Deliver Great Outcomes
First of all, at the
moment employees are experiencing a superior customer experience in their
personal life (and they carry the same expectations in the workplace), the
number one responsibility for any IT
Help Desk Support should be to meet
the needs of end-users while providing excellent customer service.
That being said, it is
easy for IT organizations to overcome this obstacle because they are overly
focused within, the help desk policies and processes (and the way in which they
are implemented) serve the first customer technical teams.
We hope, however, that
your help desk exists to serve the end-users of your organization and the roles
they play. It is, therefore, their needs that you place in front of those of
others. This should include providing your customers with the information they
need, effectively solving their tickets, communicating with them about problems
and changes affecting the company and generally being easily accessible when
they need them. at your place
End users will
ultimately want to be treated as human beings, rather than as custodians of IT
resources and ideally as customers (of IT support).
How Can you do this?
Search for end-user
habits: for example, what types
of tickets do they record? What are they complaining about? What common
questions do they ask? What information based on the aid are you looking for?
This research will help your help desk better understand your customers' needs,
which means you can better meet their needs.
Periodically review
customer satisfaction levels: there is no better way to find out what your customers need,
desires, sympathy and dislike than to ask them. This could take the form of
online surveys, post-appeal surveys or even face-to-face interviews. Customer
feedback is essential as it will tell you what works and what doesn't, so you
can adapt operations and even policies accordingly. It is finally free advice!
Communicate according to
the needs and expectations of end-users: whether it is an individual ticket, a serious accident or
scheduled maintenance, it is necessary to make sure to communicate with the
end-users as they wish. If you need to submit a saved ticket, inform the
affected end-users. If a serious accident destroys a critical system, update
the affected parties regularly until resolution. And if you plan maintenance,
it warns end users well in advance so they can make the necessary arrangements.
Communication with customers is one of the simplest things to do, but it is
often put aside because other activities stand in the way. And the lack of
communication will eventually lead to disgruntled customers and more long-term
work when dealing with complaints, emails, and calls.
Fix as many problems as
possible on the first contact: ideally, if possible, IT
Help Desk Support agents should avoid
calling end-users or forwarding the ticket. The more the helpdesk can provide
resolutions on the first call - thanks to the agents' collective knowledge
levels - the happier your customers will be.
Provide a self-service
portal to support self-help: modern customers love being able to quickly find the help they
need and a self-help IT support portal can act as a one-stop-shop they can
visit for find answers to the most common questions, documentation to help them
solve their problems and space to save their tickets if they need them. A self-service portal will allow end-users, which in turn will lead to more
satisfied customers. It also has the potential to save money on your
organization's support costs - and the more end users can do to help
themselves, the less it costs to help them.
Provide accurate reports
that demonstrate performance, promote improvement and prevent problems
Reporting is an
essential activity for any IT supports service.
Reports can show the
performance of help desk personnel (both individually and collectively), the
number of incoming incidents and requests from the company faces, whether
service level agreements (SLAs) are respected or not, which resolving teams do
not return enough tickets quickly, etc. They can also highlight problems that
cause repeated accidents, identify ticket trends and display ongoing
escalations.
Reports are also useful
for tracking data and performance over time and you should use it to show how
IT support levels are improving.
How Can You Do This?
Always present numbers
consistently: weekly and monthly
reports must be shared with the IT department and, if necessary, more broadly,
so that everyone has an idea of what is happening. Performance data should
not be kept secret even if it is not exceptional at the moment. And you can
always combine it with a performance improvement plan if necessary.
Use real-time reports to
promote proactivity: real-time reports and
dashboards must be used whenever possible, so you always know where your help
desk is. Also, if someone urgently needs information, you can provide them on
the spot. Dashboards must be created for all statistics that are frequently
viewed and can be shared with other IT managers who need the data. Real-time
reports will also save you a lot of time because when it comes to collecting
the monthly report package, the required data is immediately available.
Analyze and visualize
your data: the reports must be
used to identify models, highlight trends and identify anomalies. This is even
easier when visualizations are used to present your data because of graphs and the
like, are much easier to consume than raw data in an Excel spreadsheet.
Advise teams, if
necessary, using report data: use reports to alert IT managers and teams to potential problems.
This highlights where the problems are or will be and allows you (or others) to
anticipate the game, which can mean you can get a solution before the disaster.
Share and use your
collective knowledge
Having knowledge
management and knowledgebase capability is a great way to share the knowledge
gathered by the IT
Help Desk Support, both individually
and collectively. A knowledgebase will provide relevant information to
end-users and technical teams. Knowledgebase articles in the knowledge base can
also be role-based, which means that they are accessible only to those in need
and may be allowed to use them. By sharing knowledge, the helpdesk will be able
to prevent incoming calls, reducing ticket volumes and workloads and
simplifying the lives of customers and agents.
How Can You Do This?
Implement an FAQ area: your knowledge management capability should
include a space where end users can find answers to frequently asked questions
(FAQs). This will not only make them happier because they can quickly get the information they need, but they will also prevent your IT Help Desk Support agents from handling the same requests over and over
again.
Review and evaluate the
documentation on a regular basis: your knowledge base will be relatively useless if you do not
regularly check the documentation stored inside. This may be due to the fact
that articles cannot be found, are difficult to understand and use or have
become obsolete. For the latter, it is necessary to add revision dates to each
document to avoid obsolete content. You can update it if necessary, or remove
the document if it is no longer needed. For the first two numbers, estimate the
number of tickets created for which knowledge articles already exist. So try to
understand why relevant knowledge articles are not used.
Provide simple solutions: you can use your knowledge
base to provide information to end-users that will help them solve their
problems. These simple fixes should be able to work without the need for
administrator credentials and will free your agents to deal with more complex
problems.
