HDI Member Discussion Room / HDI Discussion Rooms / Using Email as a Support Tool

Web Mail and Security - How do you access corporate email remotely?

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:28:25 GMT

I have some questions that are pretty high on our priority list right now -

How many of you have web email access for your employees?

For those of you who do, do you allow access via only userid and password?

Do you have/or plan to adopt a multi-factor authentication solution for accessing web email?

FYI, we are deploying a software token on the new laptops we are rolling out this year to improve our remote access security. The question has come up about whether we need to also secure our web email solution for when employees access it via their home computers. We could issue hardware tokens for this purpose, but we're not sure the risk is worth it.

What are all of you doing?

Thank you so much for any input you can provide us with!

Email Processing Metrics

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:28:25 GMT

I have searched the forum and found several discussions on sugestions for how to measure Service Desk/Help Desk associates processing of email when used as a means to communicate requests for service, information, documentation and such. And although I have had my eyes opened to an alternative thought process, that of minimizing email as a channel of requests and providing an alternative of direct request entry via a web based form (I happen to like this strategy a lot for our long term direction) I have not found any useful suggestions on how others are measuring response/process times to emails. If someone has some successful suggestions or strategies for how to effectively and accurately measure the time it takes an email to be processed from receipt to ticket generation I would appreciate the information. In the mean time, I am off to start developing a strategy for implementation of our Self Serivce Page. [Smile] Sincerely, Steven St. Germain Director, IT Support RGA, Inc.

Is Email a Worthwhile Support Tool or More Trouble than It is Worth

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:28:25 GMT

Mirza asks, Many people are experiencing E-mail overload. From a Help Desk standpoint, responding to E-mails is more difficult than handling phone calls or web tickets. I would like to know of the pro's and con's but more importanly the risks with eliminating (or reducing) E-mail as an incoming communication channel to reach the Help Desk.

I currently manage the vendor relationship of our outsourced Help Desk. We pay them based on incoming volume which includes 1.) Phone Calls 2.) E-mails 3.) Web Tickets. I would like to eliminate E-mail and focus on Web primarily and phone secondary. Can anyone share similar experiences?