![MLS Insight: A Day in the Life of an RMLS™ Help Desk Technician]()
by RMLS Communication Department | Dec 30, 2014
The stellar RMLS™ Help Desk staff: Joanne Fulgaro, Ryan Jacobsen, and Serena Kendrick.
This post is part of MLS Insight, a series about how things work at RMLS™.
The RMLS™ Help Desk receives the highest scores of any department at RMLS™ on our annual Subscriber Satisfaction Survey. For the last three years running, they have garnered a 4 out of 5, or “Very Satisfied.” What makes the Help Desk tick?
To help answer that question I asked for the call log for a single day. That day turned out to be Monday, December 15, 2014. As it happened, Monday, December 15th turned out to be an average day at the call center. Eighty calls were received. In the twelve months ending in November, there were just about 23,000 calls. The Help Desk is on duty 5-1/2 days a week, so the average number of calls per day is roughly 80.4 calls.
Calls on Monday, December 15th came from subscribers in offices located in 21 different cities and towns in Oregon and Washington. Everett, Washington, was the northernmost and Joseph, Oregon, the most easterly. Port Orford was both the most southern and most western location of a call received that day. Incidentally, Port Orford has the distinction of being the westernmost incorporated place in the lower 48 states. The highest number of calls came predictably from Portland at 27, followed by Vancouver, Washington, and Lake Oswego, Oregon, at ten each.
Almost three fourths of the calls—58—came from subscribers. Fourteen participant brokers, four appraisers, and three personal assistants called. One call was received from a non-member in central Oregon, looking for information about joining RMLS™.
The Help Desk technicians were able to resolve all but one of the 80 calls that same day. One call concerning a browser problem was carried over for resolution the next day. In that case, a session for the technician to use a remote desktop was scheduled the following day to delve further into the problem.
More than eighty percent of those 80 calls received on December 15th were handled by the Help Desk technicians. Most of the other 15 callers were referred to internal RMLS™ resources, primarily the Accounting, Membership, and Data Accuracy staff. In only three cases were subscribers redirected to other entities. On this day those were AOL, RPR, and SentriLock.
Fifty-four of the calls were about some functionality in RMLSweb, including 20 calls about password issues and 16 about Listing Load. These two areas are consistently at the top of the call topics list. Other RMLSweb questions concerned searching of various kinds (4), report printing (3), inventory (2), and tax ID (2), leaving seven other unique RMLSweb questions. Other areas our answer folks provided help in were SentriLock (9), membership (6), Data Accuracy (4), and training classes (2). There were five calls about other topics such as transaction forms, RPR and IDX.
It was a full day of questions and answers at the Help Desk on Monday, December 15th, just like it is on most days. Thank you, Help Desk!
Next time we will talk about disaster recovery/business continuance planning at RMLS™. If you have any questions you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment to this blog post.
![MLS Insight: A Day in the Life of an RMLS™ Help Desk Technician]()
by RMLS Communication Department | Dec 30, 2014
The stellar RMLS™ Help Desk staff: Joanne Fulgaro, Ryan Jacobsen, and Serena Kendrick.
This post is part of MLS Insight, a series about how things work at RMLS™.
The RMLS™ Help Desk receives the highest scores of any department at RMLS™ on our annual Subscriber Satisfaction Survey. For the last three years running, they have garnered a 4 out of 5, or “Very Satisfied.” What makes the Help Desk tick?
To help answer that question I asked for the call log for a single day. That day turned out to be Monday, December 15, 2014. As it happened, Monday, December 15th turned out to be an average day at the call center. Eighty calls were received. In the twelve months ending in November, there were just about 23,000 calls. The Help Desk is on duty 5-1/2 days a week, so the average number of calls per day is roughly 80.4 calls.
Calls on Monday, December 15th came from subscribers in offices located in 21 different cities and towns in Oregon and Washington. Everett, Washington, was the northernmost and Joseph, Oregon, the most easterly. Port Orford was both the most southern and most western location of a call received that day. Incidentally, Port Orford has the distinction of being the westernmost incorporated place in the lower 48 states. The highest number of calls came predictably from Portland at 27, followed by Vancouver, Washington, and Lake Oswego, Oregon, at ten each.
Almost three fourths of the calls—58—came from subscribers. Fourteen participant brokers, four appraisers, and three personal assistants called. One call was received from a non-member in central Oregon, looking for information about joining RMLS™.
The Help Desk technicians were able to resolve all but one of the 80 calls that same day. One call concerning a browser problem was carried over for resolution the next day. In that case, a session for the technician to use a remote desktop was scheduled the following day to delve further into the problem.
More than eighty percent of those 80 calls received on December 15th were handled by the Help Desk technicians. Most of the other 15 callers were referred to internal RMLS™ resources, primarily the Accounting, Membership, and Data Accuracy staff. In only three cases were subscribers redirected to other entities. On this day those were AOL, RPR, and SentriLock.
Fifty-four of the calls were about some functionality in RMLSweb, including 20 calls about password issues and 16 about Listing Load. These two areas are consistently at the top of the call topics list. Other RMLSweb questions concerned searching of various kinds (4), report printing (3), inventory (2), and tax ID (2), leaving seven other unique RMLSweb questions. Other areas our answer folks provided help in were SentriLock (9), membership (6), Data Accuracy (4), and training classes (2). There were five calls about other topics such as transaction forms, RPR and IDX.
It was a full day of questions and answers at the Help Desk on Monday, December 15th, just like it is on most days. Thank you, Help Desk!
Next time we will talk about disaster recovery/business continuance planning at RMLS™. If you have any questions you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment to this blog post.
![MLS Insight: A Day in the Life of an RMLS™ Help Desk Technician]()
by RMLS Communication Department | Dec 30, 2014
The stellar RMLS™ Help Desk staff: Joanne Fulgaro, Ryan Jacobsen, and Serena Kendrick.
This post is part of MLS Insight, a series about how things work at RMLS™.
The RMLS™ Help Desk receives the highest scores of any department at RMLS™ on our annual Subscriber Satisfaction Survey. For the last three years running, they have garnered a 4 out of 5, or “Very Satisfied.” What makes the Help Desk tick?
To help answer that question I asked for the call log for a single day. That day turned out to be Monday, December 15, 2014. As it happened, Monday, December 15th turned out to be an average day at the call center. Eighty calls were received. In the twelve months ending in November, there were just about 23,000 calls. The Help Desk is on duty 5-1/2 days a week, so the average number of calls per day is roughly 80.4 calls.
Calls on Monday, December 15th came from subscribers in offices located in 21 different cities and towns in Oregon and Washington. Everett, Washington, was the northernmost and Joseph, Oregon, the most easterly. Port Orford was both the most southern and most western location of a call received that day. Incidentally, Port Orford has the distinction of being the westernmost incorporated place in the lower 48 states. The highest number of calls came predictably from Portland at 27, followed by Vancouver, Washington, and Lake Oswego, Oregon, at ten each.
Almost three fourths of the calls—58—came from subscribers. Fourteen participant brokers, four appraisers, and three personal assistants called. One call was received from a non-member in central Oregon, looking for information about joining RMLS™.
The Help Desk technicians were able to resolve all but one of the 80 calls that same day. One call concerning a browser problem was carried over for resolution the next day. In that case, a session for the technician to use a remote desktop was scheduled the following day to delve further into the problem.
More than eighty percent of those 80 calls received on December 15th were handled by the Help Desk technicians. Most of the other 15 callers were referred to internal RMLS™ resources, primarily the Accounting, Membership, and Data Accuracy staff. In only three cases were subscribers redirected to other entities. On this day those were AOL, RPR, and SentriLock.
Fifty-four of the calls were about some functionality in RMLSweb, including 20 calls about password issues and 16 about Listing Load. These two areas are consistently at the top of the call topics list. Other RMLSweb questions concerned searching of various kinds (4), report printing (3), inventory (2), and tax ID (2), leaving seven other unique RMLSweb questions. Other areas our answer folks provided help in were SentriLock (9), membership (6), Data Accuracy (4), and training classes (2). There were five calls about other topics such as transaction forms, RPR and IDX.
It was a full day of questions and answers at the Help Desk on Monday, December 15th, just like it is on most days. Thank you, Help Desk!
Next time we will talk about disaster recovery/business continuance planning at RMLS™. If you have any questions you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment to this blog post.
![MLS Insight: A Day in the Life of an RMLS™ Help Desk Technician]()
by RMLS Communication Department | Nov 25, 2014
The RMLS™ accounting team—Dalece Lauck, Cheronn Foster, Ceri Howell, and Stacy Waples—are the friendly voices on the phone if you call regarding your RMLS™ bill.
This post is part of MLS Insight, a series about how things work at RMLS™.
Do you know there is an opportunity for receiving a discount on RMLS™ dues? This year, our annual Subscriber Satisfaction Survey revealed that only around 20% of those responding knew about it.
Generally, subscriber dues are quarterly, billed in advance. However, there are now two options to make discounted payments for a longer time period. If you pay all subscriber dues annually in advance, you will receive a 10% discount, and there is now also a brand new offering of half-yearly advance payment with a 4% discount. With the end of 2014 rapidly approaching, so is the opportunity for making an annual payment to take advantage of this discount opportunity for the full year in 2015. Call RMLS™ Accounting at 503-872-8003 for more information.
The Accounting Department works hard to make the billing process as easy and streamlined for subscribers as possible, while maintaining the highest level of fiscal responsibility for RMLS™. Last year, our billing process did not allow for payment of fees without penalty in the quarter of service, because this allowed us to virtually eliminate bad debt. No one received service that they had not paid for. However, this policy caused problems for some subscribers who needed to pay in the month or year that the service was actually received to make their accounting work the way they wanted it to. This year our billing timeline allows for payment without a late fee until the sixth of the month after billing occurs, eliminating those problems and not significantly increasing our exposure to unpaid service.
RMLS™ will upgrade its billing and membership system in 2015. The RMLS™ Board of Directors approved a new contract with Abila, Inc, to use their cloud-based system netFORUM Enterprise. RMLS™ has used the same membership system since 1993. A change was needed because that system does not operate optimally over a wide area network—in plain English, this means that our branch offices often experience slow response and other difficulties. It has been increasingly difficult to maintain PCI compliance for credit card processing with the current system. After reviewing many products, Abila was chosen for its solid platform, customization potential, and commitment to PCI compliance and data security. The system will also replace our outmoded HelpDesk software, as well as some other staff tools. Customization of the system and data migration will take place over the next six months or so. We do not expect to bill subscribers with the new system before the third quarter of 2015. When the system is rolled out, it will include an upgrade to the online payment system for subscribers.
Next month we will spotlight another department at RMLS™. If you have any questions you would like to have answered about how things work at RMLS™, I encourage you to post a comment to this blog.
![MLS Insight: A Day in the Life of an RMLS™ Help Desk Technician]()
by RMLS Communication Department | Oct 23, 2014
This post is part of MLS Insight, a series about how things work at RMLS™.
RMLS™ is renewing its agreement with Oregon Real Estate Forms to pay for MLS-Connect® for zipForms on behalf of the RMLS™ subscribers who use the OREF Forms. The Board of Directors approved payment of this annual fee of $3.00/OREF Forms subscriber at its meeting in October. MLS-Connect® allows for auto-population from the listing data. We recently audited the available fields, and are sending all the data that is compatible to OREF for use in this functionality.
RMLS™ and OREF are two separate entities with a history of cooperation in serving Oregon REALTORS®. From 2004 through 2010, RMLS™ provided the on-line forms software solution for OREF. The program was based on Microsoft technology, and after six years of operation, some key components were no longer available to support the software that RMLS™ had built for OREF. The REALTOR®-owned zipLogix platform was chosen by the OREF Board of Managers and was launched January 1, 2011. RMLS™ has participated in the MLS-Connect® feature from the beginning to add value for our subscribers.
Thanks to everyone who commented on the last post – Thinking About an MLS Without Area Numbers! As I stated, this is not in the works at this time, but discussion about how things might work in the future is healthy. Technology moves at a great rate, and we don’t always know where it is headed. Even just thinking about doing things in a different way keeps us mentally agile and a little more ready for whatever changes comes our way. Thanks again for participating.
I took a detour this month to tell you about OREF. Next month we will get back to talking about the various departments at RMLS™ and their plans for the upcoming year. If you have any questions you would like to have answered about how things work at RMLS™, I encourage you to post a comment to this blog.
