Jermiah Robinson
October 10th, 2025
Old Dominion University – IT Help Desk
CYSE 368 – 15101
Working at the IT Help Desk for Old Dominion University has been a blast for these past few weeks. I’ve developed numerous skills now and continuously improve them while I work my shifts as an IT Help Desk Student Lead. While I have dived into some crucial skills needed for the job, there are two more that I have also learned about as well with my 150 hours complete. I have learned that time management with downtime is a very skill to have, along with customer service too.
While certain days are very slow sometimes, tickets and calls can always appear at any time. Sometimes we can get a bundle of tickets at once which will make all of us busy in an instant, while sometimes there may be a drought with zero tickets coming in for hours. I have learned that even with this downtime of no tickets coming in, we still need to account for the fact that our guest ticket bucket is always full of tickets needing resolution or a caller. After noting an employee who was using their phone while nothing happened for a while, I had the employee check through our guest ticket bucket to remove the ODU Guest user from the tickets and try to find the actual user who made the ticket. After doing this, our guest ticket count went down from 40 guest tickets to only 13, with the rest sadly having no way to find the users for. By doing this, we lower the stress of help desk supervisors and correctly send emails out to the right callers about their ticket so they may respond back to it. Even when we have no tickets or any calls for a while, we also use our free time to work on assignments and work with Stefan and Eddie on projects to further benefit the IT Help Desk.
With time management being a crucial part of the IT Help Desk position, customer service is extremely important as we constantly talk and communicate with many members of the university and guests around. We are constantly trained on customer service skills by developing a nice greeting that we can give to users when we get called, communicating proper solutions, and even taking damage control measures in case that a solution fails and the user gets angry. Customer service skills constantly used at the IT Help Desk, and we develop quite a lot of patience with users with this skill. For example, I had a call that lasted an hour and a half due to a professor wanting assistance with creating and using PowerPoint. Sometimes we even have walk in visits with people remembering us and wanting a specific employee because they helped them before. This has also happened to me as well, as I had a lot of in person meeting with a faculty member who has many photos and pictures to upload to Google Photos. I used my customer service skills to always be friendly and encouraging her as well to try experimenting with the application. I even showed her how to edit her own photos and how to properly manage them so they wouldn’t save her phone but her ODU account instead. All of this has led to the faculty members always requesting me and putting in good notes for me because of my friendly and tempered voice and always being calm with her. Customer service will always be very important when it comes to the job, as having bad reviews of our service makes the IT Help Desk unreliable to the public and users around. Without the IT Help Desk, many things would not be able to get done around ODU as many services struggle without a core team to serve as the messenger.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have learned that while having great communication, problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills and problem resolution skills, it’s still very important to manage your time here at the IT Help Desk. Many things can still happen at any time, and we must remain alert in case that something goes down or someone needs assistance for a classroom. Even during downtimes, there’s always tasks to do and if everything is complete, we can work on our own assignments and homework if needed. Having excellent customer service is a huge part of the IT Help Desk. Without having proper customer service with the employees and users around the University, the IT Help Desk becomes a negative source of assistance with IT services. We strive to always excel in our customer service, and we will always do our best to get to a resolution in a nice and well manner.