Reality IT: Offering Good IT Support

A Tarnished Image

At times, we let our customers suffer in silence. Have you ever received an e-mail from an employee who was humbly following up on a request he or she made months ago? And we wonder why employees have a poor view of IT service. Small requests add up--and not responding to those requests can be detrimental to IT. A vice president might forget to give credit to IT for a big project if she has a three-week-old helpdesk ticket still pending on her own PC.

The secret to building a successful helpdesk--and a good image for IT--is hiring the right people. We've all seen Saturday Night Live's fictional computer-support person, Nick Burns (Jimmy Fallon), making derogatory remarks about co-workers' computer skills and shouting "Move!" as he takes a seat at some poor user's desk instead of showing the person what to do. A helpdesk requires the "anti-Nick"--someone with great interpersonal skills, even if he or she has only average technical knowledge.

If You Make a Mess, Clean It Up

Here at ACME, we knew we had a problem with our IT support, and we decided to do something about it. But, like most organizations, we had a lot to learn about building an effective helpdesk. We started out by designating a dedicated helpdesk staff, instead of using network technicians who had other responsibilities. Next, we implemented a rudimentary helpdesk system, using e-mail as the primary means of opening trouble tickets. But we struggled for many months before we recognized that these measures were insufficient.When we re-evaluated the situation recently, we saw that we were lacking in a few key areas. First, we didn't have enough helpdesk staffers. Second, we didn't have a good helpdesk-ticketing system. Third, we needed to set service levels to help define priorities and user expectations.

Getting the budget necessary to expand our helpdesk staff was the toughest challenge at first. To make our case, we cited industry figures showing that most enterprises our size have one first-level support staffer for every 80 to 100 employees, compared with our one staffer per 150 employees. The bean counters knew from experience that our helpdesk service levels were low, so they signed off on the additional staff.

Similarly, the new helpdesk ticketing system took time and money to implement. Our biggest obstacle was navigating the differences among helpdesk vendors and products. A thorough RFP and evaluation process led us to a solid solution we could afford.

Establishing SLAs (service-level agreements) was the final hurdle. The hardest part of setting SLAs is trying to meet user expectations while remaining realistic about IT's ability to respond. We gathered employee input by meeting with some of our more "difficult" customers and departments. Top management also had a say in setting our service goals.

Customer SatisfactionIf your organization's IT service is running below par, you might want to consider making changes to your helpdesk, just as ACME did. Before you do it, though, take stock of its strengths and weaknesses to ensure you're addressing the right problems. If you can avoid the mistakes we made at ACME, your helpdesk reorganization will go a lot more smoothly. You can't ignore good, basic customer service.

Hunter Metatek is an enterprise IT director with 15 years' experience in network engineering and management. The events chronicled in this column are based in fact--only the names are fiction. Write to the author at [email protected].