Open Your IT Doors
by Citrix Online

Hosting an open house enables your IT department to meet face-to-face with the rest of the company, which helps to overcome stereotypes and improve relationships.

Planning an open house is easy, and it’s the perfect opportunity for the rest of the company to get acquainted with your technical-support team. Here are a few suggestions to ensure that all sides learn from each other during this event while maintaining the fun component:

• Wear name tags: Allow your users to put faces to the voices they’ve heardwhen calling the support line or to the names they’ve read in emails from the tech support team. Make blank name tags available at the entrance so your visitors can also identify themselves.

• Let others experience tech support firsthand: Give visitors the opportunity to listen in on a live call. As an alternative, you can play some of your favorite or most challenging pre-recorded calls. Your fellow employees will get a taste of your phone support, allowing them to better understand and respect the challenges you face daily when providing support.

• Make users more self-sufficient: Wouldn’t you love it if you weren’t called to change toner cartridges anymore? Or how about those calls for help when it comes to loading the printer with special materials like legal-size paper, labels or envelopes? Take advantage of your open house by setting up demonstration tables and teaching participants hands-on tasks that they can master themselves without calling the help desk. Be careful not to make this demonstration the center of attention at the open house because visitors might feel trapped in a classroom-type setting when they were expecting a party.

• Ask for feedback: Use this full house as an opportunity to get your end users’ feedback regarding the quality of the support and services you provide. Set up a suggestion box in your call center and ask visitors to drop you a few lines of feedback on their way out. You’ll be surprised by the insight and quality of suggestions they provide.
If you do it right, participants will enjoy your open house so much that they’ll expect you to host one every year. And why not make it an annual event? Remember, if you conduct open houses too frequently, the event could lose its novelty.

About Citrix Online
Citrix Online, a division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), offers the leading Web-based access, support and collaboration software and services. The division offers Citrix GoToMyPC®, the easiest-to-use solution for remote, secure and managed desktop PC access over the Web; and Citrix GoToAssist™, the most secure, reliable and powerful solution for Web-based technical support and customer collaboration. Citrix Online products are used by more than 4,000 companies worldwide, including Cisco Systems, Siemens, Intuit, Cablevision and Microsoft Business Solutions. The division is based in Santa Barbara, California, and is on the Web at www.gotomypc.com, www.gotoassist.com and www.citrix.com.