IT Manager's Handbook: Getting Your New Job Done (68 page)

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Support for international use. If your organization will use the package in countries outside the United States, you may want to make sure that the package can be configured for multi-language support and that the vendor has a presence in the countries you will be operating in.

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How usable the package is out of the box. You may not have the resources available to dedicate for customizing the package to your exact needs.

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Extent of the implementation effort in terms of time, training, and need for consultants.

Selecting a Call Tracking package is a critical decision, as you will be using it for several years. In addition to the standard practices of checking references, investigating the vendor, and so on, you should also consider getting input from some (if not all) of the staff that will be using the package. You may want to solicit their assistance in narrowing down the field of candidates to a few finalists. Also, when you’re down to deciding among the last two or three vendors, you should have some of the staff sit in on the vendor demos so that they can see how the packages operate and can ask questions.

Knowledge Base

Since no Help Desk analyst can be expected to know everything, a knowledge base of information can be a valuable resource. This might be something developed internally, or part of a call tracking system or an external resource. Most call tracking packages allow you to build a knowledge base for resolutions, but this requires that analysts at the Help Desk carefully enter comprehensive information and details about each call’s resolution. Many vendors have a knowledge base function on their website, along with user forums. Both are great for finding solutions.

Remote Control

Very often an issue may go unresolved during the initial phone call because the user was unable to describe the problem accurately or couldn’t follow directions provided by the Help Desk analyst. Using a remote control package (e.g., PC Anywhere from Symantec, SCCM from Microsoft, TeamViewer, Remote Control from Dameware), a Help Desk analyst can see exactly what the user sees on their PC and even take control of the user’s PC, all without ever leaving the Help Desk chair. (Of course, the support staff should always ask for the user’s permission before accessing their workstation in this way.) This remote control access saves time, increases user satisfaction, and improves the effectiveness of the Help Desk tremendously.

Desktop Management

Many calls to the Help Desk result in a request for some type of installation (printer drivers, new software, upgrades, patches, etc.). By using various software tools, for example, remote control mentioned earlier, as well as solutions for the automatic deployment of software, the Help Desk can fulfill a request without having to dispatch a technician or walk a user through a complicated process. Desktop management tools can also automatically inventory users' hardware and software, note changes in configurations, and so on. Tools in the space include SCCM from Microsoft, Casper from JAMF (for Macs only), Altiris from Symantec, and LANdesk.

User Surveys

While reports from your Help Desk phone system and call tracking software can give you all kinds of statistics, they often don’t tell you if your customers are satisfied. It can be very helpful to periodically survey a sample of users who have called your Help Desk and ask them a small handful of questions.

The survey can be done in person, over the phone, or via e-mail or the Web. Simple, free survey tools such as
www.surveymonkey.com
or
www.zoomerang.com
are great for this. A sample survey might include questions such as:

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How was your initial call to the Help Desk answered: by a person, by voicemail, or by e-mail?

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If your request was submitted by e-mail or by voicemail, how long was it before you received a response?

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How long did it take before your problem was completely resolved?

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Did it require multiple visits to your desk or multiple phone calls to resolve your problem?

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Did the analysts who worked to resolve your call act in a professional and courteous manner?

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Overall, how would you rate this specific call to the Help Desk (using a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being perfect)?

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Please feel free to make any additional comments, complaints, or suggestions you may have regarding the Help Desk.

You may find that a survey yields very different numbers than the statistics you get from other tools. Your call tracking software may report that the average call is resolved in 3.2 hours. However, the user survey may indicate that the average is 4.5 hours. Even if the call tracking statistics are more accurate, as a manager it is often more important to deal with the
perception
. Regardless of the results, the act of taking the survey will help users believe that you’re concerned about the quality of service being delivered. After each survey, statistics should be compiled and decisions made about what the results indicate, and what actions should be taken to improve service levels. Include your team in these discussions. When you do surveys periodically, you can then evaluate trends and patterns.

Measuring the Help Desk Workload

Tracking the performance of your Help Desk is important because, as discussed earlier, this department is often the only face of the IT department that the rest of the organization knows. Within most call tracking applications, tools exist to monitor typical Help Desk activities. You can track:

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Service ticket submissions

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Service ticket categorization

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Response and resolution times

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Activities by technician (volume of tickets, resolution time, etc.)

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Busy periods (by hour, day, month)

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Service tickets due and completed

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Volume of calls in different categories (e.g., password resets, hardware, software)

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Service ticket billing (if you chargeback for services)

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Reporting and performance charts

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Billable time/expense tracking

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E-mail ticket volume

Staffing

It’s important to remember that a Help Desk is essentially a
complaint
desk—people only call when there is a problem. As such, callers to the Help Desk are likely to be frustrated and impatient.

Accordingly, one of the most vital prerequisites for Help Desk analysts is their interpersonal skills. The staff on the Help Desk has to be sensitive to callers' needs; remain calm, mature, polite, professional, and demonstrate confidence. The last item is of particular importance. If a caller to the Help Desk feels that the analyst isn’t qualified or capable, the caller is likely to become more frustrated. On the other hand, if the caller believes (whether it’s true or not) that the analyst is confident and capable of finding a resolution, the caller will immediately feel better. Confidence is contagious.

A user is likely to appreciate and value a quick, courteous, and helpful response to a basic support question more than they would appreciate major upgrades and investments to your infrastructure. A friendly voice helping a road warrior through a hotel connectivity issue (which helps only one person) will usually generate more goodwill than an operating system upgrade to a file and print server (which helps the whole company). Both are required for a successful organization, but the former may be more appreciated than the latter.

In addition to interpersonal skills, individuals at the Help Desk need to have skills in whichever technologies they’re supporting. Since you’re unlikely to find someone who knows everything, it’s important that they’re also resourceful enough to find solutions to problems they haven’t seen before, and be able to think through problems and explore alternatives on their own.

Specific Considerations When Hiring for a Help Desk

Chapter 3, Staffing Your IT Team
on
page 65
, covers staffing and recruiting in detail, but when hiring for a Help Desk, you should especially consider how they perform in a telephone screening. This call should give you some feel for the candidates' telephone personality.

Develop a set of representative questions that might come into the Help Desk, and see how the candidate handles them. The questions should be ones that don’t draw on technical skills exclusively, but also allow you to get a glimpse as to how the candidate thinks through troubleshooting and how she reacts when the answers aren’t clear-cut.

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Look for evidence that the candidate can learn on his own. Have all his technical skills been developed through formal training or self-taught?

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Is the candidate prepared for full shifts answering phones?

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If the candidate sees the Help Desk as a stepping stone to a higher level position in IT, you and she should agree on a minimum time commitment at the Help Desk before such a transfer is possible. Note that if such a goal is not realistic—some companies have no direct route from this job to any other, either for geographical or other reasons—make sure you mention that right away. It could be a deal breaker, for you or the candidate. And there is no sense in wasting anyone’s time.

Size of Support Staff

How many people you need supporting your Help Desk depends on the number of calls that come in during a given period, your service level targets, average length of each call, and so on. A Help Desk that has multiple shifts will obviously need more analysts than one that runs just a single shift. You’ll probably need to be flexible in your staffing: you’ll want more analysts during peak periods and fewer during quiet periods. Statistics from your
ACD
and your call tracking software can help you evaluate call patterns.

Taking calls at the Help Desk for eight hours a day can be exhausting and may be a short path to quick burnout. Consider rotation of assignments with other positions or schedule shifts so that each analyst has some time away from the phone, perhaps to research questions that might normally have been escalated to some sort of second level. The section
“Avoid Burnout in Your Employees”
in
Chapter 2, Managing Your IT Team
on
page 35
addresses staff fatigue in more detail.

Staff Training

Ongoing training for your staff is critical to the success of your Help Desk. In addition to the obvious training of applications, there are a number of training ideas you may want to incorporate:

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Training on IT policies and procedures. When the staff is familiar with the policies, they’re more likely to apply them consistently.

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Training from other IT teams (systems development, networking, etc.) on what those teams do and how they interact with each other, the Help Desk, and the users.

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Discussions with vendors: innovative ways to use their products, for example, or in-depth training on particular features.

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Training on trends in the industry; this could be a discussion you lead based on headlines in trade journals.

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Training on security issues; this discussion could be led by your internal networking team and could be a great way to inform your team about “social engineering,” new vulnerabilities and viruses, and how to be on the lookout for them.

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Sharing knowledge with other Help Desk members; if one member encounters an unusual question or problem from a user, have the member share both the problem and its resolution with the team. This could be a great idea for regular team meetings.

Remember that training is an ongoing process. Periodic refresher courses are just as important as the initial training.

10.5 Service Level Agreements

When a user calls the Help Desk, they’re hoping for immediate service and resolution. Of course, that may not be possible in all cases; a technician may have to be dispatched, it may be a problem that has to be researched or escalated to a specialist, and so on. If it’s a hardware problem, a part may need to be ordered. When this happens, the user will usually ask, “How long will it take?” Service level agreements (SLAs) give you—and them—the answer to that question. SLAs are your targets for delivering service. There are many different types of SLAs:

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System uptime

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Hours of Help Desk operation

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How many rings before a phone is answered, or how long before a voice mail message is returned

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Time until call resolution

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Turnaround time for different types of tasks such as

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Creating an ID

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Restoring a file

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A password reset

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Break/fix repairs

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Obtaining new hardware

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Installations and/or moves

This list is just a short sample of SLAs specific to the Help Desk function. However, comparable SLAs can be set for all the systems and resources that IT provides.

Positive Values of SLAs

If you’ve never had SLAs, the process of just defining them may actually improve service—after all it’s a lot easier for your staff to hit a target once they know there is a target. By defining and publishing your SLAs, you can help reduce anger and frustration—yours as well as the users. For example, if you tell users that it takes 24 hours to create an ID, you are likely to get users in the habit of requesting them in advance versus those emergency requests that come on Monday mornings because HR never informed IT about the new hires.