Build a Help Desk Blog - Page 5 of 7 - Help Desk Management Best Practices

Individual and Team Recognition

September 8, 2016 Wayne 0

Individual and team recognition leads to employee engagement and productivity improvements. Too many managers focus just on negative employee behavior and implementing human resource approved disciplinary actions. Successful managers not only ensure they deal with negative behavior but also celebrate success or positive behavior. This celebration of success reinforces positive employee contributions and will lead to an environment that inspires an increase in employee engagement. To properly recognize performance and achievement, I have the following […]

Help Desk Stakeholder Groups

September 6, 2016 Wayne 0

Careers are built on a foundation of communications and strong relationships. It is important to quickly build relationships and collaborate with key stakeholders of your support department to be successful. A new Help Desk Manager needs to have clear lines of communication with at least 4 key stakeholder groups their new department interacts with. These 4 key stakeholder groups are your boss, the customers you support, the staff that reports to you, and vendors you […]

Employee Training and Development

September 1, 2016 Wayne 0

Managers know that company success is a result of knowledgeable and engaged workers with skills to meet their job duties. To develop and keep top talent productive, you need a comprehensive training and development program. Employee training is to improve worker’s performance by transferring skill-based knowledge to be used in their current job position. Employee development is to advance an employee’s skills and knowledge beyond what is required for their current job position. If you […]

Help Desk Structure The Top 10 Questions with Solutions!

August 28, 2016 Wayne 0

There are many factors to consider when you design your Help Desk structure. These Help Desk organizational structure factors include contact channels, hours of operation, language, customer base location, security, and many other items. These are the core foundation Help Desk structure decisions you make to build your policies and processes on. Help Desk a Single Point of Contact Question 1 – Is your Help Desk a Single Point of Contact where all issues and […]

Performance Reporting: Help Desk Metrics

August 21, 2016 Wayne 2

Key performance indicators (KPI) are used for performance reporting to help management understand how the team is performing. It is important to ensure you are capturing accurate performance reporting data to measure, manage and implement continuous improvement efforts. Most of your performance reporting data will come from your phone system, ticketing system, customer surveys and Help Desk audit program scorecards. Performance reporting is not just one snapshot of a point of time but a trend […]

Help Desk Organizational Structure for Success

August 13, 2016 Wayne 0

Before you meet your new help desk team, I suggest you understand the help desk organizational structure. Understanding and optimizing the help desk organizational structure is an important critical success factor in achieving team and company goals. The first step is to obtain an organizational chart from your supervisor or the Human Resources department. You should also obtain a staff list, which includes name, job position title, salary, and hires date. With this information, you […]

Customer service complaints: Help desk improvement steps

August 7, 2016 Wayne 0

If you have managed or worked in a help desk for any amount of time, you may have heard of many customer service complaints occurring repeatedly. Many of these issues are not unique and they transcend all industries. The good news is throughout this book we identify the issues and the solutions to fix them. The leading causes of customer service complaints are actually well known but for some reason help desks and call centers […]

Top 10 Help Desk Calls and how to deal with them

August 1, 2016 Wayne 0

What are the top 10 help desk calls received by the help desk from the customers they support? We pulled together the top 10 help desk calls with specific recommendations. While you cannot prepare for every question, there are some industry-standard high volume questions. These questions must be prepared for by documenting the most probable support steps that will resolve the issue. Documentation of the support steps should be placed in the help desk knowledge […]

The Top 6 Total Contact Ownership best practices will place customers first

July 24, 2016 Wayne 0

If a customer contacts a help desk with an issue and the help desk is unable to resolve it first contact, it can be disappointing. We do understand not every issue can be solved on first contact by the help desk but too many times an escalated request for help seems to go into a black hole. If tickets pile up with escalation groups, no updates are provided to the customer and lingering customer IT […]

Help Desk Performance Management: Team Meetings

June 25, 2016 Wayne 0

If you are a new help desk manager, your new staff may have been self-managed, managed by a manager from a different department, or poorly managed by a former manager. Even if you have been the team’s manager for a while, you must assume there are issues with staff roles, work schedules, attendance expectations, performance, and training. For help desk performance management, it is important to setup team and 1:1 meetings with your staff. As […]