Students, faculty and staff can fix their computers without having to hold onto the phone for long periods of time.

Live Chat from Information Technology Services allows the University community to receive support through instant messaging.

“We wanted to help deliver a better service to students faculty and staff,” said John Ellinger, chief information officer for ITS.

This service was made available through Bomgar, a program ITS bought two years ago, which also included a remote access service, Ellinger said.

The remote access service allows the ITS staff to operate someone’s computer to manually fix the issue, Ellinger said.

“They just send you a request and you can sit and watch them fix your computer,” he said.

And the service applies to anywhere the customer may be.

The first day the University initiated the program, a faculty member in Connecticut was about to give a presentation when the computer died. The staff fixed it in three hours through remote access, Ellinger said.

Through Live Chat, the staff at ITS can talk a user through a problem, so if it happens again, the person can fix it themselves, he said.

The program is applicable to any type of device from laptop to iPad to smartphone, Ellinger said.

Debra Wells, director of ITS Client Services, said the chat improves response time compared to before.

“Most people are used to nonverbal communication anyway,” Wells said.

Last week, ITS serviced 280 calls between the two programs, said Danee Gunka, manager of Customer Service.

“Typically we get 100 to 200, but during the peak at the beginning of the school year we got 300 to 400,” Gunka said.

Most calls deal with forgotten passwords and email questions, she said.

Junior Chad Brown sees both services as being beneficial for his generation.

“There’s a lot of illegal downloading with music in general that comes with viruses and a lot of people don’t know what to do,” Brown said. “It’s very helpful because not everyone is computer literate.”

He would use the service if he were to have problems with his computer, Brown said. He is also trying to educate himself more on computers through a computer science class.

Whatever the problem, Ellinger said the service can make life easier.

“We’d rather provide it than having you be frustrated,” he said.