Help Desk

Help Desk

A help desk is the first point of contact for customers and employees. Customers need answers and the help desk is where they turn.

When employees need someone to fix printer problems, update their laptop security, or give them access to a new system, it's the rescue service. When customers cannot access their systems, need help with configuration, or encounter an error, the help desk usually receives a call.

Help Desk vs Service desk

People often use the terms help desk and service desk interchangeably, but the truth is that they both have different and important goals.

A help desk was born from computer-centric computing (mainframe), while a service center was born from computer-centric services. The main goal of a help desk is to solve problems, the main goal of a help desk is to serve its customers or users. The focus is on service delivery and the focus on the client on care services which is less focused on support services.

A help desk can be a good starting point for organizations looking to organize their approach to solving customer problems.

Help Desk Functions

A help desk must fulfill several functions:

Provide a single point of contact: Customers, internal or external, should always know where to go when they need help.

Answer the questions: Customers should be able to use self-service or contact a support representative when they need answers or step-by-step instructions.

Free time: A well-managed help desk centralizes knowledge and provides a workflow guide that helps solve customer problems faster and easier.

Measure customer satisfaction: Customers should always have a way to assess helpdesk and provide feedback to improve processes, knowledge bases and solutions.

What is the Difference Between an IT Service Desk and a Helpdesk or Call Center?

Companies often use the terms "call center", "Service Desk Help Desk" interchangeably, which can be confusing. ITIL treats call centers and helpdesks as limited types of services, offering only part of what a helpdesk offers. With ITIL taking a service-focused perspective and focusing on IT, it makes sense. For many companies, the ITIL definition does not correspond to operational practices, which makes the distinction much more complicated. Here are explanations of the helpdesk and contact center features to help you contrast with an IT service center.

Help Desk

A help desk is a resource intended to provide the customer or internal user with information and assistance relating to a company's processes, products, and services. The purpose of a help desk is to provide a centralized resource for answering questions, solving problems and facilitating solutions to known problems. Common examples of Small Business Help Desk services include: technical support centers, product/warranty support functions, charity offices and facility service centers. Helpdesk support can be provided through a variety of channels, including physical locations, toll-free numbers, websites, instant messaging and email.

Call center

A call center or contact center is a central point for managing contacts and customer interactions. office responsible for handling a large number of requests, usually over the phone (but may also include letters, faxes, social media, instant messages or email). Incoming call centers are often used for activities such as product support, customer service, order processing, and 24/7 telephone service. Outgoing call centers are used for activities such as telemarketing, debt collection, and market research. A company can have multiple call centers that support different parts of business operations (including IT) and can be managed internally or through a third-party agency.

As you can see, there are many overlaps between the definitions of helpdesks, call centers and IT departments. The distinction between them really focuses on the scope of what the function covers and how they are structured:

A helpdesk focuses on providing "help" and "fix" assistance. Helpdesks do not necessarily have to focus on IT and can be used to manage exceptions to normal operations that take place within the company. These can be physical locations that interact directly with in-person applicants or remote/virtual locations that use technologies such as telephone, email, chat and other technologies to facilitate virtual engagement.

Call centers are the largest in the area of ​​issues addressed, including technical and non-technical topics. Call centers do not interact personally with applicants and always involve a sort of intermediate technology to facilitate involvement.

IT support centers focus only on the care of IT services, but manage both responsive "help" services and routine tasks such as resource provisioning, access management, etc. IT service desks can be physical locations that users can visit in person or remote operations such as a call center. Those familiar with ITIL can say that the help desk is tactical while the help desk is strategic: this can vary from one organization to another.

What does IT help desk do?

The main role of an IT the service center is to act as the main contact point for monitoring / owning incidents, answering user requests/questions and providing communication the channel between other service management functions and the service community. users. In addition to these essential functions, the service center often plays an active role in acquiring change requests, managing third party support contracts, managing software licenses, and managing problems.

In some organizations, the service desk is integrated with other business processes such as:

• Employee integration
• Integration of the acquisition
• Management of data access
• Integration and disconnection of suppliers/partners
• Management of reports and metrics
• Business continuity management
• Infrastructure / services monitoring

Three Key Responsibilities of the IT Help Desk

For many companies, the IT support service acts as the facade or front for the IT organization. Manages employee problems and service requests, managing most, if not all, of the communications between end-users and the IT organization. The helpdesk is a key player in providing IT services to the company and has a number of responsibilities that must be taken to succeed.

In this blog post, I explain three of the main IT Help Desk Services responsibilities and offer suggestions on how to best meet them.

Deliver Great Customer Service

First of all, at the moment employees are experiencing a superior customer experience in their personal life (and they carry the same expectations in the workplace), the number one responsibility for any IT Help Desk Services should be to meet the needs of end-users while providing excellent customer service.

That being said, it is easy for IT organizations to overcome this obstacle because they are overly focused within, the help desk policies and processes (and the way in which they are implemented) serve the first customer technical teams.

We hope, however, that your help desk exists to serve the end-users of your organization and the roles they play. It is, therefore, their needs that you place in front of those of others. This should include providing your customers with the information they need, effectively solving their tickets, communicating with them about problems and changes affecting the company and generally being easily accessible when they need them. at your place

End users will ultimately want to be treated as human beings, rather than as custodians of IT resources and ideally as customers (of IT support).

Providing Accurate Reports That Demonstrate Performance, Drive Improvement and Prevent Issues 

Reporting is an essential activity for any IT supports service.

Reports can show the performance of help desk personnel (both individually and collectively), the number of incoming incidents and requests from the company faces, whether service level agreements (SLAs) are respected or not, which resolving teams do not return enough tickets quickly, etc. They can also highlight problems that cause repeated accidents, identify ticket trends and display ongoing escalations.

Reports are also useful for tracking data and performance over time and you should use it to show how IT support levels are improving.

Share and Exploit Your Collective Knowledge 

Having knowledge management and knowledgebase capability is a great way to share the knowledge gathered by the IT Help Desk Services, both individually and collectively. A knowledgebase will provide relevant information to end-users and technical teams. Knowledgebase articles in the knowledge base can also be role-based, which means that they are accessible only to those in need and may be allowed to use them. By sharing knowledge, the helpdesk will be able to prevent incoming calls, reducing ticket volumes and workloads and simplifying the lives of customers and agents.