Help Desk FAQ - The Basics

Staffing the Help Desk

One of the bigger debates within the support community has been whether to staff the help desk with experts or generalists. Most help desk managers seem to prefer good communication skills, customer service experience and an ability to handle stress.

Many colleges and universities support multiple software and hardware platforms, and rely on students as the first level of support. If you are located near a college or university, contact their help desk to see if you can work out an internship program.

If you are looking for information on how many staff you need, this is very site-specific. Ask your customers, your CIO (Chief Information Officer), and your staff. There are also some solutions that can give you some guidance (provided you have some statistics) -- look at Global Resources of this FAQ under resources compiled by contributers to the help desk list, as well as Software - Scheduling packages for a listing of companies that offer commercial and free call center staffing packages.

Notes:

• Look at the link to global resources (or search for training) and you will find a number of companies offering certification.
• If you are interested in learning more about ITIL (or don't know what that stands for!), check out the Global Resources section of this FAQ.
• An increasingly popular option is to augment staff resources either with virtual call centers or with contracting firms. See 'Outsourcing' for some companies that can help in this area.

Why automate your Help Desk?

Increasingly, with solution sets too complex to be solved by one person or group, the Help Desk staff needs to call upon multiple groups with multiple skill sets to effectively address an issue.

Common techniques include call tracking and management software that can keep track of who called, when they called and why they called. Such systems will allow you to maximize resource usage by letting the group know when one person has taken the call. Used properly, this can help identify trends which can lead to pro-active service.

Many support tools offer a database of solutions which enable solutions or solutions-in-progress to be reused, which offer consistent answers independent of the person providing the support.

This is one of the hottest markets in client server computing. See Call tracking and problem resolution tools in the Software section for a comprehensive list of companies in this market space.

Build or Buy?

The most important thing to remember here is to take into account what makes most sense for your organization. Often a simple call tracking feature will enable you to justify a more comprehensive solution to upper management if that is what your ultimate goal is. There is nothing implicitly wrong with starting one way and ending up in another, as long as you are making progress towards what you want!

While it is fairly straightforward to build a call tracking tool, capturing and updating the solutions may not be as straightforward. Think this through at many different levels. Some of the issues that will help you decide include: Availability of programming expertise now and in the future. Related to this - how will updates occur? How will enhancements occur? On whose schedule, if multiple resources compete? Scalability of solution - do you plan to allow clients to access your call tracking system/knowledge base at some point? Is cross platform support important? Solutions - ability to update people who are not physically near each other via email or other means? Ability to update people if solution changes? How does the solution get enriched? How many methods of searching? Ability to hook into other products in a non-proprietary manner?

Note: When you look at commercial vendors you should be aware that there have been a lot of mergers and acquisitions going on since 1996. Most observers expect this to continue for the next year or two.

Issues to Address With or Without Automation

Whether or not you decide on automation, too often the basic call flow is missing. What happens when someone calls the help desk? What procedures should someone follow when they cannot resolve a call? Are there documented procedures for escalating a call? Is there more than one level of support? Are there procedures for handling information exchange between them? Is there a list of "supported" hardware/software? At what level do you support them? What platforms do you support?

Even more basic questions - who are your clients? Internal? External? Can your potential client base reach the services you provide? Are people in your organization willing to put up with the discipline that comes about with automation? Are people resistant to change? Do you have top down and bottom up support to bring about change? The more comprehensive your proposed solution, the more important it is for wide spread support for your solution.

Tip: While there are many more issues to address, remember that automating a mess only makes it messier faster! You must address workflow issues first, before attempting to automate it.

Tip: If you found information in this section useful, you should check out the books listed in Global Resources and the list of Consultants.

Links

Dave Fletcher's 101 Ways to Market Computer Support.

Association of Support Professionals' June 1999 survey on hours of 'live' phone support