Halloween Horror: 5 Help Desk Tales From The Crypt

Be in the know, measure and provide feedback: Monitoring and analyzing your key performance indicators is imperative, not only to provide insight into trends and issues, but to allow you to provide feedback to your staff.

Document every interaction: Keep historical records of incidents for cases, end users and assets to spot trends and solve future problems.

Keep everything at your fingertips: Empower your staff with all the data, tools, and resources they need to do their job, such as case and end-user history, common issues, policies and training.

Clearly define and communicate your help desk process and SLAs: Have a clearly defined process that not only sets end-user expectations, but also gives your staff a clear framework they can leverage.

Enable end users to help themselves: Create an easily searchable external knowledgebase that will allow end users to find quick resolutions to the easy problems that they frequently encounter. This strategy will help to reduce the number of help desk tickets that come in and will allow you to focus on more challenging problems.

Check your pulse: Survey your end users for overall satisfaction after their help desk interactions to see what you are doing right, and what you can be improved.

Transparency is key: Give end users access to their tickets and openly communicate what the next steps are and when they will be happening. This prevents unnecessary frustrations and contact.