IT Help Desk: The Face of Your IT Department
In today’s era, organizations must undergo digital transformation because of the pressures that come from customers. Customers are not only limited to people who pay for the services or products offered by a company, but also employees which are known as ‘internal customers’. They both put high expectations in the level of service they receive, including from IT help desks.
Main Advantages of IT Help Desk
IT help desks are designed to provide technical support to end users and troubleshoot users’ issues. The present of IT help desks enables organizations improve their customer centric as well as employee engagement and scale their business rapidly at a lower cost. IT help desks serve as single point of contact (SPOC). It provides a single support platform to contact with technical issues which enables to interact seamlessly and efficiently. Then, IT help desks could be used to resolve problems as quickly as possible rather than trying out random solutions to see if it works. IT help desks also have historical logs containing all the issues the IT help desks encounter at the organization which could be useful as a reference for existing problems that once resolved, as well as for employees who have an ongoing problem.
Furthermore, IT help desks also take proactive prevention. The information gathered by IT help desks will help organizations identify which systems that are constantly running into issues. Therefore, they could be proactive about changing hardware as a prevention without worrying system crashes in the future. Last but not least, IT help desk provides automatic surveys to measure the job performance after a problem is solved. The result of the surveys will help them improve and give better performance in the future.
Key Responsibilities of IT Help Desk
The first key responsibility of IT help desks is to deliver great customer service. As mentioned earlier, employees are also customers; hence, delivering against end-user needs while also providing great customer service are the first and foremost responsibility. In delivering great customer service, IT help desks can research end-user habits, survey customer satisfaction, and resolve as many problems as possible at first contact.
Second, provide accurate reports. Reports can show how well the performance of IT help desks, how many incoming problems and requests the organization is facing, which problems causing repeat incidents and show ongoing escalations. In preparing the reports, IT help desks should present the figures well, use real-time reporting, as well as analyze and visualize the data.
Last, share knowledge. Having a knowledge management capability is a great way to share the knowledge that IT help desks have collated. This can be done by creating articles which are accessible by those who need. Through sharing knowledge, incoming calls will be reduced, and both customers’ and IT help desks’ lives would be easier.
Skills to Become an IT Help Desk Professional
As IT help desks are expected to provide prompt responses to troubleshooting, they are required to possess certain skills. First, documentation. It is the ability to document and explain the problems occurred as well as the solution clearly. Next, attention to detail is also needed by a professional IT help desk as some tasks require very precise attention to detail such are installing new systems and documenting error solutions.
The next skill is ticketing systems. It is necessary to be familiarized with ticketing systems as IT help desks collect, organize, and track all the customer inquiries. Then, conflict resolution. It is valuable when dealing with frustrated end users. Last, administrative support. It is used in dealing with account maintenance issues, password management, user access permissions, and network security.
Conclusion
IT help desks act as the face of the IT department in organizations and they deal directly with customers. In consequence, they should possess the skills and ability in order to properly perform their key responsibilities and thereby bring advantages to the organizations.
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Sources
Dror, B. (2021, August 16). 3 Key Responsibilities of the IT Help Desk (and How to Meet Them). SysAid. https://www.sysaid.com/blog/help-desk/3-key-responsibilities-of-the-it-help-desk-and-how-to-meet-them
Morpus, N. (2020, July 8). The Top 10 Help Desk Skills Every Support Specialist Needs. The Blueprint. https://www.fool.com/the-blueprint/help-desk-skills/
Zawacki, N. (2011, September 20). Benefits of IT Help Desk. Compare Business Products. https://www.comparebusinessproducts.com/networking/benefits-of-it-help-desk
