Devoted to Help Desk and Technical Support personnel and applications

Allow me to take a brief moment to introduce myself to you, as the new author of Help Desk Notes. My name is Phil Gerbyshak, and I've been working in the Help Desk and Customer Service area for the last 20 years (yes, that takes me all the way back to age 13, for those scoring at home). 

Currently I manage an IT Help Desk at a financial services company in Milwaukee, WI, where our team of 7 supports more than 2000 desktops in many states and a variety of countries. We are responsible for hardware and software support, and we are not yet down the ITIL path. It's a fun time, and I learn a lot of new stuff every day. 

The past few years I have been involved with HDI (formerly Help Desk Institute) as a local chapter officer in Milwaukee. Our chapter is called the Professional Help Desk Association, and we put on monthly programs for our members.

In my spare time, I published my first of what I expect will be many books in June of 2006, 10 Ways to Make It Great!, and write almost every day at my personal blog Make It Great!

So what can you expect from me here at Help Desk Notes?

First, I know a LOT of industry experts, so I'll be interviewing them and inviting them to share their insights here as often as they are comfortable. ITIL experts, QA experts, management experts, Help Desk experts, software experts, hardware experts, and anything else you are interested in. If you have an interest, leave a comment on any post, send me an e-mail (phil at helpdesknotes dot com, replacing the appropriate words with symbols, you know the drill), or find a way to reach me. I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!  I took on the authorship of this blog because there aren't enough resources out there for Help Desk professionals BY Help Desk professionals, so I hope this will encourage them all to share MORE!

Secondly will be some how to:

• How to create WOW! customer service experiences;
• How to create a training plan for your team;
• How to own problems, incidents, and resolutions, even after they've gotten out of control;
• How to find/create/steal documentation so you can help your end users help YOU be a better Help Desk;
• How to improve yourself and therefore be a better manager for your staff;

You'll learn this by reading about mistakes I've made, and continue to make, and by my sharing resources I've found helpful over the years. It can get REALLY lonely out there, so I hope to be a bit of a, with apologize to Elton John, "candle in the wind" that you can look to for guidance.

One thing I've learned is that if I don't know the answer, someone does, so I'll be posting some questions here, to give you an opportunity to share your expertise with everyone else, so we can learn from each other.

The last thing I will do is share some of my favorite websites, books, and articles for Help Desk, call centers, service desks, and other things "help desk" related, sort of like an aggregation service. 

I hope you enjoy what you read here, and that if you made it this far in my first post, I thank you for your patience. As I said, this blog is FOR YOU, so if you have any feedback, please share it with me anytime.

Let the journey begin!