What is Help Desk?

The hyper-connected millennial workforce has a strong knowledge base thanks to mobile tech. Now, with cloud technologies, they are working seamlessly from anywhere, without compromising on productivity. Work from home is a growing trend while working during travel is expected just the same. The common point of contact is the IT help desk that supports them with a diverse range of technologies and platforms. But before we look into what is help desk, let’s first try and understand what role help desk plays.

The broader understanding of a help desk is that it is a one-stop solution for all user issues. Users can get any kind of customer support and assistance as per company norms. But, in the IT sector, the role it plays varies. In many companies IT help desk is an in-built service desk that caters to the technical needs of its users. The main purpose of setting up a help desk is to respond to the employee’s hardware issues.  Usually, help desks work at different levels. The first-level is usually setup to answer questions that are part of knowledge base or FAQ. The second level has trained staff to provide a single solution for their complex queries. The third level deals with specific software requirements such as bug fixes and other updates that impact companies.

Millennials have a different approach to work. Being born in the age of internet, they are used to flexibility, openness and are always connected with people through various platforms. With the growth of the IT sector and the rising employment of the young in this industry, help desk has moved beyond the regular day-to-day customer service. It is playing a critical role in many companies’ technology operations. The millennials expect IT help desk to work hand-in hand with users. The desk functions are as follows:

End-user-centric

In many companies, IT help desk plays a prominent role. It should provide all the support related to customer support. It gives a personalized experience and works towards solving all user issues.

Reactive to proactive

The IT help desk must proactively use the cloud and mobile technologies to make work easy and simple. It should help in identifying the issues before they are flagged by the users.

Identify new ways

The main aim should be to increase customer service. It should also focus on boosting innovation and knowledge base to strengthen the business. It is should enable people to approach the desk support for any user issue.

A help desk should always be able to manage multiple support queries. It becomes very difficult to serve the internal or external staff with limited resources. But, there are always solutions to minimize the workload of the service desk and help them to improve and provide high quality of personalization support. Here are some ways that can help:

Go for automation

Every help desk should focus on increasing the productivity and customer service. The best thing to do is to automate the key procedures. This way the help desk can focus on other desk functions and can add more value to the customers.

Implement best practices

The help desk must emphasize on finding the problems that can come in the way of work. They should test different approaches and process to find solutions for the user issues. It is always good to experiment because that will help us to provide a single solution.

Focus on internal communication

Be it a small or large firm, internal communication is crucial. The help desk must be able to prevent any kind of confusion and should work in accordance with all the departments. It has to act as the bridging platform in many companies.

A help desk software will come in handy to quickly resolve user issues. It also helps in ticket management and will be the point of contact for any support-related queries. The new help desk software makes work easier for desk agents by providing wide range of support and collaborative tools.  According to the stats, about 42 per cent of customers expect a quick reply from the desk agents. This is where help desk software comes into picture to ease out the pressure and provide good customer support.

The help desk software works towards the specific process of dealing with customer issues. In many companies IT help desk provides all the necessary support for the internal and external audience. This way the help desk will be able address all the user issues. The help desk solutions mainly cater to three things such as contact channel, ticket management and analytics. Here are some important ways, help desk software can provide consistent user experience.

Point of contact

Customers should be able to reach out help desk for anything through the help desk software. This should be the common point of contact for users. Usually, customers should be able to contact the help desk via phone, email, email, social or chat.

Ticket management

This forms the core of any help desk. It helps to keep track of the user issues and will come handy to solve the matter quickly. Help desk software gives the customers a clear status of tickets and helps to avoid duplicating. It converts the emails also into tickets.

Knowledge base

This is another crucial element of help desk software. It helps in giving a proper structure to the customer queries to provide the necessary customer support. It will help to sort out the repetitive queries that come to the help desk which is release the burden from desk agents.

Escalation

The escalation feature is provided by some advanced help desk software. This will give the desk agents a chance to route specific tickets to the right people. A multi-level escalation can come handy in ticket management and will also resolve issues quickly. This will make work easier and simple.

This is the new trend that seems to be catching up. Outsourcing the IT help desk will relieve the in-house IT help desk to concentrate on other important issues. The customer issues will be taken care by experts and latest technologies who are always ready to all the support related to the queries. This is how organizations benefit by help desk outsourcing services.

Many companies prefer to work from 9 to 5. But, there are issues that need to be tackled outside of normal work hours. It is during this time that the outsourcing of help desk comes in handy. For example, there will be some transaction that needs to be taken care of after work hours which can be handled by the outsourced help desk. Not having help desk after work hours can lead to several user issues.

Not all the in-house representatives will be able to handle the user issues. It is always beneficial to have knowledgeable and experienced help desk professionals who can provide good customer service. In many companies across the globe, in-house help desk works in coordination with outsourced IT help desk to get the issues resolved.

We at ExterNetworks provide you with all the necessary managed IT support services to tackle the IT related issues with our multi-lingual support and IT help desk services. Our professionals will always be there to provide the support related to the customer queries and deal with the user issues. This will also help you increase productivity. We promise to bring in new technology to provide the best customer service.