IT Support: The Help Desk

A help desk is a central location for managing the users' computer system-support needs.

Responsibilities of the Help Desk

  1. Customer Service – all system users have access to the help desk to receive assistance for their general needs.
  2. Technical Support – The help desk provides a pool of expertise for various internal technical demands placed on the IT staff.

Vertical Organization:

  • Management – scheduling, hiring, internal operations, organization, and management, job evaluations, budgeting, purchasing, training decisions for staff, motivation, promoting/marketing the support staff.
  • First level support staff – handle all the common issues.
  • High level support staff – handle more challenging issues that make it past the first level support staff.

Lateral Organization

  • Desk-side staff: desktops, laptops, phones, etc. Setup, move and maintain internal computing infrastructure. They also install and update software. This group provides a pool of first level support staff and some high lever support staff.
  • Network staff: Responsible of the network. This group would be categorized as a pool for network related high lever support.
  • Server staff: Responsible for the main servers and software central to the computing infrastructure. Another pool of high level support.
  • Call Center staff – could be made up of full-time staff members or drawn from other groups. Novice technology staffers are often assigned to the call center to learn by finding the answers to questions.

The Technical Call-Center Help-Desk

  • Management determines how many people should be available and the actual hours of operation. These decisions are guided by the SLA.
  • Call center employees should not be banished to the call center indefinitely. Call center employees should have other responsibilities to reduce turnover.
  • The call-center help-desk must have a way to track all calls. This is typically done with specialized software. The software should include the following functionality:

◦Assign a “ticket” to each call sent to the help-desk. The call is entered into a database by the help-desk employee. Note that all calls are entered into the database.

◦A ticket contains:

▪A tracking number

▪Who made the call.

▪Who answered the call.

▪A description of the problem

▪Date & time the call was entered

▪Date & time the call was completed

▪The solution

◦The ticket number acts as a way to track and reference the call.

  • The call-tracking software has the ability to search the database for similar or same-issue calls. This is an important time saver. Fast response time translates into happy customers.
  • The call tracking software can give stats on the successes and failures of the support staff: who answers the most questions successfully and how much time is spent on assisting users.
  • Help desk employees need:

◦Training to get started with some confidence, or training to deal with new technology

◦An amicable personality, good interpersonal skills.

◦Patience

◦Tenacity

◦Commitment to professionalism (constantly improving one's skill set).

◦Are often interviewed over the phone to evaluate their phone interaction skill.

Entry level support staff costs less than expert support staff. It is inefficient to have expert support staff fielding general questions for users. Expert time costs more than novice time.

Consider 1 support staff member for every 75 customers. Increase and decrease the staff based on budget considerations and your customer feedback on service.