As your organization scales, requests to your help desk will increase as well. Issues coming to your business help desk can present in many forms, such as the internet, devices breaking down, crashed applications, or clients seeking help working with certain products or tools.
An increased number of requests can overwhelm any help desk if the right strategies are not implemented. If you are having problems managing your help desk, the five help desk best practices listed below are an excellent place to start to get things moving smoothly.
Contents
Getting the Right Software
Nothing increases the efficiency of a system like automation. When used at the help desk, automation helps ensure that not a single request falls through the cracks. Also, a good help desk tool helps organize requests while prioritizing the most urgent tickets.
An efficient help desk tool should help automate responses to frequently asked questions allowing team members more time to attend to other pressing requests. There are countless help desk automation solutions in the market, but not all may offer the quality of service you are looking to get.
Therefore it is essential to ensure that you go for a recognized brand. If you are lost on where to start, this post on the best email help desk software in 2022 could be worth looking at.
Get the Right Talent
Anyone can work at a help desk, but not everyone can achieve the desired results, so you must be careful about hiring. Your best bet at getting the right hires for your help desk would be hiring help desk institute-certified personnel.
Certified help desk hires better understand help desk best practices, especially asset management and customer service, and are easier to onboard. Alternatively, you could employ persons that have had experience working at help desks. Once you have the suitable hires, the next thing would be facilitating them to ensure you get the most out of them.
Get Your Workforce Trained
Getting suitable hires is great. But even then, you will need to train them regularly to ensure that they remain on top of their game and are up-to-date with emerging trends. A properly trained employee will spend less time resolving problems, thus increasing productivity.
Besides offering formal training, creating a knowledge base that your employees can refer to when solving problems can be a huge plus in improving service delivery.
Also, you may want to have clients have access to your knowledge base. Having access to a knowledge base means that your customers are better equipped to solve problems independently rather than by sending tickets to your help desk, thereby reducing the strain on your team.
Leverage Your Data When Making Decisions
Help desks generate and collect lots of data that can help make decisions to better its efficiency when leveraged. Some of the metrics you may want to track from your help desk include:
- Ticker resolution rates
- Time spent resolving tickets
- Average response time
- Most common tickets
You get a comprehensive view of your help desk performance by tracking these metrics, which can help develop solutions for the challenges. You can also use these metrics to predict what you are likely to encounter based on historical patterns allowing you to plan.
Follow Up On Resolved Cases
Most help desks stop at a resolution of a case. Doing so can see you missing out on critical information that can help you better your help desk, so you may need to follow up on resolved cases.
The best approach in follow-up is using a by requesting clients or employees to fill out a feedback or survey form. You can then use this information to implement changes that increase customer or employee experiences.