Help Us Help You

“I emailed the help desk and they won’t get back to me!!!!” – Jon
“I emailed the help desk and they keep asking me to restart my computer” – Jane

The Help Desk supports you and your day-to-day work. Whether your report isn’t printing, you can’t log-on to your computer, or your projector won’t power on – we’re here to help.

Every day we answer between 25-75 help requests. Here are some tips to help us help you faster.

Write a Descriptive Summary

Use wording in the subject of your email or the summary of the web form that states what the specific problem is and what you are seeing.

Good: Cannot log in to computer. Says account is locked
Bad: Help, computer problem???

When the help desk team looks at the first ticket they can immediately route it to someone who can assist with a login or account issue. The second line requires us to open the ticket and read the details and possibly ask more questions before routing.

Examples of descriptive summaries

• Speakers are not working in room 303
• Phone is not working in room 104
• Cannot login to chromebook #01506
• I cannot access Jane’s calendar today. It worked yesterday.
• Website X is loading very slowly. Others seem to work.

Put Details in the Details Section

In the body of the email (or the details section of the web form) put all the relevant details to the problem such as the room the problem is occurring in, the specific computer, printer, desk, projector, etc. and the time that the problem occurs. Anything you may know that is relevant will help our team get to this faster. Try to include:

• What you were doing when the problem happened?
• When was the last time this worked (if ever)?
• Does this happen every time you do X?
• The room number.
• The equipment ID.
• When did you first notice this?
• What was supposed to happen, but didn’t?
• It’s a good idea to include your contact information such as your email or a phone number we can reach you at. Having the information ready makes it easier for the help desk team to contact you.
  

Follow Up

“My ticket has been open for three days and no one has contacted me yet.”

We do our best to answer tickets as they come in. Sometimes we are faster than others. Often times we try to contact the ticket creator by email and wait to hear back about a clarification. A good way to follow up on your ticket is to login to the help desk system and update your ticket. You can also reply to an email from the ticket. Creating a new help desk ticket requesting an update to another help desk ticket will take extra time for the team member looking up the information.