Abstract
Victoria University of Technology was formed in 1992 as a result of the merger of two Institutes of Technology. This merger brought together a diverse set of technologies, services, and support practices. The authors discuss their attempts to set up a centralized help desk to cover the geographically dispersed institution and the introduction of help desk technologies in an attempt to balance the demands of the customer with the available skills of the staff. Some approaches to raise the skills of information technology support staff to provide quality service in a distributed environment covering six campuses spread over a 50 mile radius are also presented.