Laurie Guererri, RN, BS, Patient Advocate, Virtual Help Desk Manager
Jeff Grandon, VISN 2 Webmaster
Joan Lucas, IT Specialist-Web Assistant
Daniel V Ryan, Customer Service Specialist/Public Affairs Officer Rose Terry, RN, Patient Advocate
Colleen Weber, IT Specialist, Web Assistant

Number of customer type inquiries (if applicable):

• Complaints
• Employment
• Enrollment
• General Information
• Medical/physician related
• Personal
• Network 2 specific

Number of different inquiries made to the Virtual Help Desk (if applicable):

• Coordination of care
• Decision making
• Emotional needs not met
• Family involvement, or lack there of
• Staff courtesy
• Timeliness

Number of most frequently asked questions:

• Employment opportunities
• Eyeglass benefits
• Requests for emloyee e-mail addresses
• Genealogy research inquires
• VA donation information

SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of Virtual Help Desk program (See Table I).

• Identified a 25-member expert panel to assist as needed with Virtual Help Desk requests specific to their areas of expertise
• Developed a one-day training session with 25-member panel that included expectations of their roles, expected email etiquette, Virtual Help Desk mission, policy, and encryption process
• Implemented a "Jobs at VISN 2" icon on home page for employment inquires
• Added the identified frequently asked questions over a period of one year under the "Frequently Asked Questions" icon located under Veteran Services
• Provided a link to volunteer website that provides information about donations and volunteering
• Standardized email responses for employment opportunities, obtaining eyeglass benefits, doing geneology research, and locating military records
• Promoted website and educated stakeholders with flyers and advertisements

Return on investment can be assessed in terms of the quality of benefits aggregated as well as the financial impact of education and communication via electronic transactions. Paper-based processes typically cost 10 times more than their equivalent electronic transactions. Beyond financial implications, the value of the Virtual Help Desk is surrounded in the exclusive potential the web offers in facilitating the delivery of services and nurturing the relationships and interactions we have with those we serve. (“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”—Albert Einstein).

Lessons Learned

• Graph I: Tracking the categories assigned to the incoming inquires illustrated to the Virtual Help Desk team that the Help Desk is used for the main purpose of searching for general information related to Veteran Affairs. It also showed that since adding the top five frequently asked questions to the link on our web site that inquires in these areas have declined empowering users to utilize the tools we offer.
• Graph II: Tracking Virtual Help Desk Requests and the relation to Customer Service Standards confirmed that the majority of inquires did not have a relation to a customer service standard deficient and only 3% of inquires were complaint related, allowing the team to focus other areas for proactively.
• Graph III: Comparison of frequently asked questions before and after published on web site or an icon added to the webpage demonstrated that there was a decline in each of the five categories, denoting that users were exploring the web site for answers to their questions.

Laurie Guererri RN
Virtual Help Desk Manager
laurie.Guererri@med.va.gov