"The corporate network is slow," the caller reported to our help desk. "I'm shopping on the Home Depot website, and response time is really sluggish."
As CIO, my initial thought was maybe inappropriate use of the corporate network was making response time sluggish. The friendly help desk response was, "We'll look into that."
After we determined the corporate network did not have a technical problem, we reported this caller to her supervisor for mentoring on the appropriate use of resources during business hours. You cannot make up these stories, like the popular one years ago about the caller who mistook the PC's DVD tray for a coffee cup holder.
Is the "helpless desk" still viable in this age of the self-service millennial and BYOD (bring your own device)? I contend it is still viable, and I offer some ideas to improve the impact of your help desk.
Why is the help desk viable?
The Holistic CIO: Support is one of the eight key elements for the holistic CIO (please see my previous article on this topic). Responding to customer and system needs for troubleshooting remains an important IT responsibility, an expectation.
Critical systems and users: Critical systems, like an electronic health records system in healthcare, must be up and running. Downtime is disruptive to the organization, as is slow response time. Having a support organization poised to respond quickly — with procedures to bring about resolution — is vital to the operation of the organization.
Executive users, physicians and call center staff are some of the critical users of IT systems that need responsive support. They provide services directly to our customers and patients — services that are important to the success of the organization.
IT reputation: A good recovery can go a long way in salvaging IT's reputation in the event of a problem or outage. It can change the conversation from the problem itself to the excellent resolution by IT and the proactive measures by IT to prevent recurrence.
Firefighting: You can minimize IT firefighting through a solid support team, and the CIO can free up additional IT resources for projects and innovation. And this is at a time when IT resources are stretched thin.
9 ways to improve your help desk
1. Prevention. The first idea is preventing a call to the help desk.
- Properly maintaining your systems and keeping up with patches and upgrades will contribute to fewer problem calls.
- Setting up a new user is an opportunity for problems. Perfecting the process and testing of a new user's hardware, network connection and applications will result in the avoidance of help desk calls.
- If you create and maintain a knowledge base of frequently asked questions and common solutions, users can search there first and frequently resolve their own problems. We periodically emailed the top FAQs, with resolutions, and reminded users to leverage the knowledge base.
- Our analysis of calls showed a high volume of password resets. We developed an automated DIY solution for the reset process, reducing help desk call volume.
2. User experts. Develop "superusers" to be the go-to experts within the business departments. If help desk is tier-one support, the super user is "tier zero," a source to go to priorto calling the help desk.
These may be users who want to explore a career in IT, users with more advanced skills or users who want to fully exploit the capabilities of the system. Superusers can also be a resource for testing new system features before releasing to the whole organization. Establishing such roles and nurturing them can contribute to fewer help desk calls.
3. Hiring. As Jim Collins says in his book, "Good to Great," you need to "get the right people on the bus." How do you assure you have the right help desk staff? Our strategy was to hire for soft skills, including a customer service attitude, and train for technical skills.
I have had staff with strong technical skills who did not have a service attitude and the patience to work with users; they did not last.
4. Training. I used the help desk as an entry point into IT, trying to create movement from the help desk to other teams within IT. Training was important to that movement.
- Resist cutting your training budget. Look for low-cost, local or online training opportunities.
- Create lunch-and-learn sessions with the help desk, using presenters from other teams within IT.
- Develop internship programs, rotating help desk staff into other IT teams.
Training creates personal growth, improves job satisfaction and lessens turnover.
5. Coverage. Allocate staff for peak demand, like a power company accommodating peak electrical demand. These peaks vary by company, but a common example is the morning after a major upgrade. If you have support in multiple locations, staff may be able to provide back up for each other, with overflow calls going to another location.
Also pay attention to and adjust for continuous coverage. We had support staff in multiple locations, but they all chose to have lunch at the same time, leaving us dangerously thin in help desk coverage. We staggered their lunch schedule.
6. Escalation process. Help desks should have clearly defined processes.The time to do this is prior to an issue, not while under fire.
When a call comes in, being a healthcare organization, we used the familiar term "triage." Determine which calls are critical and need immediate attention, such as an EHR system being down and staff unable to work. Determine which are less critical, such as an executive's golf application not working (a real example), and address those at a lower priority.
If a critical call is not resolved in a specified time, escalation to Tier 2 (e.g., IT technical experts) or Tier 3 (e.g., the vendor) should be defined. Avoid problems residing in Tier 1 for too long. If an issue is not resolved in a specified time, communication to IT and/or business management should also be defined. Avoid management needing to ask for an update.
7. Teamwork. Communication is a big challenge for the help desk. We typically included help desk representation on project teams, so the support staff is plugged into project plans and status.
We also defined a communication plan within each overall project plan; this assured communication to support teams. Encouraging the one-team spirit in meetings and recognition also helps eliminate any "we-they" attitudes within the IT team.
8. Measure and analyze. The old cliché "what gets measured gets done" applies here. To be effective, measure ...
- User feedback (e.g., their satisfaction with support, if resolution was timely, if the support staff was helpful).
- Elements of the process (e.g., time to answer the call, time to resolution). We reviewed stats weekly and looked for opportunities to improve. This is how we discovered the high volume of password reset calls and took action to automate the resolution. While measurement is important, look for actionable findings that enable overall service improvement.
9. Empowerment. What if the help desk staff needs to spend money for a resolution (e.g., a remote user needs a replacement cable)? The previous process required IT management approval and resulted in delay for the user.
We empowered the help desk to take action, within a $50 cap on spending, to resolve the problem without the added step of seeking permission. This small empowerment step was motivational for the help desk staff, provided improved service to our customers and avoided extra bureaucratic red tape.
Which help desk tool should we use?
Having used high-end tools as well as tools geared to small and mid-sized operations, my conclusion is any tool will work. The tool alone does not make a successful help desk. Procedures, staffing and communication all contribute. Try to cover these basic tool functions:
- Open a problem ticket
- Escalate a problem to Tier 2 or 3
- Close a problem
- Access a knowledge base of known solutions
- Collect and report help desk stats
If you have a tool with these basic functions, I believe your help desk can be effective.
Should we outsource the help desk?
Having worked with both in-house and outsourced help desks, the challenges are similar. With either approach, the CIO needs to pay attention to the elements of success suggested above.
If the vendor can provide the right staff attitude and expertise, escalation procedures, teamwork with in-house staff, analytics and results, an outsourcing arrangement can be a viable option.
Should we offer special support for key executives, like the CEO?
If you do not support the personal technology needs of your CEO, I suspect your successor will. We opted to allocate a designated contact for executive support. That was his primary role, with other support and projects used to fill his time. This enabled a consistently high level of executive support, plus it enabled a trust and rapport to be established.
Results
Using the techniques in this article, our help desk team was able to achieve:
- Avoidance of help desk calls through automation and Tier Zero support
- Well-defined processes for escalation and communication to management
- Movement of several help desk staff to other roles within IT
- A lower turnover rate than the industry norm, via training and empowerment
- A 95 percent user satisfaction result in our latest help desk survey
The help desk can play a vital role for the holistic CIO.
