8-point Help Desk Quality Assurance Checklist

Help Desk quality assurance

Do you have a Help Desk quality assurance checklist? Do your Help Desk agents provide high-quality customer service? As a good Help Desk Manager, in addition to establishing customer contact handling procedures and providing your staff with good customer service training, you must audit agent performance. To truly find out how well your customer contacts are being handled, the Help Desk management team must implement a quality assurance audit. This audit is a program to review calls and tickets on a regular schedule using a standard methodology.

Getting your 8-Point Help Desk Quality Assurance Checklist Started.

A Help Desk quality assurance checklist lists items required or points to be considered when implementing a Help Desk quality assurance program. While not all the following checklist items may be required, it is good to consider them.

1. Make support tickets mandatory.

A prerequisite to implementing a quality assurance audit program is to ensure all customer interactions with agents are documented in a

Help Desk Quality Assurance Checklist
Help Desk Management book by Wayne Schlicht

support ticket. These customer interactions to and from the Help Desk captured by a Help Desk support ticket must be mandatory and enforced by management. A Help Desk support ticket is the official record of the service provided to the customer. Important details of who the customer was, when they called, what support was provided, and any follow-up activities must be documented with any official record.

2. Set goals for the quality assurance program.

Before you begin designing and implementing a quality assurance audit program, you need to set your goals for the program. Setting these high-level goals can drive positive behavior and better track your status. Remember, you need to identify specific and measurable goals. Below are six goals that may be achievable by implementing a Help Desk quality assurance program.

  • Increase positive behaviors.
  • Improve performance management accuracy.
  • Meaningful annual reviews.
  • Reduce employee confrontations.
  • Improve training programs.
  • Reduce inappropriate behavior.

3. Manage the customer’s expectations.

The customer has an issue, and they choose to contact your Help Desk team for assistance. Treat the customer with respect by thanking them for calling. Failure to thank the customer for calling should negatively impact the agent’s audit score. Help Desk agents must provide the customer with a high-quality customer service experience. Identify specific actions such as using the customer’s name, not asking the same question repeatedly, and asking if there is anything else they can help with before ending the call.

4. Embrace company pride. 

The Help Desk agents must positively represent the company, the Help Desk team, and the applications and services they support. A Help Desk quality assurance program must review interactions for inappropriate conversations. Flagging agents talking disparagingly about company policies, services, and personnel should be part of your Help Desk quality assurance checklist.

5. Enforce communication standards.

The Help Desk agents must properly communicate with the customer as expected. Ensuring the Help Desk agent uses acceptable language during customer interaction is critical for positive interaction. Use of slang and vulgar language must be part of grading performance. Vulgar, explicit, or politically biased language should negatively reflect the agent’s audit score.

6. Documentation and content matter.

A Help Desk support ticket must be created for all support interactions. The official Help Desk record documenting the support provided is the support ticket. It must be mandatory that this is complied with by the Help Desk agent. Creating a support ticket must be mandatory for Help Desk agents, but it must be mandatory for anyone providing support. Part of the Help Desk audit assurance checklist is to verify a support ticket has been created and that the support meets Help Desk standards. If a support ticket has not been created or is incomplete, it should negatively impact the overall audit score.

7. Get it right the first call.

Ensure that the customer issue is resolved at first contact. First contact resolution is one of the most important Help Desk measurements and directly ties into staffing, cost, and customer satisfaction. Resolving the customer issue during the support interaction should reflect positively on the audit grade. Escalating an unresolved call and ticket when a solution is available should be a training opportunity. The audit score should reflect the improper escalation and flagged for agent training. Implement the top eight first contact resolution best practices.

8. Monitor compliance with security procedures.

The Help Desk is responsible for many security-related processes. A Help Desk agent will create accounts, provision access, and have elevated permissions to support technology. Ensuring the Help Desk’s security policies and procedures are followed is a major area of audit. Any violation of security-related policies should negatively impact the agent audit score, and disciplinary action should be considered.

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