Do you think of your IT help desk as a group of angry nerds, who work out of your office basement and growl when asked to help with printers, or internet connectivity? If so, you may not be alone. That was the sarcastic take on the corporate view of IT in the hit 2006 British comedy series- The IT Crowd.
That corporate mindset however, does not fly anymore. Help desk is no longer the nerdy errand-boy of break-fix IT, but the ‘Rockstar’ that organizations build around. The quest for digital transformation- that allows companies to be more agile, scalable, and flexible has raised the importance of IT significantly. Increased technological dependencies has radically altered the way modern organizations work. IT support today, is much more of a customer service and a service delivery role designed to keep operations under control.
Help desk improvements over the years has led to it becoming a multi-faceted tool that reduces downtime and major outages. Service desk improvements like automation and increased visibility also focus on quick-resolutions that improve the overall end-user usability. But, if you’re failing to get the most out of your IT help desk, here we list 7 tips that will help you improve performance.
1) Invest in New Technology
Legacy systems that operate in individual silos limit your help desk influence with less flexibility to handle situations and reduced overall visibility of processes. However, the best IT service management solutions like ServiceNow, can align your help desk to streamline processes, improve infrastructure visibility, and provide you with the best analytics platform to continually improve service delivery.
2) Concentrate on the Right Metrics
It isn’t enough just to say, “We have been getting complaints on our support services”. Can you get to the bottom of it? Can you track key metrics like call times, number of reroutes to resolve,
or first-time resolution rates? The best help desk software let you assess exactly where you stand before mapping a way out.
3) Establish Benchmarks
Let’s say you’ve figured out your problem lies in low first-time fix rates that stand at only 50%. And you know from research, that your competitors have around 80% first-time success rates, which is also an industry average. You can then set your benchmark at achieving an 80% first-time fix rate and provide your team with clear directives on how they can improve it.
4) Encourage Raising A Ticket
Most IT service management (ITSM) systems are based on a ticketing platform. An ‘IT ticket’ is raised to IT support whenever an incident or issue occurs. However, many employees don’t raise a ticket and try other unorthodox means of engaging IT support with lines like “I don’t want to raise a ticket, I just have a quick question about…”. That doesn’t help anybody.
Raising a ticket not only provides a trackable record of your request, but also improves accountability and routing of issues. The best ticketing tools can also categorize requests into categories such as- incident management, problem management, request management, and change management for faster results.
5) Provide the Right Training
Equipping your front-line workers (the ones tasked with solving the issue), with the most pertinent information should be a part of your customer service management strategy. Well-trained employees can solve issues faster and more efficiently without having to escalate frequently.
6) Establish Self-Help Services
Self-service tools relieve your help desk employees of additional workloads for smaller items. It also improves end-user happiness through rapid resolutions without any wait time.
7) Use Performance Feedback
How did you come to know your help desk was failing? Chances are an aggrieved customer left a complaint. Thus, in order for you to judge the success or failure of your new help desk management software, you need to rely on user feedback to see if it’s working or not, and tweak where necessary.
Looking to improve your help desk call center efficiency and productivity? All of the above tips work best with our dedicated service desk services. At ProV, our customized solutions for ServiceNow products provide the fastest implementation times, optimizes your resources, and also saves cost while ensuring quality. Ask for a FREE Consultation today.
