Visiting academic to give public lecture on importance of the IT service desk
April 30, 2014
A visiting American academic to the University of Canterbury will give a public lecture next month to help organisations
perfect their IT service desk for the public good.
University of Dallas Associate Professor Sue Conger will summarise key issues relating to the modern service desk. She
is carrying out related research while at the University of Canterbury.
A service desk provides support for computer use in organisations often including services relating to provisioning of
computers for new employees, remedying outages, providing access to data and answering questions on computer use.
Professor Conger says service desks are critical within organisations and also for companies with their user
communities. Though they attempt to anticipate everything that might go wrong, technology never cooperates as we might
like.
"Service representatives can field as many as 100 plus calls in a day that never touch the same subject. Thus, they need
to be jacks-of-all-trades as well as courteous and pleasant.
"Service Desks are always under pressure to perform better, faster, cheaper, more. As a result, there is significant
research attention paid to how to improve service desk services."
Professor Conger's May 22 talk on the University of Canterbury campus focuses on service desk adjustments that can
improve service desk functioning now and in the future.
"In terms of business, there are recommendations for what to do now, what to be on the lookout for and planning for in
the next five years and what to look for in about 10 years’ time that apply to all companies."
Professor Conger will look at service quality in providing information and answers. She will also be a keynote speaker
at the IT Service Management Forum’s annual conference in Wellington fromMay 5 - 7.
She is an Erskine visitor to the University of Canterbury’s Department of Accounting and Information Systems. The
Erskine fellowship programme was established in 1963 following a generous bequest by distinguished former UC student
John Erskine.
ENDS