We rely heavily on IT services and platforms in both our personal and professional lives, from staying in touch with friends and making a curbside pickup order to supporting lifesaving research and managing day-to-day operations. At Texas A&M University, the technology behind these services and platforms is important but the personnel that support them when there are questions are essential.

Help Desk Central (HDC) fills this role 24 hours a day, seven days a week for faculty, staff and students at Texas A&M. With a team of six full-time employees, their commitment to delivering customer-oriented service was recently recognized by HDI, an IT support and service management organization dedicated to providing tailored training to elevate the customer experience. Each HDC employee successfully completed the certification process earning the unit as a whole the HDI Team Certified Pinnacle of Excellence Award. Only support centers where every single team member is individually HDI-certified are eligible to receive this award.

“Each team member completed sixteen hours of training focused on enhancing positive outcomes through elevated service for campus partners needing IT support to help earn this award,” said Isaac Podolefsky, executive director for IT support services at Texas A&M.

On average, more than 30,000 incident requests are submitted to HDC each semester. As you can imagine, questions range from basic needs like a password reset to complex issues unique to Tier 1 research institutions. 

“The time spent completing this training offered insight among the team on their challenges, allowing the team to learn from one another and apply new tactics to real-life scenarios supporting our faculty, staff and students with unique and varying IT support needs,” said Podolefsky. “I am extremely proud of the great work, collaborative nature and commitment to excellent service being exhibited by our teams across Technology Services.”

HDC offers support in-person, over the phone, via chat and by email year-round, and serves as the ‘go-to’ resource for frequently asked questions, tutorials, guides and other documentation to help the university community work through tech-related challenges. These services extend into the respective academic and administrative units across the university through embedded IT professionals in these areas, and through special pop-up events during peak seasons throughout the academic year.

These efforts, where almost all university community members engage with the division, continue to support the larger strategic initiative underway to enhance service delivery and transform interactions with Technology Services. To keep this momentum going, two employees become HDI-certified trainers, helping reduce costs for course materials and exam vouchers and developing an instructor with Texas A&M-specific experience as they lead colleagues in the certification process.  The division is currently coordinating another certification for 30 more full-time employees to become HDI-certified trainers.

Learn more about Help Desk Central at it.tamu.edu/help.