Tag Archives: call center

Milne Office Moves Timeline

Here are the details for our upcoming office moves. If you have questions or concerns about where you will be working during the transition or how processes may be impacted by these changes, please see the chart outside Richard’s office. If that doesn’t answer your questions, talk to Max C., Angela or Kirsten.

Timeline of Moves

  • Friday 3/23
    • We will start clearing out 213C (the old 201)
  • Saturday 3/24
    • We will reconfigure the furniture in 213A
  • Monday 3/26
    • Spring Break starts
    • We will tear down and move out of 213C; walkup customers will be temporarily redirected via signage to 213
    • Contractor begins furniture install in new 201
    • Telecom installs new phones in 213A; David and Keenan’s phones will be moved to 213A at this time
    • CN builds and dban done in 213A
  • Tuesday 3/27
    • Telecom installs phones in 201
    • Lisa moves to 201A (pending contractor break down of her existing furniture)
    • CN builds and dban done in 213A
    • Setup of 201 completed
  • Wednesday 3/28
    • 201 ready for walk-up; can also be used for call center and builds if needed
    • CN builds and dban done in 213A; 201 can also be used for builds if needed
  • Thursday 3/29
    • We will tear down 213
    • 213A used for CN builds and call center; 201 can also be used for builds if needed
  • Friday 3/30
    • Telecom reconfigures phone jacks in 213 for new layout (in preparation for staff moving to new locations in 213)
  • Monday 4/2
    • Contractor begins install of new furniture in 213
  • Tuesday 4/3
    • Contractor completes furniture install in 213
  • Wednesday 4/4
    • We begin setting up staff and student work stations in 213
  • Thursday 4/5
    • We will have a large truck available to surplus old cubicle walls, etc. Until then Milne 228 will be used for temporary storage of furniture bound for Surplus.
  • Friday 4/6
    • Setup of all work spaces completed by end of the day; afterwards builds and call center can be done in 213 and 213A (as well as 201 if needed). Walkups can be handled in all areas. Dbans will be done in 213A.

Process changes to note:

  • CN builds
    • May be delayed 3/26 through 3/30 and possibly as late as 4/6. CN customers will be notified no later than 3/20.
    • A role will be defined for a full-time staff member to monitor builds throughout the day and ensure they are being assigned and completed.
    • After the change, builds can happen in all our work spaces. Clear notes in tickets regarding location of equipment and good adherence to process will be even more critical than before. Please be careful not to misplace customer equipment and peripherals.
    • After the change, Extension customer equipment will likely be stored in Lisa’s new office in 201A. Other CN customer equipment will either be in the Mail room or the new storage racks in 213. The CN outgoing rack will be moved to the new storage racks in 213.
  • Walk-up
    • Walk-up services will be interrupted 3/26-3/27. However, as this is Spring Break, traffic should be light. Signs will redirect customers. Let customers know we are sorry for the disruption, and that the move of the walk-up is intended to make it easier to find.
  • Call Center
    • By the time the tear down of 213 begins on 3/29, we plan to have enough work spaces in 213A to handle our usual load of calls. However, some spaces may need to double-up and do CN builds as well (we will try to limit these), or even handle a walk-in customer.  The worst days will likely be 4/2 and 4/3, as that is the start of the term and we will be space-limited on those days. By 4/4, we should be starting to get back to normal as we begin to set up work spaces in 213.
    • I am expecting some longer call wait times and higher call abandons on 4/2 and 4/3. Do the best you can but don’t worry overmuch about it.
    • More full timers will be assigned to do call mentoring after the change. It won’t be just Robin and Keenan anymore! 🙂
  • Field/On-site appointments
    • Additional staff will be added to the rotation for on-site appointments. More information to follow soon.
    • No one will take appointments 100% of the time; staff will be assigned to varying roles throughout the day. Please read calendars carefully before scheduling appointments.
    • In the future we plan to allow more ad-hoc on-site visits – that is, you take the call, you decide an on-site is needed, you aux out and go see the customer. More information about this will follow soon. (Max and I still need to work out details.)
  • Slack
    • There will be some changes to our Slack channels. More information on this soon.

 

Avaya CMS Upgrade 10/30/2017

I received the following notice from Telecom today:

OSU telecom will be moving to a new CMS server on Monday October 30th at 7pm. CMS provides you with reports for your respective Call Centers or the ability to login and view real time statistics.  Monday October 30th will be the last day you will be receiving a report via email or have access via the CMS supervisor software. After the cutover, we will be setting up new login accounts that will allow you to log into CMS via web browser (Google Chrome, Firefox). If you do not need access to this service, please reply to this email and we will remove you from the list. The move to the new CMS server is due to the dismantling of our central support group (iNOC). We will be contacting you with your new login credentials and instruction as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience during this transition. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

I will share login information for the new system with staff once it is available, and will update instructions in TD and the KeePass entry.

Service Desk Digest 3/20/2017

OSU Mobile App Launching Soon

The OSU Mobile App is due to be released starting this week. The IS Service Desk will be the first point-of-contact for questions about this service. We do not expect to get a large number of questions about the app. We will assist with basic usage and escalate all other issues to Web and Mobile Services.

Please review the OSU Mobile App Service InfoSheet and let me know if you have any questions.

Always Make a Ticket

In the past I have made exceptions to the “always make a ticket” rule but that has caught us up short several times recently. If you help a customer via phone or walk-up, you should always make a ticket. If you did not get the customer’s name, please assign the ticket to “Phone Log”.

The following script can be helpful to assure you always get the customer’s name (from section IS Service Desk Process Guide – 3.3 Call Processing Workflow):

Tech: “IS Service Desk, this is <name>. How may I help you?”

<Listen to user request>

Tech: “Okay, before we get started can I get your OSU ID or name?”

Long story short: if you spend any amount of time talking to a customer, please make a ticket.

Walkup Policies

Reminder: our offices are for work only and are not a place to hang out when you are off-shift. This is particularly true in the Service Desk Walkup as we have limited space to help customers and too many people in the room can discourage customers from coming in.

The only people who should be in the Walkup are people currently on-shift or customers.

Techs who are off-shift can be in the call center so long as they are not disruptive and not taking up space needed by people on-shift.

If you need a space to eat or relax, you are welcome to use the couch in 213, or the break room downstairs (please take your food trash to the can outside). If you need a space to do homework, there is an entire lab downstairs full of desks and computers, paid for by student fees. I hear it is run by some nice folks.

Getting Help

The following are some ideas for when you don’t know how to resolve a customer’s request:

  • Review relevant documentation. If you are totally new to the topic, it is a good idea to let the customer know you need to do some research. You can ask them if they want to wait, or be contacted by us later. Get all of the pertinent details before letting them go.
  • Ask a colleague or staff member in your area for assistance. Be prepared to answer the following questions:
    • Who is the customer? Are they an employee, student, affiliate or other? Where are they located? Are they a CN customer?
    • What type of device do they have? Windows or Mac? Laptop, desktop or mobile? What browser?
    • What is the customer trying to do? What error messages did they see? How urgent is this problem or request?
    • What steps have you already tried to resolve the problem?
  • Escalate the issue. If you are not sure what to do and no one is available to assist, let the customer know that you will make a ticket and have someone get back to them. The customer may be disappointed, but this is better than making a guess and being wrong. Make sure all the pertinent information is in the ticket and assign it to “Service Desk – Escalation (Group)”. A supervisor will review the ticket and either reassign it or give you more information to resolve the issue.
  • Communicate with the customer. When you an escalate an issue, you should always send an update to the customer. It may take some time for their request to be resolved, but keeping communication going lets the customer know that we are still working on their request.

Do you have other suggestions? Post them in the comments.

 

 

Service Desk Digest – 8/16/2016

Customer Service Training

On Tuesday 8/9, all full-time staff in Client Services attended a customer service training provided by Kristen Magis from HR. The goal of the session was to work through the training modules and customize them to our needs. Kristen will also be helping us turn this into a Canvas module so that student workers can do the training ad-hoc.


Box Training

Box is slated to be made available to all students and employees in a soft launch on September 7. The Service Desk is the tier 1 point-of-contact for Box support.

All Client Services staff and student workers (everyone who is here this summer) should be able to login to oregonstate.box.com now. If you had trouble accessing the training before, please try again via this method:

  1. Login to oregonstate.box.com.
  2. Click on “Get Training” on the right.
  3. If this is the first time you have gone to the Training site, wait 1 day before doing the next step.
  4. Search for “Helpdesk Essentials”, click on it, and choose “Launch”.
  5. If that doesn’t work, click on your profile at the top-right, then choose “Transcript” – the training should be listed under “Active”.

Walk-up Moving to Milne

There is a project underway to move the repair and tier 1 services of the walk-up desk from the Library to Milne before school starts in September. The checkout and production services will stay in the library. If this move happens, it will be during early to mid September.

The project team is: Andrew, Kirsten, Max, Samuel, Jeff, Richard, Ed. Ping one of us if you have questions or concerns.

I am currently working on the communications plan and CAB request for this change.

Walk-up folks please note: Community Network customers will also be able to bring their OSU-owned computers to the walk-up for assistance, but we will not be promoting this service until later in Fall. For now, if a CN customer comes to the walkup, please DO NOT TURN THEM AWAY. Ask for their ticket number, or look them up in RefTool to find their ticket, and call the 78787 number if you are not sure what to do.


New IS Website

The Information Services website is being redone, and the new one should be going into production either late August or early September.

You can view the dev version of the new IS site here. I am still working with Sher Fenn to update much of our content.


Apps.oregonstate.edu

Citrix XenApp (apps.oregonstate.edu) has replaced RemoteApps. The Service Desk is the tier 1 point-of-contact for all Citrix requests. Escalate issues to the Campus Labs queue in Coho as needed.

The InfoSheet for Citrix is in ITKnows.

The name of this service may change, but for now we seem to be calling it “Citrix” or “Apps”.


OSU-Cascades New Building

The grand opening for Tykeson Hall is September 13. Greg Chilcote and Shannon Osborne were busy last week getting things ready.

With things being very busy in Bend and with OSU-Cascades expanding to more locations, we are encouraging CN customers at OSU-Cascades to call the call center for support rather than arm-grabbing Greg and Shannon for everything. Always make note of where a customer is located when talking to them on the phone. We can send Greg and Shannon to field appointments in Bend just as we do with field techs here in Corvallis. Max C. is working on getting travel time information to assist us with scheduling.


New Email Address for Service Desk

Beginning with promotional events this Fall and with changes to the IS website, I will be promoting a new email address for contacting the Service Desk.

The official contact information for the Service Desk is as follows:

IS Service Desk

Phone: 541-737-8787 (Corvallis/Statewide),  541-322-2051 (OSU-Cascades)

Email: Service.Desk@oregonstate.edu

Walk-up: Valley Library, main floor lobby area (until this changes)


Fall Service Desk Hours

With the move of the walk-up to Milne, we will be syncing up the call center hours with the walk-up. Our fall hours for walk-up and call center will be:

IS Service Desk Hours

Monday-Friday: 8am-7PM

Saturday/Sunday: 3PM-7PM


Team Dynamix Update

We are getting ready to reboot the project to roll Client Services to Team Dynamix, our new ticketing system.

Lucas Friedrichsen will be heading up this effort, with Paul Bunn as the project manager.

I can’t give an exact time frame yet, but if all goes well, we will be migrating the Service Desk from Coho to Team Dynamix in mid-to-late Fall term.

We will address other groups who use Coho after the Service Desk operations have moved.

Call Mentors

In an effort to provide better support to call center technicians, a call mentor will be on-shift throughout the day. The call mentor’s main purpose is to assist call center technicians in finding the right information. The other goal is to reduce interruptions for other staff as they work on accounts, recommendations, or escalations.

When you are taking calls, please ask the scheduled call mentor for help first.

The call mentor schedule will be posted on the whiteboard and in the “Community Network” calendar in Exchange.

For more information about call mentoring see the ITKnows article.