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.

To start off the training series, all you need to do is give everyone the same photo and get them to describe the photo as detailed and accurate as they can.  Everyone gets a 2 minute time limit.  Spread out the practice sessions; having hold one photo per session and maybe two sessions in a week.

Start of with a “busy” picture. A busy picture is full of subject and therefore easy for your team members to describe as there are plenty to write about.  After a couple of easy pictures, slowly move them to less busy picture and practice until you are giving out a single subject. A single subject is monotonous, making it difficult for your team members to describe them.

By the way, the above image is that of a Platan leaf and not Maple.  If you have assumed it is a Maple leaf and described it as that, you would have been wrong.  The same is applicable if you are describing your customer’s problems; you could make a wrong assumption.

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.

Being complacent is just so dangerous.  If one of your team members start to develop a lackadaisical attitude, it will spread to the rest of the team in no time.  Trust me, I’ve been there and it takes a huge effort to change that habit.  As the famous saying goes, Prevention is Better Than Cure, rings true in Service Desk too.  Once in a while, on an ad hoc basis, you have to press that Test button to check the quality of your team’s work.  To add on a weightage to your new ad hoc quality checks, build this into your team’s Key Performance Indicators so that they know you mean business.

Knowing that you will spring surprises on them, your team members will be constantly on their toes; bringing about a slight increase in work pressure, which can be reduced through appropriate rewards.

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.

I am thankful that a handful of my teammates do go that extra mile for self improvement. An extra follow up call to the customer can do wonders to your customer satisfaction results. I know because I’ve done this, I’ve experienced this and I can reproduce this result. For the small majority of them who did improve on their own and introduced these small gestures into their teams, I make sure I reward them. Rewards are mainly in monetary terms because a clap, an email and a pat on the shoulders is not tangible. Reward giving are announced to the entire service desk operations to let them know my appreciation and more importantly that hard work does pay.

We can all learn from Johnny, a Down Syndrome who is a grocery store bagger. If Johnny can do it, surely we can too. If you do not know Johnny’s story, play the video below.

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, [1] Higher customer satisfaction. Since your helpdesk agents are able to serve the customers without the need to escalate, customers’ requests are immediately attended to and solved.

[2] Higher employee satisfaction. If you have not sat in the helpdesk chair/shoe, you should. It feels great to be able to resolve customers’ requests and incidents. With more requests resolved, your helpdesk agent will feel a higher level of job satisfaction. A higher level of job satisfaction translated to motivation.

[3] Better team reputation. Now that customers’ requests are resolved at first call, guess what, they are going to sing your services greatness. Your customers will continue to contact your helpdesk whenever they need help. Don’t be surprised that customers do make contact with your 2nd level support and beyond; especially when the majority of requests are escalated by first level.

Having said these, there are some risk management to address. First, you should not grant higher level of access to young helpdesk agents. It is prudent to first establish their suitability for the job and their integrity to perform the task honestly and ethically.

It worked for me and I hope it will work for you.

Cheers,
Amos