Help Desk Website

Context

In 2009, our university Help Desk had a communication problem that made it harder to support our 20,000+ students and faculty. Our website used strict XHTML coding that required technical knowledge for even small updates. This meant our User Support Specialists – who knew our users' needs best – couldn't update the site themselves or share timely information when needed.

Challenge

We needed to change from being just reactive to becoming more proactive with sharing information. Our team was wasting time coordinating with web developers for simple updates, and our users had no good way to get notifications about outages or important technical updates. As the university's technology needs grew, we needed a solution that would grow with us and help our team communicate better across different channels.

Approach

I wanted to do more than just update our website – I wanted to improve how we communicated overall. Having used WordPress for my personal site, I knew content management systems could make publishing much easier.

I started by talking with key stakeholders about how a modern system could improve our work. Once everyone was on board, I chose WordPress because it was user-friendly and flexible. This choice was practical – it would let our support team focus on sharing their knowledge rather than struggling with coding.

I set up a new hosting environment, added social media integration, and created workflows that would automatically share content across multiple channels. Throughout the project, I made sure our support team received proper training so they could confidently create and manage content on their own.

Outcomes

The results were really impressive. Our Help Desk site became the third most-viewed resource at Missouri State University, showing just how effectively we were reaching our users. Our success went beyond our campus – our troubleshooting articles started ranking high in global search results, catching Microsoft's attention and making us a resource for universities worldwide.

Best of all, we achieved our main goal of empowering our support team. Content that once took days to publish could now be shared across multiple channels instantly. This meant we could provide real-time updates during outages and share technical solutions right away, significantly improving our service and user satisfaction.

Key Takeaways