Bridging the gap with emergency operating procedures

摘要

The Gap: Help Desk customers (faculty, staff, and students) thought Help Desk consultants were incompetent and did not know what was going on when the campus network experienced system outages. Communications between the Help Desk and customers was poor and reactive rather than proactive. These problems led to a poor perception of the entire Computing and Information Services department. Communications between the Help Desk and some systems groups was poor and this led to an adversarial and hostile relationship. As hostility increased, communications decreased. As communications decreased, Help Desk consultants were less able to serve their customers, and Help Desk consultants experienced increasing frustration, which was sometimes unprofessionally communicated to clients.The Bridge: We created Emergency Operating Procedures (EOP) to facilitate better communications among Help Desk consultants, technicians, and customers. The EOP empowers the Help Desk to declare emergencies and workwith the systems groups and managers to solve problems and keep customers better informed. The Help Desk is now proactive and notifies customers about a problem before it happens (or soon after) rather than waiting for a customer to call the Help Desk to report a problem. The Help Desk is now perceived as a knowledgeable, central, and first point of contact when problems occur and communication is needed (sometimes involving all nine A&M colleges and universities across the state). Now, with better communications, feelings of hostility and frustration are almost nonexistent.This paper will describe Emergency Operating Procedures (EOP); how we implemented the EOP; what parts make up the EOP; what happens when we need to declare or escalate an emergency, and what we are doing to continually improve communications both internally and externally through the Computing and Information Services Help Desk.