Stupid User Tricks: 8 Reasons You Gotta Love IT

Benchmark and provide feedback – Understanding your environment's 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, users and assets to spot trends and solve future problems.

Automate as much as you can – Working on and closing help desk tickets can be a repetitive process. To help, implement automation at every stage of ticket lifecycle -- from ticket creation and assignment to escalation and closure.

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

Enable users to help themselves – Create an easily searchable knowledgebase that will allow users to find quick resolutions to the problems 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 users for overall satisfaction after their help desk interactions to see what you are doing right and what can be improved.

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