IT Help Desk Management Tips
Your IT help desk goals should lead to a great user experience, higher staff morale, better productivity, less downtime, and less turnover. Here are IT help desk management tips to help you achieve these goals:1. Create a Clear SLAs
You must have a clear Service Level Agreement (SLA) with your customers (both internal and external). It’s simply a plain-language agreement that defines the services you’ll deliver, the response times they can expect, and your mechanism of measuring performance and displaying IT help desk statistics and metrics. An SLA will ultimately prioritize tasks and categorize tickets/request as urgent, high-priority, medium-priority, or low-priority.- Maximum Response Time refers to the longest time you’ll take to respond to customer request in the ticket system, even if a complete resolution will take a few hours or days. It’s calculated from the moment a customer makes a request to the time your IT help desk agent “picks up” the ticket and begins to read it.
- Maximum Resolution Time is the longest it will take to resolve an issue. Other parameters can play into these IT help desk metrics, such as customer response.
- Time Waiting for Support is how long the ticket takes in the hands of a help desk agent before the resolution is achieved. The ticket is at this point in “open status” and does not require any input from the customer.
- Time Waiting for 3rd Party applies when the customer request requires a third party (non-help desk team member to review, approve, or give some input to the customer request).
2. Train Help Desk Agents
ITIL defines HDI as the industry standard for help desk training. Instead of focusing solely on training your help desk staff, you should make HDI part of your onboarding process. There are two common levels of support within your service desk:- Level 1 is the first IT help desk support level that handles basic problems.
- Level 2 is an in-detail technical support level. They troubleshoot and investigative, and that’s why most IT managers use them as administrative level support.
3. Set-Up Proper Processes for your Service Desk Management System
IT help desk tools and (like service desk software) should create a new service request ticket for every task. With the right IT help desk tools, you can resolve issues on the first point of contact and avoid hand-offs or unnecessary escalations. Keep customers in the loop every step of the way until the issue is fully resolved and closed. Additionally, it’s important to have a field dispatch service to respond to on-site IT issues when need be. It’s not always practical to handle all on-site problems using your internal staff. It’s important to consider field service dispatch systems as a part of your service desk management system. It can help you improve productivity and save costs as well. In general, it’s best to follow IT helpdesk best practices especially for implementing processes.Find Out How Buchanan Can Help Manage Your Service Desk And Increase Your End User Experience Satisfaction.
4. Configure Self-Service Portals for 24/7 IT Support
Keeping your employees focused on your core business should always be your priority. Every time a user seeks IT support, it’s because something is broken and they’re experiencing a barrier.
A self-service portal, also known as a knowledge base, allows IT support staff to curate information and documentation. It acts as an IT repository for document asset management, and enables 24/7/365 availability of IT information and support.
The system should allow you to differentiate request types and flag critical/severe issues. It’s easy to automate requests like password reset, access, etc. As a result, your IT help desk agents take minimal time to resolve issues, and they can handle much more in a day.
5. Get Full Transparency
Build a workflow that tracks issues end-to-end. Both the help desk agents and the customer should be able to know the status of the issue at a glance. Such transparency reduces anxiety and frustration for all parties and saves time on developing a resolution.
6. Consider an Outsourced IT Help Desk
More often, the greatest source of pain and frustration for any company is IT support. This guide will provide the ultimate checklist to follow for outsourcing IT Services. IT support staff across the globe must always have industry leading expertise in tech industry.
Engaging an outsourced IT help desk service provider can bring a number of benefits, including reducing costs and the workload on your employees. Some of the benefits include:
- Greater Flexibility
- Rapid Response
- Better Management and Tracking
- Reduced Costs
- Experience knowledge base with industry experts
An IT help desk isn’t just project management, it’s an entire IT field in and of itself. The technology, human resources, and processes cost a lot of money and take a lot of time and expertise to configure.
Even after setting everything up, you must continually improve it and wait much longer to recoup costs. If you don’t have adequate resources and expertise to manage an efficient IT support desk, it could be an unnecessary burden on your business.
Simply leave it to the experts. We have been in the business of providing outsourced IT help desk solutions for several years. Contact us today to learn more!
