UNC’s demand for ITS help rises

With more and more devices making their way into classrooms in the past five years, Information Technology Services officials said they’re striving to keep up with users’ demands for support.

Since fiscal year 2007, the number of unique requests for help to the ITS help desk has increased by about 50 percent, with about 128,000 tickets in 2010 alone.

But as budget cuts force ITS to cut staff members, the increasing workload has put a new strain on the remaining staff, said Priscilla Alden, executive director of ITS user support and engagement.

The help requests, which are tracked in the form of tickets, only reveal part of the actual interactions ITS fields on a yearly basis, Alden said.

In 2010, ITS received almost 140,000 phone calls, another increase in the department, Alden said.

She said she was first confused by the increase in tickets because enrollment had not significantly risen. But she later realized it was because of an increase in the number of electronic devices per person.

“Four years ago, they might have walked in with a laptop, and now they’re walking in with a laptop and an iPhone and an iPad,” Alden said.

Alden said the number of calls also increased with the implementation of ConnectCarolina in 2010.

Alden said the calls, which used to go to other offices, were directed toward ITS, the first point of contact for ConnectCarolina.

“We were suddenly now getting a large number of calls from parents and prospective students that we would not have gotten in the past,” she said.

Alden said the ConnectCarolina program funded four new staff positions to counter the increase in questions, but that it didn’t compensate for the demand.

She added that even with the addition of staff, people calling for help have had to deal with an increased hold time.

Bruce Egan, director of the ITS response center, said calls also increase when new technology services are introduced to campus.

“New things come along, and we’re a victim of our own success,” he said.

He said ITS also added more documentation to help.unc.edu so that users can solve problems for themselves.

Egan said the response center is now more involved in testing new University-sponsored technologies to better anticipate future concerns.

“That’s not only been educational for us, but also beneficial to the customer in terms of catching things that might confuse them,” he said.

Despite these setbacks, user ratings remain high, Alden said.

Matt Howell, manager of walk-in services at ITS, said when a help ticket is closed after the problem is resolved, the user is asked to fill out a survey.

In the last year, he said, more than 8,000 people submitted the surveys, and more than 95 percent of respondents said they were either very satisfied or satisfied.

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