Help for the Helpers
If you're in a job that involves supporting technology in any fashion, from web designer to CIO, then the odds are that you do help desk. Formally or not, people come to you with the questions, the "how do I attach a file to my email?", the "what can I do? My screen is frozen", the "I saved my document but I don't know where". Rank doesn't spare you; openly admitting that you can do anything well with computers is equivalent to lifetime membership in the tech support club.
A full time tech support job is, for the most part, an extended roller coaster ride with more down slopes than up. People who are drawn to this work are generally sharp, eager to assist, and take pride in their ability to debug. The down side is that, day after day, it's grueling. There's always a percentage of people who would just as soon smash the machine and go back to their trusty Selectrics. They aren't always happy or polite with the friendly tech who comes to help them.
But the most debilitating aspect of the work is that support techs don't manage their workload. It's randomly and recklessly assigned by the varying needs of their co-workers and the stability of their systems. They never know when they're going to walk in the office to find the donor database is crashed, or the internet line is down. The emails come in, the phone rings, and, to the people calling, everything is a crisis. Or it certainly seems that way. The end result is that career support techs often develop a sense of powerlessness in their work, and the longer it goes on, the less able they are to take proactive action and control of their jobs.
So here are two complimentary actions that can be taken to brighten the life and lighten the load of the support tech.
1. Deploy a trouble ticket system. And make sure that it meets these specifications:
There's more to it - good ticket systems feed into, and include links to additional support resources. And they don't replace the telephone - IT has to be readily available. But there should be an understanding that users follow up phone calls with tickets. These are the key strategies that help the seemingly unmanageable stream of support calls fall in line.
2. Allow the support staff to breathe. There has to be an understanding, primarily understood by the support tech, but reinforced by his or her manager, teammates and staff, that only emergencies demand emergency response times. In fact, treating every call as an equally important, must be fixed immediately situation is a strategy for failure. Support Techs need to do effective triage, and put aside time to analyze and act proactively to solve user problems. If they deal with the same questions over and over, they have to write and publish the solutions. If the calls indicate a common problem that can be solved with a better application or an upgrade, they need to be able to step back and assess that. Smart managers will enforce this measured approach. At first, it will go against the grain of service-oriented staff, but it's a must, because the measured response begets the more comprehensive solution to any problem.
A full time tech support job is, for the most part, an extended roller coaster ride with more down slopes than up. People who are drawn to this work are generally sharp, eager to assist, and take pride in their ability to debug. The down side is that, day after day, it's grueling. There's always a percentage of people who would just as soon smash the machine and go back to their trusty Selectrics. They aren't always happy or polite with the friendly tech who comes to help them.
But the most debilitating aspect of the work is that support techs don't manage their workload. It's randomly and recklessly assigned by the varying needs of their co-workers and the stability of their systems. They never know when they're going to walk in the office to find the donor database is crashed, or the internet line is down. The emails come in, the phone rings, and, to the people calling, everything is a crisis. Or it certainly seems that way. The end result is that career support techs often develop a sense of powerlessness in their work, and the longer it goes on, the less able they are to take proactive action and control of their jobs.
So here are two complimentary actions that can be taken to brighten the life and lighten the load of the support tech.
1. Deploy a trouble ticket system. And make sure that it meets these specifications:
- Incredibly easy for staff to use. Web-based, linked from their desktop, with, ideally, three fields: Name, priority and problem. The software has to be able to grab additional information automatically, such as the time that the ticket was submitted, and, optimally, the user's department, location and title, but the key point is that people won't use the system if the system is too annoying to use.
- Every update is automatically emailed to the user and the tech. This is critical. What an automated trouble ticket does best is to inform the customer that their issues are being addressed. Without this communication in place, what stands out in user's minds are the tickets that haven't been resolved. Confirmations of the fixes, sent as they occur, validate the high rate of responsiveness that most help desks maintain.
- Be clear that the scope of the problem will influence the response time. Fixes that require spending or input from multiple parties are not slam dunks. This communication might warrant additional checkboxes on the submission form for "requires budget" or "requires additional approvals", but formalizing this information helps the customer know that their issue hasn't just been dropped by the tech.
- Have a default technical staff view that puts open tickets on top. In environments where the telephone is the primary support funnel, things get forgotten, no matter how good and organized the tech is.
There's more to it - good ticket systems feed into, and include links to additional support resources. And they don't replace the telephone - IT has to be readily available. But there should be an understanding that users follow up phone calls with tickets. These are the key strategies that help the seemingly unmanageable stream of support calls fall in line.
2. Allow the support staff to breathe. There has to be an understanding, primarily understood by the support tech, but reinforced by his or her manager, teammates and staff, that only emergencies demand emergency response times. In fact, treating every call as an equally important, must be fixed immediately situation is a strategy for failure. Support Techs need to do effective triage, and put aside time to analyze and act proactively to solve user problems. If they deal with the same questions over and over, they have to write and publish the solutions. If the calls indicate a common problem that can be solved with a better application or an upgrade, they need to be able to step back and assess that. Smart managers will enforce this measured approach. At first, it will go against the grain of service-oriented staff, but it's a must, because the measured response begets the more comprehensive solution to any problem.
Labels: tech planning, Tech Support
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4 Comments:
As a support department of one (with other hats, but also NPower PA backup) for a staff of 23, this has long been on my to-do list (how meta - a todo to research managing a set of my todos). This could make a great "A Few Good Tools" article. I've looked at a few - TechAtlas has some help desk functionality, and I have a vague recollection of a TechSoup Stock-available solution.
And those of us with the Salesforce.com Kool-Aid in the veins have access to Salesforce cases and solutions for internal use.
One additional key feature that Peter hints at, "good ticket systems feed into, and include links to additional support resources," is the building of a support database.
Yeah, you outed me, I definitely think that help desk software evaluation efforts should include rating it's ability to push solutions to a knowledgebase. And I wrestled a bit as to whether this was a "best practices" blog entry or a product review sort - I think it's a worthy follow-up if we don't get a healthy comment stream's worth of them. I'll throw in that Sharepoint has a tech support template that, with some tweaking, does most of what I look for. And a pretty sharp, out of the box, but a little buggy option is Trellis Desk. I like it because it's well-designed, professional looking, free, and coded in LAMP, so I can easily hack it. :)
Not sure what you use, but we use helpspot help desk. As you mention, the thing I really like is that it doesn't even have a traditional priority field. The problem with asking for priority is nobody knows how to evaluate the 1-5 scale. So instead it just has urgent or not urgent. I've found this to be much better as you can usually easily determine urgent. Figuring out 3 or 4 out of 5 is much harder.
Thanks, Peter, for this post. I am definitely sharing it with the rest of my staff.
We have spent the past two years talking about adopting a trouble-ticket system. The one I designed had no provision for a knowledge-base. So much work, so little effectiveness. Won't make that mistake again.
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