5 Ways To Keep Your IT Help Desk Relevant

Help desks are changing as technology evolves and users get used to choosing and supporting their systems. Use these insider tips to maximize the productivity of your help desk and make sure it remains an important part of your business.

The outsourced service desk quickly inform you that you can reduce costs and improve service by providing a more efficient and responsive 24x7 infrastructure. This can be quite true and many problems can be solved remotely through an externally managed system. However, there is nothing better than a practical engineer who can work face to face. A failed laptop, for example, is much easier for a technician if it's immediately available to troubleshoot, diagnose, and / or replace, rather than providing employees with a phone, timeouts, and the shipped system. I can support you. With this in mind, perhaps the ideal future help desk is a hybrid of staff on and off site.

Whether local, outsourced, or hybrid, these 5 operating practices help keep your help desk relevant and aligned with your business priorities.

Streamline The Ticketing Process

Guided tours, pop-ups, quick questions, and unexpected visitors can quickly overwhelm local help desk staff. The same applies to calls to external technicians.

All successful help desk service have a ticketing system that allows users to login and track problems. Some ticket systems are more successful than others. The good ones offer the possibility of opening a ticket by email, web portal or other electronic means (of course, if everything else fails, the phone should also be an option).

Keep Informed Users

Any planned changes to your company's systems or services must be notified in advance. This keeps you informed and protects your IT department from the "change [X] or install [Y]" conflict. You have the right to know what changes have been made and how they affect your activity.

Standard "maintenance" email templates help ease the process. I explain to you that the Windows patch will be deployed at 2 a.m. on Friday or that the company's proxy server will restart at 5 p.m. to avoid Internet access (which is good for productivity!).

Provide sufficient staff

For a help desk to be effective, it needs the right ratio of technicians and staff. The exact ratio of optimal services depends on your organization and how you are using technology. The factors that affect the relationship are:

• ·         Does the user have administrator rights on his machine?
• ·         Do you employ a significant number of remote workers?
• ·         Are you using different software / versions / operating systems?
• ·         Do employees choose and buy their own devices for IT support?
• ·         Do employees report only major issues, such as when the system stops working?

An affirmative answer to the above will lead to more support calls and more personal.

Train To Meet Your Current Needs

You can keep your technical-user relationship high by having enough training in the technologies your technicians support. Learning on the job is a valuable skill that benefits most, if not all, IT professionals. But this is not the only training they receive. As the saying goes, being alerted beforehand means doing it beforehand. Is Windows 8.1 at your company? Make sure your help desk is familiar with the nuances and changes that are currently mandatory for businesses, such as the Windows 8.1.1 update. Would you like to introduce a new Cisco VPN client? Check with your support staff for support on numerous operating systems and network environments (Linux or Mac OS X, home over broadband, Wi-Fi, 3G / 4G mobile networks, etc.).

 Focus On New Developments And Trends.

Helpdesk technicians need more than they are doing today. They should also have the opportunity to focus on new technologies and develop positive thinking by studying what's around the corner (as a measurable goal sponsored by companies) too)

This not only helps engineers respond quickly to new developments, but also helps them plan for those developments by providing useful information on technical changes to be made. Cloud storage is secure enough to finally pass these stringent regulations. Has a new portable device been invented with a new lost tracking method? Will wearable technology help reduce employee smartphones quickly (or will it help employees reduce the amount of money they spend on personal technology to get the job done for the company)? The ability to explore first can help in the search and implementation of new ideas.