User Support Services

1
User Support Services

• Chapter 17

2
Areas of Discussion

• Value of Help Desks
• Components of a Help Desk
• Call Tracking
• Staffing
• Service Level Agreements
• User Training

3
Help Desks assist

• Employees
• Clients
• Customers
• Business partners

4
Value of Help Desks

• Users first line of assistance
• Items to consider
• Dont want users running into your office for
  help every time they have an issue
• Dont want users yelling at your staff
• Dont want poor reputation of IT department
  because of poor support

5
Value of Help Desks

• Typical Help Desk Activities
• Requests for new equipment
• Password resets
• Providing users with documentation and Web links
• Requests for new IDs and setting up new employees
• Coordinating the process and activities related
  to a new hire

6
Value of Help Desks

• Typical Help Desk Activities continued
• Computer supplies (toner, CDs)
• Installation and move requests
• Disabling accounts and recovering equipment when
  employees leave
• Scheduling training

7
Value of Help Desks

• Typical Help Desk Activities continued
• Tracking requests and assigning ownership
• Generating reports for management on types and
  volumes of calls
• Keeping current databases of users, inventory,
  etc.

8
Value of Help Desks

• Typical Help Desk Activities continued
• Routing and coordinating requests with other IT
  groups
• Maintaining a knowledge base of fixes and
  resolutions
• Providing application support
• Reporting and resolving hardware problems
• Helping remote users with connectivity issues

9
Components of a Help Desk

• Two critical help desk issues when setting up a
  help desk
• A centralized way for users to reach you usually
  with a phone extension and/or an e-mail address
• Sufficient staffing to answer and deal with
  requests for support

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Components of a Help Desk

• Centralized method of user contact
• Additional responsibility for employee
• Full department due to size of company

11
Components of a Help Desk

• Staffing selecting the right individuals is
  vital to its success
• Must have excellent interpersonal and telephone
  skills
• Must be adept at diagnosing problems based on
  telephone conversation and ability to walk users
  through solutions

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Components of a Help Desk

• Must possess a high degree of professionalism
• Must have patience
• Must convey a certain degree of calm and
  confidence to users

13
Components of a Help Desk

• Telephone System
• Take care that a user never gets a busy signal
• Call back as soon as possible
• Use automatic call distribution system (ACD)
• Ticket system

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Components of a Help Desk

• Procedures
• How to route different calls
• How to escalate
• When to follow up
• Access
• Administrative access to resolve all types of
  issues

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Components of a Help Desk

• Self-service
• E-mail instead of telephoning
• Allow users to see status of their tickets
• Setup knowledge base for users to browse
• Set up online forms for common requests
• Reset own passwords
• Allow users to see messages that have been
  identified as spam
• Online forms to request file restores
• Should not totally replace personal interaction

16
Components of a Help Desk

• Tools
• 350 help desk software applications. See
  www.helpdesk.com
• Knowledge management develop a base of
  knowledge that help desk employees can use
• Remote control to users desktop (be sure to
  receive permission by user prior to doing this)
• Installation tools automatic deployment

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Components of a Help Desk

• Call tracking system
• Can track calls
• Can route calls to correct person for resolution,
  schedule activities, set priorities,
  automatically escalate, generate reports, track
  call history

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Components of a Help Desk

• Service Level Agreements
• SLAs
• Identifies type of service you can provide
• Identifies how quickly help can be provided
• Set users expectations of help desk
• Set performance criteria for help desk staff
• See p. 463

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Components of a Help Desk

• User Surveys
• Periodically survey customers regarding your help
  desk service
• Measuring the Help Desk Workload
• Service ticket submission
• Service ticket categorization
• Activities by technician
• Busy periods of hour, day, month

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Components of a Help Desk

• Measuring the Help Desk Workload
• Service tickets due and completed
• Volume of calls in different categories of
  requests
• Service ticket billing if you chargeback for
  services
• Reporting and performance charts
• Billable time/expense tracking
• E-mail ticket volume

21
Call Tracking

• Call tracking software
• www.helpdeskinst.com (Help Desk Institute)
• Specific Issues
• Ease of customization
• Platforms supported
• Auto-escalation
• Integration with e-mail environment

22
Call Tracking

• Specific Issues continued
• Ad hoc queries and reports
• Integration with handheld devices
• Access from a Web browser interface
• Integration with third party desktop management
  tools
• Integration with third party knowledge base
  packages

23
Call Tracking

• Ability to build an internal knowledge base of
  calls
• Support for international use
• Usability of package is out of the box
• Extent of the implementation effort in terms of
  time, training, and need for consultation
• Selecting appropriate Help Desk software affects
  your IT group

24
Staffing

• Remember Help desk is essentially a complaint
  desk.
• People call when they are frustrated and
  impatient because of a problem.

25
Staffing

• Most vital skill of help desk employees is their
  interpersonal skills.
• Remain calm, mature, polite, and professional
• Demonstrate confidence
• Second vital skill is knowledge to resolve issue.

26
Staffing

• Specific considerations when hiring for a help
  desk
• Telephone skills
• Evidence candidate can learn on his or her own
• Prepared to work full shifts of answering the
  telephone
• Commit to certain timeframe before moving up the
  ladder

27
Staffing

• Size of support staff
• Staff burnout
• Staff training
• Policies and procedures
• Train from other IT groups
• Vendors training
• Industry trends
• Security issues
• Train to share knowledge with other IT staff
• Escalating a call

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Service Level Agreements

• Specific Issues of SLAs
• System up-time
• Hours of Help Desk operation
• Number of rings before answered, how long before
  voice mail message is returned
• Time until call resolution

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Service Level Agreements

• Turnaround time for different types of tasks
• Creating an ID
• Restoring a file
• A password reset
• Break/fix repairs
• Obtaining new hardware
• Installations and/or moves

30
Service Level Agreements

• Positive Values of SLAs
• Users know how to act when making requests
• Users know what to expect
• Ask for Help from your staff
• Reasonable response times
• Feasible response times

31
Service Level Agreements

• Writing Good SLAs
• Levels of service are clearly defined
• Most requested tasks should be written first
• Measuring SLA performance should be easy and
  preferably automated
• SLAs should be written clearly so they can be
  understood by all
• SLAs should be meaningful for users (reliability
  of Internet access)

32
User Training

• Determined by size of IT staff and budget of
  organization
• In-house classes
• Third Party Training Providers
• Computer-based training
• Web-based training (e-learning is now standards)

33
Pros of Web-based Training

• Easier delivery than standard classroom training
• Size of class is not an issue
• Some classes do have instructor interaction
• Scheduling is at students time
• Negligible cost since done at workstation

34
Cons of Web-based Training

• Less personal
• Unable to monitor interest of trainees
• Sometimes less effective because no interaction
  with instructor
• Initial training required to use Web-based
  training

35
Summary Slide

• Value of Help Desks
• Components of a Help Desk
• Call Tracking
• Staffing
• Service Level Agreements
• User Training
• Pros of Web-based Training
• Cons of Web-based Training