For many years, LITS has continued to staff our main number for support calls during regular business hours. Each LITS team member takes several blocks of time each week to “staff the help desk.” Over the years the number of telephone calls we receive each day has continued to decline as users have made more use of our INFORM system. A recent analysis of calls coming through our main number shows that we receive 3 calls a day on average. Some days we receive none. Of the calls we receive through our main number, approximately 1/3 are requests to speak to a specific person on the team, not to report a problem. Many of these are from vendors or outside service providers. Another third are “rollovers” from individual team member telephones when they are on another line or out of the office. And, of course, we receive our share of wrong numbers. Again, on average, this means that we receive between 1 and 2 telephone calls for service each day. And of these the vast majority are calls that need to be entered into INFORM for further action and tracking.

In an effort to make more efficient use of staff resources and respond more quickly to support calls coming through INFORM, LITS plans to launch a pilot project to introduce a voice menu system for our main number (322-7073) during the summer of 2008. Following advice from the training and technology support coordinators, the menu will be very simple and will allow for reporting emergencies or urgent issues to an “on call” team member without navigating a lengthy menu. This is particularly important for system wide problems and for campus-wide services such as VUprint. It will also provide a directory feature to contact specific team members. Our hope is that by using more staff time to resolve service calls, and less time monitoring our telephone, we’ll be able to provide even better service.