Service Desk Center

If you have worked in a Service Desk environment long enough, you will bound to notice some trends as to the directions people, processes and technologies are taking to.  Below are some of the points that I picked up while attending a seminar and I’ve added my comments for each item pointed out.

The characteristics that Service Desk is moving towards are:

1. Increased use of self help - As customers and users become more technologically savvy, they are getting braver nowadays to execute remedial efforts.  Compared to a few years back, these group of customers have become bolder and have embraced technology quicker than ever before. It is therefore a good time for Service Desk manager to re-look into their FAQs and knowledge bases so that their customers can help themselves. Continue reading »

Wikipedia defines best practices as;

…the most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over time for large numbers of people.

So, where does one go around getting the set of proven repeatable procedures to best accomplish a task? You can get them through multiple ways including your own experience and other peoples’ experiences as well as right here on ServiceDeskCenter.com.

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Believe it or not, this question has popped up many times in the course of my career as a Service Desk manager. Many young managers as I was have pondered on this and some managers have even had their subordinates asking if casual dressing is allowed in operations.

Just like many before me, I have asked the question before. From what I gather, there are 3 situations that influence what Service Desk professionals should wear. The 3 situations are:

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Let’s face the truth. No employee is going to work for you at Service Desk for a long period of time. Even if you have, it is a rare feat. Long period here means something like 3 years and beyond. If you have noticed, Service Desk is akin to a lightning rod. You always takes the first, hardest, most painful strike; while protecting the every entity you work for, you are generally not given a proper recognition of the sufferings you and your team go through. It’s a fact, it is widely known but more often that not, management considers that a job they paid you for.

Given the high dynamic forces of incidents at attack you and your team, day and night, relentless as the sun rises and sets, human beings on Service Desk experiences burnouts. Wikipedia defines burnout as “a psychological term for the experience of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest (depersonalization or cynicism), usually in the work context” and further suggests that it is a “result of a period of expending too much effort at work while having too little recovery“. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Of course it does; it’s referring to your working environment. It is said that the average lifespan of a Service Desk professional is 18 months. That’s a short 1.5 years. Based on my experience, this assumption seems to be holding water.

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It takes practice and experience to describe something, be it a problem, a situation or even a photo. I would say that describing something or someone is an art; don’t believe me, read on and take the practices set below.

To help your Service Desk team practice their description skills, have a series of practice sessions where everyone can participate in a photo/picture description activity. After a while you will notice that your team will be able to describe incidents or problems better to 2nd level support.

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Your Service Desk is one of the most process oriented team compared to the rest of the IT groups in the organization.  What this means is that your team members are expected to follow procedures to the very last bit; especially if you attend to requests of security nature; e.g. resetting of passwords, creation of new users

Process and procedures can be rigid and restrictive.  Humans tend to slack after a while because over time, no incidents have happened even though they slacked.  Take my case for example; over a period of time, signature in forms are no longer verified because all the while, the requests that came into Service Desk are genuine, or rather, assumed to be genuine.  Just because no incidents has occurred, it does not mean that something has not happened; it also does not mean that nothing is ever going to happen.

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Before I begin this post, I want us to agree that any service desk can only improve as much as you can put in. The amount depends on the level of input you put into your training. If you want your service desk to soar and score in terms of customer service, a lot depends on your staff, their attitude, their desire and their drive level.

If we do not realize by now, helpdesk or service desk services are essentially customer service. You are measured not only by your technical capabilities but also by the level of professionalism, courtesy, timeliness and friendliness.

Apart from all the soft skills that you have been preaching to your people, the trainings provided by your external training partners, you should encourage your team to practice self improvement. Self improvement can be achieved on technical aspect, from conversation skills, going a step further with the customer, and a whole lot more. I realized in my role as a global service desk manager that no matter how hard I push all my teammates to practice self improvement, a large majority do not.
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To run an effective service desk, you will require a system to help you. Always remember that the system adopted is merely a tool; a tool to make your service desk engineers more effective and efficient.  A helpdesk system acts as a lubricant to complement your team, your processes and your policies.

Choosing the right helpdesk system is never easy.  It all depends on what you need, want you want and how deep your pocket is.  The most important thing is that the system must be able to suit you, to be flexible enough for customization.  Here is my take on what helpdesk systems must have and nice to have:

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I am sure many of us as Service Desk or Helpdesk Managers have training programmes for our engineers.  Even though we may have tonnes and tonnes of training materials available for newly joined engineers, that may prove counter-productive as the incumbent is going to experience information overload.  Always remember that every individual is different, every individual absorption rate is different, every individual  learning curve is different.

How then can you develop a single training programme suitable for all?

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Let’s face the facts. How many of us here believe that helpdesk agents (yes those professionals who work over the telephone aka first level support) is less trustworthy compared to your second level technical support? How many of us think that helpdesk agents are limited to low level IT request tasks? How many of us think that helpdesk agents should not have more higher access levels to perform tasks such as password resets?

The fact really, is to empower your helpdesk agents with these rights and accesses so that they will be able to serve customers’ request at first call. You actions of empowerment will result in, Continue reading »