A Help Desk hero

It is not an understatement to say that the pandemic changed life as we know it at DIIT. Overnight we transformed into a fully remote school district, and there was not a corner of DIIT that wasn’t impacted. Every person, every team, rolled up their sleeves and did what needed to be done to support New York City students and their families.??

One of the most Herculean transformations happened within the DOE Service Desk, commonly referred to as the Help Desk. In early 2020, in a matter of just days, the average number of calls to the Help Desk went from 1,000 to a soaring 20,000 per day.?

That 20,000 number still amazes Jerry George, director of service desk operations, and the man behind the Help Desk’s pandemic response. “It was a complete paradigm shift,” he says. “We went from supporting mostly school staff and central staff, to also supporting the City’s 1.1 million students.”

Jerry George. Photo courtesy of Jerry George.

Jerry’s team includes 18 people, spread across three smaller teams: Service Desk Operations, Quality Review and Customer Relations, and Change Management. COVID-19, and the rapid shift to remote learning, thrust this small but mighty team to one of many front lines in New York City Public School’s pandemic response. And it wasn’t always easy. In the early days of the pandemic, for example, wait times were long and even when callers reached an agent, answers were not always readily available. This was exacerbated by the fact that the DOE was simultaneously ordering, staging, and loaning hundreds of thousands of iPads to students across the city at warp speed. “We had to be able to support callers with questions about both the devices and the content on the devices,” Jerry recalls. “It sounds cliche, but we were writing the chapters as they were being read. I couldn’t be prouder of my team in those days. Despite all the uncertainty and stress, they rose to the challenge and came to the table with ideas and solutions.”

Thankfully the storm has calmed, and the Help Desk is settling into an exciting new reality. Most notably, DIIT has launched the SupportHub, an online self-help and ticketing center for DOE students, families, and staff. The SupportHub also has an educational virtual assistant (EVA) that answers calls and offers support through chat. Jerry’s team played a critical role in aligning the SupportHub’s ticketing system with its self-help resources, and EVA, so that if users can’t find a solution to their problem, they can easily open a ticket. “We want students, families, and staff to be able to get the answers they need without having to call the Help Desk, but we also want to be there for them if they need more help,” Jerry says.

Being there to help people has always been Jerry’s passion, along with technology. He began working with DIIT in 1998 as a consultant/help desk agent and would eventually become a full-time employee in 2005. “I came up through operations,” he says. “I started as a help desk agent, then became a team lead, then assistant supervisor, and was also the supervisor of the ATS help desk. In 2011, I became the director of the Service Desk.”?

In his 24 years at DIIT, Jerry has provided tech support to just about everyone at the DOE, including a former chancellor. “I will never forget the day Joel Klein called the Help Desk. I was an agent at the time, and it was a Saturday, and he needed help with an email issue.”?

Jerry also believes in helping not just customers, but his teams as well. “My goal is to empower my team members as much as possible. When a new process or protocol comes about, I make sure they understand how to proceed and feel comfortable making decisions. I want them to be creative and collaborative, and you don’t get that by questioning every decision they make unless they seek your input. And I’ve found that this approach positively impacts the people we people. In short, the greatest lesson I have learned is that if you take care of your people, they will take care of your customers.”

--Lilly Prince, [email protected]