Customer Service

Over the past two years, the IT Marketing and Communications group at Rice University has actively searched for new methods to reach undergraduates. We ask students how they want to hear from us. Then we extrapolate the feedback we gather to guide our campaigns to reach the entire undergraduate population.

We frequently expect that users will flock to our services with little effort on our part. Sometimes that works. When it doesn't, this presentation may help. It will describe how UNC-Chapel Hill rolled out a new computer-based training service with a dramatic increase in the number and variety of users.

Even the most seasoned IT professional needs constant training. How do you instill the love of lifelong learning in nontechnical support staff, at the same time moving them along the continuum toward more confidence and skill in technology support and troubleshooting? Empower them to learn, then teach them to teach other.

Relationship management is a holistic approach to understanding customer IT needs that augments existing relationships between customers and IT service teams. The goals are to position central IT to understand customer priorities and to inform operational and strategic planning. This panel discussion will offer three institutions' approaches and the successes and challenges they face.

This site provides video and slides from the 2007 ResNet conference, held at UC, San Diego, June 23-27, 2007.

The University of Mississippi's Office of Information Technology has made a concerted effort in recent years to improve communications with faculty, staff, and students. This presentation will chronicle how IT publications, presentations, and Web pages have helped end users connect to campus technology and the people who make it happen.

This presentation will focus on the development of the Project Management Office at Georgia State University and discuss how a PMO can improve customer communication and the success rate of project completion in an organization.

Every IT organization must manage projects. In fact, our clients (customers) base much of their evaluation of IT on how well projects are managed. In this seminar, we will address managing single projects of all sizes, as well as how the IT organization can better manage its slate of projects. We will interactively discuss project management concepts and techniques, emphasizing practical solutions to the most common reasons given for project failures. Our exercises will provide an immediate opportunity to put what we discuss into practice, to experience first-hand well-managed projects and learn to use each project to improve the next one. This project management approach is grounded in theory that emphasizes both research and practice. Project management sites at the University of Memphis will illustrate how these basic principles can be applied in ways that help organizations plan and execute projects to ensure their success for the entire enterprise.

This session will offer a (somewhat) lighthearted reconsideration of what to look for when hiring customer service personnel and how to develop existing personnel both as effective communicators and as respected team members, using techniques from the theatre.