10 Components to Simplify Help Desk Management
Achieving and maintaining a successful Help Desk operation can depend on a number of pre-requisites that need to be in place. These components have been identified from surveys covering a wide range of help desk facilities. 1. Set clear, realistic and quantifiable goals and objectives Establish goals and objectives for the help desk operation that support and match the organizations overall aspirations. The key purpose of a Help Desk function is to provide effective support for the services being delivered to clients. The Help Desk usually provides the first level of support for a client and often co-ordinates the overall support process. The Help Desk delivers value to an organization by achieving the following goals and objectives: - Provides strategic functionality in supporting the customer relationship objectives - Helps ensure customer satisfaction - Supports the retention of customers - Identifies additional business opportunities - Provides a managed and structured approach for the service support activities - Enables identification of customer training requirements - Monitors service activities and service performance levels - Optimizes staff and other resources - Enables early identification of service deficiencies 2. Understand your customers� requirements and carefully plan the Help Desk structure A typical Help Desk structure providing various support levels to enable focused response to problems and system failures could be described as follows: - Front Line Support This unit is particularly key within the Help Desk structure. The front line personnel are the first people that the customer will contact in the event of a problem or incident. Their job is to record accurate information regarding the problem or incident, and to make an initial assessment of the classification level to be assigned to the problem. The front line support staff will then either identify potential solutions to the problem, or refer the matter directly to level two or level three support staff. - Second Level Support The second level support unit is usually staffed with a higher level of technical or specialised skills than the front line unit. The second level support unit is often located within the Help Desk premises, although this is not a mandatory requirement within this structure. - Third Level Support Usually staffed with highly technical specialists who will assess and advise the customer of the anticipated time for the resolution of the problem or incident, and then resolve the problem. 3. Establish and implement secure, practical and cost effective policies Recent studies have shown that over 60% of Help Desk organizations have inadequate Information Security Policies and, as a result there is an inadequate basis upon which to build the appropriate safeguards to protect the life blood of the Help Desk � its information systems. You should research and obtain suggested baseline policies and rules to be applied to meet these requirements. Your organization should adopt only those policies that meet their own requirements and the organisation�s risk profile. Whilst Information Security Policies lay a solid foundation for the development and implementation of secure practices within your organization, the Policies themselves are not usually instructional or overly descriptive. They represent the rules which must be adhered to by the organization. Compliance will require an understanding by staff of not only the individual policies but also of the circumstances in which such compliance is expected in their day-today activities. Knowing the Policies is only one half of the equation - staff need to know how they should comply, from a procedural perspective. 4. Ensure adequate staffing levels The following information requirements are provided to help to determine the number of personnel required to support the Help Desk function together with an assessment of the skill sets required: - Service quality expectations - Problem resolution expectations - Complexity and age of the IT systems on which the services are dependant - Available budget - Number of customers being supported - A profile of customers time support requirements ( i.e. 24/7 or 0800 � 1800 hours Monday to Friday ) - Foreign language requirements - Type of incidents predicted - Duration of resolution times - Specialist expertise required - Volume of incidents - Work load graphs - Service level agreements - Existing skill levels of staff - Adequacy of procedural documentation - Automated support systems being used - Cover for holidays, sickness or other employment contract entitlements 5. Provide ongoing comprehensive training to all levels of management and staff Communication skills must be developed to a very high degree together with an understanding of the technical issues involved with the delivery of the organisation's products and services. It is not necessary for each Help Desk representative to have detailed knowledge of highly sophisticated technical systems, but they should have sufficient understanding of the technicalities involved to identify the correct level of technological support to be supplied by the organisation's technical staff. Areas for Help Desk training include: - Telephone handling techniques - Product and service orientation - Communication skills development - Complaint handling skills - Listening skills - Stress management - Recording and note taking skills A principal focus for customer handling skills is the building up of customer satisfaction levels. This is to support the objective of long term retention of customers through the building of effective and strong working relationships with the customer�s staff 6. Maximize automation of Help Desk operations on a cost-effective basis Automation of the help desk operations should be maximized but care must be taken to ensure that this is done on a cost effective basis. There are a number of tools currently available which would assist the efficiency of the Help Desk, but these need to be properly analyzed to ensure that the technological investment is offset by a combination of lower costs of operation and improved customer service. Available Help Desk technology tools include: - Help Desk management - Advanced telephone systems including auto-routing, hunting, voice integration (CTI) - Interactive voice response systems - Electronic mail systems - Network management tools - E-mail operations management systems - Analysis and diagnostic tools - Remote diagnostic and resolution support systems - Fax servers - Internet technology 7. Manage and monitor service level performance through service level agreements The service level agreement is the ideal vehicle to establish and agree metrics and benchmarks for measuring performance. A system must be set up to keep track of the volumes of calls and queries received. It must also monitor the resolution times for each of type of problem or incident so that improvements in service levels can be attained and measured. The type of information that could be included the following: - Number of calls received - Number of problems recorded - Average resolution time per problem classification level - Number of problems resolved - Number of unresolved problems - Number of system changes requested - Number of changes approved - Number of changes implemented - Frequency that escalation procedures have been evoked It is necessary to monitor staff utilization and this is achieved through workload analysis. It is important to measure both average utilization and also peaks and troughs and monitor the periods in which they occur. 8. Control potential problem areas through effective change management procedures Reduce potential problem areas through application of change management disciplines. The objective of the change management process is that standardized procedures and controls are applied to all proposed changes to the systems, product or service deliveries to the customer. The procedures are prepared for the people who are responsible for making such changes in order that they can handle such activities in a structured manner. The change management procedures are normally applied to proposed changes within the following areas: - System software - Application software - Documentation - Operational procedures - Hardware - Communications - Support systems - Maintenance procedures If change management is not standardized then changes are likely to occur in an uncoordinated and uncontrolled manner. 9. Ensure effective problem management and escalation The main goal of problem management is in the detection of the underlying reasons for a particular incident and the resolution and prevention of future recurrences of that incident through problem elimination methodology. Effective problem identification is dependant on a formal incident management process. In the first instance the emphasis should be on problem and error control processes, particularly where specialized resources are in scarce supply. Escalation management is the involvement of increasingly senior levels of management at preset intervals whenever a problem remains unresolved. The level of problem or incident classification is a critical feature within the escalation management process. For example, a priority 1 or mission critical problem could be automatically notified to a senior management level within the supplier�s organization very shortly after the customer notifies the Help Desk about the problem. On the other hand a priority 4 problem that merits a low priority rating would only be notified to the supplier�s senior management after a significant time had lapsed 10. Hold regular service review meetings On a regular basis the service quality levels need to be reviewed with the customer. This is normally handled by holding periodic service review meetings between the customer�s representatives and Help Desk staff or other supplier representatives nominated for this task. These meetings can be at regular intervals or they can be triggered by a significant problem experienced by the customer or simply because the customer has requested a meeting to discuss concerns that they may have. The key document to form the basis of these meetings is the service level agreement and these meetings will tend to use this document as a basis for discussing service expectations and actual delivery. At these meetings it is important to discuss whether the services being delivered are in full conformity with the agreement and whether any deviations that have occurred that need to be rectified. The service review meetings can be either formal or informal. This is a matter to be agreed between the two parties at an early stage in the discussions. If it is agreed that a high degree of formality is required then minutes should be kept in sufficient detail to satisfy the needs of both parties. It is also beneficial in these more formal gatherings for there to be a detailed agenda with advance notice of some of the more critical issues being discussed. If the meeting is to proceed on an informal basis then formal minutes would not normally be necessary although it is always advisable for the main findings and agreements reached during the meeting to be communicated in writing after the meeting has concluded |
