How to Meet Three Key Responsibilities of the IT Help Desk

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.