Going from 0 to 60 in 20 years: transitioning a help desk into a multi-function support center

This paper will focus on the transition of our Help Desk that began as a small User Services Support Desk with almost no budget, no upper management support, and an inexperienced staff of student workers. It was resurrected into a Help Desk of full-time staff "volunteers" who devoted their time to work the desk to support faculty and staff and the occasional student. The Help Desk later was staffed with two full-time support staff dedicated to providing good customer support and became the first point of contact for the majority of computing problems for faculty and staff. This mighty group of two remained constant for many years.As it began to struggle to meet the growing needs of its customers, which now included more students seeking help, it caught the attention of upper management. A departmental re-organization spun that small, but reliable Help Desk into a fully-staffed, multi-purpose Support Center that merged three different departmental components.The Support Center now struggles to merge the staffs that were comfortable in their own little niche of computing support into a group that "does it all". Their loyal customers now struggle to break old habits and not count on their usual support staff to resolve all their support issues. They must learn to give whoever answers the phone the opportunity to assist them. These challenges will be addressed later in this paper.