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5 Tips on How to Improve your Service Desk
IT Service Desk:
A service desk is the accumulation and repository of a service helpline that is offered to users that demand help from the IT service provider. It is the point of contact between the service desk personnel and customers or employees for resolving issues and managing situations is the core subject. The end-users may be customers, employees, stakeholders, or business partners. It manages the mixture of AI, technology, and automation as a single point of contact to anticipate issues, rectify them, store and manage resolutions and ultimately improve the user experience.
The advancement in Information Technology has made services easier for customers and employees but remains a huge challenge for the IT service desk. The management continuously strives to improve the service desk performance so as to attain optimum potential. It helps in speedy clearance of service requests, proper flow of service without interruption, and thus ensuring greater user experience.
Listed below are a few guidelines to improve the burden of your service desk:
Most of the employees spend time searching and waiting for support that is already provided 'n' a number of times to other users. Like the way FAQs work for most frequently asked questions, the knowledge and resolutions available have to be segregated and accessible to the service users through a central repository. This ensures that not much time is wasted on raising tickets and waiting for the service desk to resolve them, but the users themselves can solve it. For this purpose, relevant information that is user-focused has to be provided to end-users with clarity and accuracy. Hence it will guarantee that the work is completed smartly and not by using hours of time and energy.
As technology advances, it is only beneficial to the management that the optimum support tools are installed and utilized according to the industry needs. Based on the motives, size, and workflow of the organization, advanced features can be implemented that helps in Knowledge Management, Asset Management, and Service Management. For example, a basic ticketing system can be utilized to its utmost potential and be available to all users via the help portal, and this will aid in tracking and resolving the issues at the earliest. User experience can be improvised by making these features available with an easy and simple user interface that is SEO-friendly. It must also be noted that such advanced features and technical support offered must be spontaneous and instinctual. This will reduce the pressure of dealing with abundant volumes of requests and issues under limited budgets.
The tickets raised and active service requests have to be sorted and prioritized according to their severity. Tools to alert important service requests can be utilized to foster such segregation. Issues involving major energy or people have to be resolved first rather than an issue of a single employee. This comes out of proper finding and monitoring by the service desk team, and they can sort the pending issues according to their level of importance. This is essential for worry-free and timely delivery of service to ensure smooth workflow. The team has to be properly trained on this basis so as to ease user experience.
Every organization has employees of different cadres and experience levels. There may be possibilities that the first point of contact for service issues isn't the best at resolving. This doesn't imply that the end-users are kept waiting for their issues to be resolved. The tickets raised and sorted according to severity and priority must be passed to the right hands for resolution. Escalating the unresolved issues and delivering friction-free resolutions should be properly learnt and followed. The average response time should be reviewed and improvised constantly and also made sure that the user is kept informed at regular intervals regarding the stages of resolution. It is significant that the process is user-focused and obtains feedback from resolved issues for improvement. This will highlight how the work is carried out optimally using ideal metrics.
Analyzing all such echelons of improvisation has to be seconded with intricate training to the service desk personnel. The IT service desk team has to be trained and updated constantly with the changes and advancements in the industry and services. Multiple training software is available in the markets to deliver such technical skills. It is also possible to create courses and training of your own, depending on the industrial needs pertaining to your organization. Certifications that are acceptable and valued worldwide can be made available to the team so that even they are motivated to refine their skill-sets. Such training and courses can be used as platforms for appraisal and recognition programs that will encourage the utmost utilization of the training offered. Though it is evident that additional automation is required for speeding up deliveries, it must be noted that people have the power to overcome such boundaries.
Closure:
The efficacy and success of any management are directly relatable to the user and employee experience it offers. The bottom line of providing service desk support is to meet and upgrade the ever-changing business needs with the proper usage of business metrics. Optimization through automation is a key feature as it paves the way for measuring the end-to-end steadfastness of tickets and requests. An all-inclusive approach to demanding improvement is the best answer for the service desk team to overcome shortcomings. All mentioned grounds of improvement are an intersection of each other and have to be worked uniformly to eliminate or nullify burdens. Ultimately even the goals of the service desk team have to be aligned with the business goals as the outcome of any technological use is to augment the success of a business. The team of the IT service desk is a very significant gauge of the organization's adoption and delivery of technological services. It eventually highlights the importance of appropriately using metrics that results in uninterrupted and commotion-free IT service. Due diligence must be taken in choosing and upgrading the Service desk requirements for smooth operative workflow.
