SMART Service Desk IT Service Desk Best Practices

Some of the best practices can make a world of difference in the eternal struggle between the help desk and its callers. This blog is our introduction into these best proiactices.

I've spent a good part of my career working on (or closely with) help desks and the rest of my career having to call them on a regular basis. Over that time, I've seen a lot of bad help desk habits that make a call go bad in a hurry. Here are 10 things all help desk workers should do to make sure that their customers are as well served and satisfied as possible.

Proper Phone Etiquette
It is amazing how the first few words out of your mouth when you pick up the phone can set the pace for the remainder of the call. Unfortunately, too many help desk organizations assume that their employees know how to answer a phone, while too many employees don't. Think: "Hello, thank you for calling Company Name Technical Support, my name is _______, how may I help you today?" This lets callers know that they have reached the right company and the right phone number, tells them who they are speaking with, and shows them you are there to help. 

Keep The Customer In The Loop
When I call the help desk, it is really frustrating to have a technician insist that we follow a particular troubleshooting route when I am certain that it will not lead to anything useful -- and I am usually right. It is even worse when it is a direction I have already explored and told the technician about. At the same time, I recognize that many help desks insist that a problem be worked through according to a standard script or flowchart. Other times, the technician really knows something I don't.

Either way, I have found that it is best for the tech to explain exactly why we are taking the steps we are taking. For example: "Sir, I understand that you may have already tried this, but our policy requires me to try it anyway" or perhaps, "Ma'am, I have a knowledge base article here that is internal-only, which says that this setting may indeed be the problem after all." When you state things like this, callers understand that you aren't just trying to give them the runaround or that you are ignoring them. They see that you really do need to take those steps.

Use The Online Notes
If you want to make callers mad, ask them to do something a previous technician already did or ask them for information they gave on the last call. The real troulemaker? Asking them to tell you what the problem is. This kind of aggravation can usually be avoided by reading the ticket notes. If the notes are unclear or incomplete, you need to have a talk with the person who wrote them, and if that does not do the trick, you need to speak with his or her supervisor.

Investigate Previous Cases For That Customer
Many times, when a caller has an issue, the clues can be found in previous cases for that customer or perhaps that unit. For example, I once worked for a help desk organization that would take old units on RMA, refurbish them, and send them out again, but the refurbishing process sometimes did not resolve the actual problem. By looking at the past tickets for the unit, we could determine whether it was a perpetual lemon and let the RMA department know that it should be discarded. Other times, I saw certain customers with an issue in their environment that just didn't work with what we had. So by looking at previous tickets, it was possible to know when to start looking at their environment.

Follow-up with us tomorrow and see Part Two of SMART Service Desk IT Service Desk Best Practices

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