Developing your ESP (Existing Support Program) for Fun and Profit, or Implementing a Successful Tiered Client Services Program

Name: Pat Kava; Tim Leehane

Institution: University of California, Davis

E-mail Address: mpkava@ucdavis.edu

Title of Presentation: Developing Your ESP* (*=Existing Support Program) for Fun and Profit, or Implementing a Successful Tiered Client Services Program

Format: Paper Presentation

Suggested Audience: CS managers and professionals, academic and administrative department managers

Presentation Outcome:

1. Identify the steps to implementing a successful program

2. Understand different escalation strategies

3. Devise appropriate feedback measurements

Presentation Content:

Using the entertaining framework of a New Age presentation metaphor, the presenters discuss how the University of California, Davis, transformed their "single-point-of-entry", fully centralized client support program into a tiered, combined centralized-decentralized Technology Support Program that has enrolled more than 1/3 of all campus academic and administrative departments in less than a year, and is perceived as being a quantum leap forward for the Univ- ersity in providing this type of support. The planning and implementation steps they followed are provided, as are the feedback measurements and incentives for joining the Program.

Briefly, the Technology Support Program (TSP) at UC Davis was launched in July, 1995, to address the reality of distributed computing in the University community. The "single entry point" philosophy that had structured the UCD client support services up to that point did not work well in an increasingly heterogeneous, decentralized computing environment. Faculty, student, and administrative clients could no longer be viewed as a single entity. In order to provide adequate and timely responsiveness, a new approach was undertaken. The TSP focuses on the needs of the faculty and administrative client base.

Each department selects one or more internal people to provide the first level of client support; these Technology Support Coordinators (TSC's) are assigned to designated, centrally-located Information Technology Representatives (ITR's) for level 2 support. In addition, they are given opportunities to take part in an extensive training program specifically designed for TSC's, preferential enrollment in regularly scheduled courses, and consultative help in carrying out such activities as departmental needs assessments and technology plans. A number of feedback mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that the Program stays aligned with actual client department needs.

OUTLINE:

1. Meditation
     or   Thinking about the Client Support Problem
2. Navigating the Etheric and the Material Worlds
     or   The Redundancies of the Material (Distributed) World versus
          The "Un-done"-dancies of the Etheric (Centralized) World
3. Tapping the Group Mind
     or   Laying the Collaborative Groundwork
4. Attaining Nirvana
     or   The Actual Steps To Take
5. OOBE's
     or   "Out of Baloney" Experiences, i.e., the Art of Escalation
6. Remote Viewing, Telekinesis, and Other Forms of Mind Over Matter
     or   How to Get Feedback 
7. Reading the Aura
     or   Interpreting the Feedback
8. Crystal Balls, Tealeaves, Ouija Boards
     or   What the Future Holds for Client Services
9. Dowsing
     or   Finding the Funding