Resources

Our list of resources is here to get you pointed in the right direction. We place them here because we feel they have information to offer our visitors. We do not accept any payment for placement nor do we specifically endorse any produce or company. Many of the tools listed are of the FREE or are at least really inexpensive. We like free but it does sometime come with a limitation or two. Please take the time to check out any claims made by business listed here. If you know of a helpful link, send it to us for inclusion. If you can’t find something you need, let us know that as well. We might just know where to find it.

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General Resources

Harvard Business Review
When it comes to business leadership and management training, the Harvard Business Review is one of the best tools you can get. This monthly periodical is put out by the Harvard Business School and is truly packed with useful and timely information. Many of the top executives in the world subscribe. I know I do.

HDI - Help Desk Institute
The largest collection of Help Desk Chapters in the United States. Good resources. They charge money. We prefer free.

Neighborhood and Worldwide Call Center Professionals
An independent, free (we like free), Help Desk and Call Center organization dedicated to education, networking and building the Help Desk community in the Pacific Northwest. While located in Seattle, their 1000+ members are spread around the world. Their newsletter is full of information and it's FREE!

iStockphoto
Professional photos you can legally use in your publications starting at a $1.00 each.

ITIL
The home site of the British Office of government Commerce. The originators of ITIL.

ITIL Global Forum
An interactive portal for the ITIL community. Many of the contributors are from outside the USA where they've been doing this ITIL thing for a lot longer than we have. This is a good resource.

COBIT by ISACA
The official site of COBIT. The best place to start your exploration into IT governance.

Ubuntu
Achieve independance from Microsoft with an Open Source OS that has real corporate support, speaks 95 languages and comes with a $10 million dowery to ensure its existance into the future.

VoIP Information
This Wiki covers everything related to VOIP, software, hardware, service providers, reviews, configurations, standards, tips & tricks and everything else related to voice over IP networks, IP telephony and Internet Telephony.

Experts

Ivy Meadors
Ivy has been in the Help Desk and Call Center industry longer than anyone save for Malcolm Fry. If you have the opportunity to hear her speak, take it.

Malcolm Fry
Malcolm is the most senior Help Desk consultant in the world. He is the one person who best understands where we are going in the future. Never miss an opportunity to see him speak and when he does, listen very closely and take notes.

Brad Worthley
Customer Service training and Leadership Development at its best. Custom developed training for you and your team. He also offers Executive Coaching to help you develop your personal growth and career.

Char Labounty
Char Labounty is another Customer Service expert well worth the time to get to know. Her company specializes in service level management, customer satisfaction and customer service education for the support center.

Donna Holt - Help Desk Xlence
Know in the industry simply as The Donna, Ms. Holt is by no means simply a consultant. Her training in Customer Service, ITIL and Process Management allows her to provide a complete package of support to your team. I've known Donna for many years. She's definitely one of the best.

Gartner, Inc.
The world’s leading information technology research and advisory company. If you only use one resource, these are the folks to go to. CAUTION: Expect heart stopping prices but know you will get what you pay for.

Jeanne Bliss
A leader in the art of customer service. 25 years of directly bringing the customer to the strategic agenda of major corporations. Her latest book, "Chief Customer Officer - Getting Past Lip Service To Passionate Action" is a must read for anyone in our industry.

Jim Collins
Jim Collins is arguably one of the leading educators in the leadership of a successful business. His research has led to the creation of many lectures, articles and one of the largest best selling books on business today, Good to Great. Get his book, listen to his tapes, read his articles and you will become a better leader.

Conferences & Training

The Signature Customer Service and Support Professional's Conference
From our experience, this is the best conference in the technical Help Desk industry. They limit the number of attendees to allow easy access to all the experts and jury the speakers to ensure only the best presenters make the cut. We suggest you register early.

ACCE - Annual Call Center Exhibition
The largest gathering of Call Center professionals. Great speakers, great resources, and a vendor hall that can't be missed. Start with these folks if you don't know where to find the people with the answers you need.

The Service Desk Show
Europe's largest Service Desk, Support, IT Infrastructure, and Service Management Event. Hey, America isn't the only place that has Help Desks. 4000 folks attend this FREE event. You heard me right, it's FREE (and say it with me, Free is Good!)

HDI's Annual Conference
HDI's big event. Thousands attend. If you like big, this is the place to be. Almost too big for my tastes but I do get one of my employees there every year. Plan on wearing comfortable shoes as you put many miles on in these super sized hotels. It's located in Las Vegas - where else?

Government Customer Support Conference
A Help Desk conference for our bretheren working in or for a government body. Be it local or federal or anywhere in between, this is your best place for consolidated education. Held annually in the spring in the Washington, DC area.

Tools

Clam Anti-Virus Software
An open source UNIX virus scanner that beats many of the top rated commercial products. We use it. If you do. Make sure to donate. Like PBS, it takes viewers like you to make it work.

ClamX A/V - The Mac Version
The Mac Version of Clam A/V. While Macs go fairly unscathed by virus attackes, they aren't completely impervious. Like all good open source softeare, if you use it, please make a donation.

Desktoptwo.com (Beta)
Desktoptwo is the hosted Operating System with the mostest. While non of the hosted OS solutions are ready fro prime time, these folk's beta version is the furthest along in the development. keep an eye on this technology. It will grow rapidly over the next 2 years

Erlang C Calculator
An online calculator that will tell you how many agents you need on the phone at any given time bsed on call load. Provided by the folks at Westbay who also have a number of other Help Desk tools for you to use.

FUGU
An open source SFTP tool for Macs that is simple to install and very easy to use. It functions as a friendly graphical interface to the command line SFTP. FUGU won an Apple Design Award in 2003

Google Applications for your Domain
Web Hosting, Email, Calendars, Chat & Web Development. They'll even register your domain, all for only $10 per year.

Google's Office Suite (beta)
Hosted applications are going to be big very soon. See what the minds at Google are cooking up.

Joyent
A hosted collaboration suite that provides teams with calendar, email, shared contacts and file managment for a very reasonable price.

Liberum Help Desk
A quality open source Incident tracking solution. A great answer for the low budget Service Desk. Just don't tell your BCP rep.

Mozilla
One of the most used open source browsers, email apps and bug tracking software. The huge user base lends to very stable products and they don't cost a cent.

Numara Software
IT Service Tracking software packages.

The Open CD
Introduce yourself to the Opensource world.

Pathworks
A good, easy to use, hosted suite that includes Incident tracking, Knowledge Base, and work flow management. They even have a free version.

Ruby on Rails
An open source web framework that is fast and easy to use. FREE

Scalix
Zimbra's main competition. look for these two to go head to head over who owns the open source enterprise email system market.

Six Sigma 101
Six Sigma is a methodology designed to hmeasure and quantify the quality of your processes. MiC, a six Sigma training company put together this reference site. It contains many useful tools and calculators. If you are working with Six Sigma, you will find many useful features.

SourceForge.net
The world's largest repository of open source applications hosting over 100,000 projects in a community of 1 million+ members. If you need an application, you can find it here. Remember, support is an iffy thing with open source code.

Survey Monkey
An online survey tool. Personally I like this one best but there are many more out there. Take the time to find the one that's best for you.

Textpattern
A FREE, flexible, elegant, easy-to-use content management system for all kinds of websites, even weblogs.

Twiki
A structured Wiki designed around the needs of an organization for enterprise-wide collaboration. If you need a Knowledge Base and are on a budget, this is your answer. It's FREE

Zimbra
From their web site: "Zimbra is open source server and client software for messaging and collaboration - email, group calendaring, contacts, and web document management and authoring. The Zimbra server is available for Linux, Mac OS X, appliances, and virtualization platforms. The Zimbra Web 2.0 Ajax client runs on Firefox, Safari, and IE, and features easy integration / mash-ups of web portals, business applications, and VoIP using web services." One of the most powerful Open source email server solutions available today.