Who am I?
As with many others in Dundee, I came here to study (at DJCAD) and didn’t leave after finishing University. I moved from the north coast of Scotland in 2012 to study graphic design, but quickly realised after graduating that it wasn’t for me.
After a few years working in hospitality, I then had a go at graphic design again, securing a job for 6 months at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Again, I knew it wasn’t for me pretty much straight away, so went back to hospitality . . . during lockdown. A time which saw businesses open and close, open, and close again, I ended up having 5 different jobs in the space of 12 months.
Sometime after this, I came across the job advert for Web Support Assistant at the University, and thought, why not? Everything it listed sounded interesting; I like writing and reading, I’d figure out the rest out when I get there. I hadn’t considered a ‘techy’ job before and although that did worry me, I went for it. So, it turns out, going for something you never planned for or considered in the past, can be the best way forwards – a year on I still love what I do.
What do I do?
Caroline Petrie (Web Support Officer) and I have responsibility for responding to requests that come into Topdesk (Help4U) from across all departments of the University. This could be anything from fixing spelling errors, broken links and updating people pages, to advising on WordPress or creating online forms (using our Gecko form tool). Topdesk is where the support team have our initial discussions to gather all the information on requests, assigning your ticket to another member of Web Services for specialist input if required.
Recently, we’ve been helping the content team with the migration of sites to the new content management system (Drupal). It was really eye-opening for me to see how different elements of projects came together. It involved auditing sites to see what content was still required. Frequently, we would come across pages that hadn’t been updated in a decade – sometimes more! We would review and migrate content and ensure it was readable and accessible. Throughtout this process, we would liaise with the relevant School or department.
What’s next?
Getting actual data on our customer satisfaction levels would be great; currently we can only look at how many tickets we complete in a week on Topdesk, but qualitative feedback would be better. This would help me to see the gaps in my knowledge, streamline the customer journey and identify common problems that might need more attention.
I would also love to get more involved with content projects. A lot of our support tasks are closely related, and I really enjoyed that aspect of the migration project, seeing a job through from beginning to end and then providing the support for the site once it was complete.
Thanks Caitlin, it’s interesting to read about your path to the job here. I like the can-do attitude you demonstrate in this piece and completely agree about trying something you’d never planned or considered – that’s served me well in my career.
Do consider if you think there’s a way to get the qualitative feedback you mention. Certainly I’m always impressed at the speed you and Caroline turn around change requests.
And now that the migration is complete hopefully across the team there’ll be more opportunity to get involved in a range of interesting projects.
Thank you Rebecca!
We are currently working on getting a customer satisfaction survey to be sent out to customers when we complete their call, so hopefully that will give us a little bit more insight. And yes, I am looking forward to seeing the projects within the team now the migration is over, there could be some interesting things to get involved with.