There’s more than one way to define help desk ‘support’

Dear Bob …

The worst has happened.

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Not really. Calling a request to support the marketing director’s new toy (an iPad, of course) isn’t the worst that can happen. And it could be worse, too — unlike the COO, she isn’t a table-pounder.

On the other hand, we’ve been hit with a succession of budget cuts over the past few years, so taking on more isn’t at the top of my list of favorite things to do.

I’m not even asking for advice. I’ve been reading your advice long enough that I know what to do (don’t say yes or no — instead, explain what it will take).

I’m just venting. Don’t these folks understand that when they cut my staff and then cut it again, eventually something has to give?

– Steamed

Dear Steamed …

You think it’s bad now? You’d better hope the rumoured Microsoft Courier never shows up!

I know you didn’t ask for advice, and you have the right idea. At least, I hope so — I’ve given that piece of advice enough times by now.

There’s another dimension to the question, though, and it’s worth a mention: Is your marketing director asking for support as IT understands the term or as your average consumer understands the term?

When something like this comes up, we in IT tend to err on the side of both perfectionism and task expansion. We think in terms of full integration, bulletproofing, regression testing with standard desktop builds, application development, inclusion in the Configuration Management Database, and probably a few other niceties as well.

Your marketing director probably means she wants to get onto the company network, get her emails mirrored to it, install Apple’s synchronization software on her laptop, survey the company intranet, and go through the firewall for general-purpose Web browsing — in other words, more or less what she did for herself on her home PC.

“Support” can be a fairly lightweight affair, especially if you’ve already set up your VLAN as a mostly walled-off Wi-Fi environment for contractors to use when they work on site, as a lot of companies have decided to do.

Here’s what you do: Offer to buy an iPad for whoever in IT agrees to figure out how to make it work and give the marketing director a hand in their spare time. If you get more than one volunteer, you’ll draw lots to pick the winner.

Then explain to the marketing director that you understand her situation: Some of the company’s customers will be buying iPads and expect the firm to do nifty customer-support things with them, so she needs to be familiar with the device.

Explain that the best you can do is offer lightweight support, but you won’t abandon her. Let her know whom to call, and make clear it’s a private channel — she shouldn’t use the service desk for this.

And, please, just this once, don’t tell all of her friends about the great thing you’re doing for her!

– Bob

This story, “There’s more than one way to define help desk ‘support’,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bob Lewis’s Advice Line blog on InfoWorld.com.