Subject: Update on something a bit different

From: George Munroe <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 1997 16:35:24 +0000

'ETINU' progress

http://www.terena.nl/cgi-bin/r.pl gives a graphic summary of all
the responses to our online questionnaire about user support
provision.

So far we have only had 220 responses (mainly from managers and
user support staff from all over the internet) but I think you'll
agree that some very useful information has been gathered together.

Please feel free to use this to inform your own views, strategies
or forward-thinking and if you haven't yet completed the brief
online questionnaire please consider doing so to make this work
even more useful for everyone. The form will remain active over
the holiday period and into January while we begin the report
(see http://www.terena.nl/task-forces/tf-etinu/survey/q.html).

Some quick snippets from what we have:

   o  42% use telephone as main method of support, 22% use email,
      less than 4% use the web
   o  only 5% use some form of computer telephony integration
   o  54% believe that more than one fifth of new queries could
      be handled by answers to past queries, 20% believe more than
      three fifths of new queries could be dealt with in this way
   o  63% regard a standard way of providing online user support
      as very important, less than 4% see this as not an important
      issue

Our verdict is that this survey has been a good start to the work
which we will continue next year, working towards a public domain
user support toolkit by June 1998. More information on the ETINU
home page: http://www.terena.nl/task-forces/tf-etinu/.

Thanks again to those who have contributed already and a happy
and restful Christmas to everyone.

George Munroe
Christine Cahoon
(ETINU task force leaders)