IT Help Desk

Running a successful IT help desk is much different than nearly any other help desk organization. The complexities of information technology require a higher level of employee and the stakes are usually much higher than anything else. When someone’s PC is not acting properly, people rightly feel completely lost. This can often turn to anger or frustration if they do not feel like they are getting the proper level of support.

The Basic IT Help Desk

Although I don’t agree, many companies run their help desk by utilizing different skill sets. Their level one technicians usually only have the experience and knowledge to handle very basic issues or to help a user put in an actual request for a higher level tech. This alone can cause issues with the customer as we live in a society that requires instant assistance and people do not like to wait.

To alleviate some of these issues, the simple fix is to hire more experienced employees to be your front line support. However, often this isn’t feasible for budget reasons so the only other option is to train them a bit better.

The most important thing L1 technicians should know is the main operating system and the top two applications. The vast majority of calls will be for one of these two components. When someone calls because their PC totally dies, or they use an application that is not widely used, they expect to go through some pain. However, when they call with a Windows XP question or they are having a problem with Microsoft Outlook, they will definitely expect to be helped on the spot.

Therefore, it is imperative that all of your employees are capable of solving everyday occurrences with the main business components. Consider this analogy. If you call your car manufacturers help line because you can’t find the turn signal, would you expect to be helped on the spot? Would it surprise and possibly frustrate you if you were told you should expect a phone call back within the next five business days? This is no different with the IT help desk.

Whether you replace employees or retrain them, the happiness with your IT help desk will be apparent in no time. As soon as the right people call expecting to be unhappy, get their problem solved, they will start discussing their good experience with their co-workers. I know this sounds farfetched, but I see it happen on every project I work on.

The Advanced IT Help Desk

Once your frontline support is up and running and capable of solving 90+% of the user issues, you have to turn your attention to your L2 & L3 support. For quite a while these advanced technicians have had it a bit too good. They decide when and whom to help and they insulate themselves from the processes that everyone else must follow. The thinking is these people are so specialized that the company and ultimately the end users should be happy enough that they are even in the building.

This goes back to the old mainframe days where the IT people sat in their data centers and would never even dream of talking to an end user. That IT support model fell apart in the early 1990’s this latest help desk trend will go away any day now.

If you work on the IT help desk, your job is to help. This means making yourself available to resolve issues that fall within your area of expertise. The nonsense of waiting to the last possible second to discourage calls is unthinkably inappropriate. To resolve these extremely common issues, you have two options:

#1: Put a strict SLA on every L2 & L3 help desk queue. If the customer is not contacted within four business hours, have the system send you an email. Keep in mind the email is no good if you do not follow up with the technician. If you ignore the end user, so will your subordinates. In fact, I would treat every SLA as a big deal even if it isn’t. When the four SLA passes with no contact, send the end-user an email, copy the assigned technician, apologize and let them know you are working on the breakdown immediately. This will make the end-user feel like their problem is getting addressed and also let your employee know that you do not take the SLA’s lightly.

#2: Whenever the L2 technicians are assigned a case; send the technicians contact information to the end-user. Just a simply Technician X has been assigned your open help desk issue. Technician X will respond within four business hours, else please feel free to contact the technician directly or request a status from the L1 help desk.

Either way will often work out perfectly. You may experience some push back initially, but this is how it works when you shine light into a cave. Make it clear to everyone that you are there to provide the best possible service to your end-user and you have these same expectations out of your people. You will be surprised how fast people will respond when they think their job is on the line.

Just these few short rules are often enough to turnaround any non-performing IT help desk. Of course, there is a lot more to it and it will all be addressed in the additional modules found on this site.