems to improve efficiencies and uses technologies to support data-driven decision making. Lila is a member of the Capital Projects Planning and Design Committee to ensure new or remodeled facilities have appropriate technology.