12 things all Helpdesk Workers should perform

Help Desk:

The Help Desk is a department within a company that is responsible for answering the technical questions of its customers. The questions and their answers are usually channelized through E-mail, Telephone, Website, or Online Chat. There is even some help desk softwares make it easier for the people running the help desk to quickly find answers to common questions.

Helpdesk Levels:

Normally, there are 3 (three) levels of Helpdesk given below.

Level 1 – Might be for stuff that can be resolved at first contact (either in person or on the phone).

Level 2 – Might then work on anything that takes some research or prolonged investigation.

Level 3 – Might be where another group is involved, either another internal organisational team (Eg: Server / Network support)

Help Desk Manager

A help desk manager is in charge of training, supervising and motivating a group of help desk employees. He is typically depended upon to provide clients and customers with exemplary and timely support on the telephone and through email and website communications.

Satisfying customer needs is generally the main goal of a help desk manager. He depends on his team to provide expert, practical advice to customers in a friendly, professional manner. To ensure customer satisfaction, the help desk manager frequently monitors communications to make sure they are free of condescending, impolite or imprudent attitudes and language.

Also the manager is ordinarily required to be an expert on all the supported products and often regularly interacts with vendors, customers and other department managers.

Twelve Things to do:

Here are 12 things all help desk workers should do, to ensure that their customers are as satisfied as possible.

1. Answer the Phone Calls decently

It is amazing how the first few words out of helpdesk tech’s mouth when he picks up the phone can set the pace for the entire call. Here is a best universal “script” for answering the phone:
“Hello, thank you for calling Srimax Technical Support. My name is Ramesh Rangan. How may I help you, today?”

2. Explain why you need a particular direction

When a customer calls the help desk, it is really frustrating him to have a helpdesk technician insist that we follow a particular troubleshooting route when that customer certain that it will not lead to anything useful — and he is usually right. It is even worse when it is a direction that customer has already explored and told the technician about.

Either way, it is best for the helpdesk technician to explain exactly why he is requesting to take the steps again. For example: “Sir, I understand that you may have already tried this, but our policy requires me to try it anyway” or perhaps, “Sir, I have a knowledge base article here that is internal-only, which says that this setting may indeed be the problem after all.” When the helpdesk tech state things like this, customers/callers understand the things.

3. Read the ticket notes amply

The kind of aggravation like ask the customers for information they gave on the last call or asking them to tell what the problem is, usually be avoided by reading the ticket notes. If the notes are unclear or incomplete, the tech needs to have a talk with the person who wrote them, and if that does not do the trick, he needs to speak with his or her supervisor.

4. Write practicable ticket notes

Regarding ticket notes, the tech should be sure to leave own notes in the ticket! Things that the technician will want to record include:

• Who spoke with him
• Why the customers called this time
• What procedures were performed, the results, error codes, etc.
• What actions the caller is to take before calling back and why
• What actions the help desk is supposed to take, and why and when

5. Investigate previous cases for the unit/customer

Many times, when a caller has an issue, the clues can be found in previous cases for that customer or perhaps that unit. So by looking at previous tickets, the helpdesk technicians can answer the call or find the fix quickly for the customer issue.

6. Treat customers as human beings

Know who they are (including their names) and what their business needs are. Do not consider them simply as a “ticket number.”

7. Know when to Escalate a case

It is expected that escalations would occur when:

• The resolution of a service request does not occur within the expected time frame
• The issue has significant business impact
• A clear and acceptable resolution plan is not evident

8. Realize current policies

It is hard to stay on top of policies in any organization but it can really frustrate a caller to get inconsistent service from the help desk. So the helpdesk technicians should understand the current policies and when see that different policies are being applied to the same situation, they should ask a supervisor for clarification and alert them that there seem to be different understandings of the policy within the department.

9. Recognize the market

Customers may sometimes be looking to get technical information to decide that whether the item (of competitors) they are thinking about buying is right for them. If someone calls in to get this kind of pre-sales information, the helpdesk tech can be fully informed to help them — so long as their policy isn’t to redirect those questions to a different department.

10. Have direct lines of communications

The first level of help desk can’t directly work with the next level of support. At best, they can leave a note in a ticket begging the next level to call the customer because when a situation is blowing up for a customer, they really want to hear like, “I’ve left a note in the ticket requesting a call-back”.

While there are often policies against directly connecting a customer to the next level of support, the tech should find out how to directly communicate with them, even if he needs to use his supervisor as an intermediary. That way, if a situation deserves an immediate response, he can provide one.

11. Take ownership of instances

There are two major reasons for having angry customers. Either the product has made them absolutely miserable or the organization has botched the response to their problems.

In such case, the best strategy is to reaffirm that while other technicians may have made mistakes or that the product in question is giving them problems, the responsible tech should personally try his best to find a resolution. If he can’t, he will take ownership of the case and ensure that a resolution will be found.

And that responsible tech should provide frequent & regular status updates (even if it is to report that nothing has changed), also keep them in the loop on internal occurrences (such as a Level 3 technician being involved or a supervisor being alerted to a holdup) to show them that he is taking it seriously.

12. Get regular feedback

Encourage and welcome suggestions on how you can improve your IT support, which will help prevent future issues with support and also help you better understand your customers.