Using FAQs to Help Users Help Themselves

Abstract

Four years ago, UMBC's "tier 1" Technology Support Center [1] (formerly Help Desk) moved from the obscure basement of our main Division of Information Technology (DoIT) building to the bright, open first floor of our new Information Commons in the Library. Since then, the TSC has virtually reinvented itself by also focusing on helping users help themselves. We completely revamped our campus knowledgebase [2] that has grown from 3k annual page views to more than 400k. As a result, support phone calls have been reduced 30% and ticket volume has decreased 3% (since FY10) or remained flat while all other campus support requests have skyrocketed through widespread adoption [3] of our RT (Request Tracker) ticketing system. Guided by an excellent orientation manual with a novel, but simple ticket-grading rubric [4] encouraging support staff to recommend relevant FAQ articles as an acceptable initial resolution to user support requests, student consultants now resolve half of all the TSC's tickets each week; previously they were not allowed to do so for fear they would make mistakes. With just two FT staff and 12-15 student consultants resolving 8k of DoIT's overall 25k tickets annually, the TSC has become a model of efficiency and effectiveness. Overall, DoIT enjoys a 90% "excellent" customer satisfaction rating on an optional survey every customer receives following a resolved ticket.