Whether you are an in-house IT pro or an MSP delivering help-desk services to clients, you invariably experience the same litany of help-desk complaints day in and day out. And with so many similar trouble tickets popping up every day, it simply doesn’t make sense to apply time-consuming manual approaches to resolution to every one of them. Instead, you can add profit to your business and best practices to your help desk with automation.
Automated help desk services not only allow MSPs to speed up responsiveness and address tickets rapidly, but also increase end user productivity and improve customer satisfaction. When and how should you implement automation as part of your help desk? It isn’t right for every call that comes in, but take a look at these common help desk complaints and the ways in which an automated solution can help MSPs solve each one quickly and effectively.
1. Computer Is Running Slowly
While this is more of a policy issue than a break-fix situation, automation is key nonetheless. To streamline your overall MSP practice and prevent help desk issues from arising, it’s wise to implement an ongoing automated maintenance policy on the end-user’s PC. This will help ensure the user’s device performs at maximum efficiency every day. As time goes on, this policy should be reviewed to ensure it is robust enough as system updates are made or if the user is consistently experiencing new issues.
A secondary issue to consider is end-user training. Do the end-users know the basics of how their computers work, and what they can do to speed up processes? If users need assistance in one or more areas, consider implementing a simple online training program as well as automated self-service fixes that address basic questions and are available as part of your overall help desk service stack.
2. I Can’t Print, or My Email Is Down
These are two of the most common examples of break-fix issues that confront the help desk every day. After an initial reactive issue has been resolved in these situations, the Help Desk can then analyze the sub-categories that might have caused the issue to begin with. For example, if the print spooler is constantly filling up, steps need to be taken to understand root cause. This is critical and, when effectively addressed, can save hours of technician time in the future. Also, for these and other issues, the good news for MSPs is they can frequently be resolved by following a self-healing automation policy, which can be implemented via an MSP’s remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform, or an in-house IT monitoring dashboard.
Help Desk as a Business Driver
The Help Desk’s goal is always to strive to ensure users can promptly overcome any IT issues in order to get back to work as quickly as possible. With our Help Desk Manager offering, for example, we aim to empower our MSP partners to strive for 92% of service tickets resolved within eight minutes.
The bottom line is that, for many MSPs, help desk is the most important MSP driver for business growth with existing customers. It’s your chance to make a positive first impression, and your opportunity to get your foot in the door for other IT service opportunities that might lie ahead. It therefore stands to reason that help desk automation – and its potential for impacting the user experience and driving client success – might be the most essential weapon in your MSP toolkit today.
