7 Steps to a Faster and More Efficient Help Desk
Whether you run a help desk or service desk, one thing ties these two distinct desks together — people come to them for solutions. The speed and efficiency with which these solutions are delivered are directly tied to the performance of help desks.
In this article, we’ll give you 7 actionable ideas you can implement today to improve the performance of your IT service and help desks. Acting on them will create a cascading effect of improvements down to the bottom line of your company.
But first, let’s get on the same page regarding service desks and help desks.
Build a Service Desk, not a Help Desk
Although ‘service desk’ and ‘help desk’ are commonly used interchangeably, they do not mean the same thing or have the exact same function.
According to ITIL, a service desk is “the single point of contact between the IT organization and the user. The user can be an employee, customer, or any other stakeholder.”
Service desks take help desks several steps forward. They offer a wider range of customer-centric IT services involving the design, creation, delivery, and support of technology systems. For instance, service request management, knowledge management, incident management, e.t.c.
Besides being a modern approach to managing IT issues in less time and with fewer steps, here are some more reasons to build a service desk instead of a help desk.
What you gain from an efficiently run service desk
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Anticipate problems and minimize their impact
Service desks have infrastructure and service monitoring features to track issues and requests and uncover trends. Service managers can then predict future problems and allocate resources accordingly to minimize impact.
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Improve the user experience
Service desks track and record KPIs about user satisfaction, challenges, and gaps in service delivery. These include response and resolution time, backlogs, ticket distribution, and satisfaction ratings. Leveraging this data, support teams can discover opportunities to improve user experience.
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Access knowledge easily and faster
Another efficient feature of a service desk is knowledge management. Not only does that make collaboration and employee onboarding seamless, but easy access to issue-resolution processes can speed up resolutions of similar challenges.
7 Ways to Improve Service Desk Performance
An IT service desk, by definition, is a better, more evolved version of a help desk.
By integrating a help desk with the right tools, automation, reporting and metrics management, and more, plus implementing the steps below, service desk managers can unravel faster and more efficient IT service delivery without huge impacts on the budget.
Here’s how to run a modern, top-performing service desk:
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Maintain an accessible knowledge base
If knowledge isn’t easy to access, it opens up a drain of valuable time and productivity. The first thing that can dramatically improve efficiency is a robust knowledge management strategy. For example, you can:
- Encourage service agents to document each IT support and share those with colleagues
- Invite experts to contribute IT-related support resources
- Implement a sharing system to encourage users to share knowledge amongst themselves, and
- Review and update knowledge resources regularly in a well-defined process
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Prioritize requests and attend to them accordingly
Sort issues according to their impact on business-critical functions. For example, if company servers are experiencing downtime, that has a higher priority than one employee not being able to access their email account.
You can use features inside IT support software to automatically sort these issues under low, normal, and high urgency/priority. That way, agents respond to critical issues first.
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Build an efficient ticket escalation plan
Ensure you develop a strategy for passing more technical challenges to experts so you can keep the front lines free.
Also, keep customers in the loop. They should know that you have passed on their issue to a higher-tier agent and when to expect a resolution. This will keep them patient. But only do that when you’re sure of how long it will take.
As a rule of thumb: Under promise, over deliver.
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Focus on the correct user/customer satisfaction metrics
Most businesses grow naturally when users and customers are thrilled with the quality of the product/service. That’s why, according to the Service Desk Institute, 35% of service desk managers are reducing the number of metrics they track and measure.
Keeping your headlights focused on the user satisfaction metrics will guide you toward those activities that improve the productivity of a service desk. The goal is to satisfy customers and other users.
Monitor feedback from user satisfaction surveys, note ticket volume via channel to distribute your team accordingly, and strive to improve average response time.
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Invest in excellent tools
The best tools make your work easier. For example, service desk software helps with coordinating tasks and prioritizing requests. Some offer automation features that remove monotonous tasks and smooth ITSM processes for improved productivity.
There are other tools you can add to your team. But ensure you calculate the ROI and keep only what you need. Too many tools can also be a productivity killer.
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Train your team in customer service
Customers and users are more than assets, stats on your dashboard, or tickets. Their problems are unique and personal to them. They have feelings attached to those problems: anger, frustration, and a strong inclination to stop using your service.
Top-performing service agents know this and treat customers with patience, empathy, and positivity. Train your team so they have the right skills to handle these situations — to de-escalate heated situations and quickly find resolutions.
They need communication skills to keep customer satisfaction KPIs stay up.
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Develop a culture of constant improvement
Culture is crucial for improving just about anything. You can have all the physical ingredients to succeed but if your usual way of doing things doesn’t permit improvement, you might as well not have the ingredients.
Encourage a culture of:
- Consistency: An IT service team that shows up every day to do what needs to be done
- Excellence: To improve upon yesterday’s metrics without cutting corners, and
- Efficiency: Think it, practice it, and it’ll reflect in costs reduction, speed, and fewer support cases. For example, by automating processes and having an accessible knowledge base, you reduce the need to reach out to support for every issue.