Approaches to improve your IT Help Desk economics

With the advent of digital transformations, cloud migrations and IT systems becoming more disparate through SaaS and other online productivity solutions, the IT Help Desk has become vital for keeping organizations operating a peak efficiency. Having an outstanding Help desk isn’t a convenience any more, it’s a necessity. It has become a major factor for employee satisfaction within the organization and a key component to driving productivity.

But it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Many businesses fail miserably at their Help Desk operations primarily due to the lack of IT experts, limitations in hours service (or hiring lower skilled agents to offset the expense of staffing a 24×7 service), not having proper tools – or just not using them – and inadequate processes. A productive Help Desk not only requires skillful resources but also requires efficient processes, governance and quality reporting, and certified technical expertise and technology. Here are the six major considerations to optimize your IT Help Desk costs and transform them from being a cost centre to the growth engine for your business.

Focus on First Call Resolution (FCR)

Users don’t want to log several support tickets and call the IT Help Desk staff multiple times to solve their issue. It’s expected that logging a single support ticket or call with the Help Desk will end their involvement in the issue resolution.  Your staff want minimal interruptions so that they can focus on their core business tasks. Deliver significant value by ensuring employees have the right solutions on the very first interaction.  By achieving a better FCR you’ll be improving employee satisfaction and driving down the cost per interaction within the Help Desk.

Improve Service Quality

Not all issues can be solved in the first call.  Having a detailed understanding of your IT Help Desk’s service quality is crucial in sustaining a high satisfaction record. By diligently monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the service your Help Desk provides, you’ll be able to determine where your problems exist. For example, if you receive feedback that employees are unhappy with delayed responses and high wait times, your KPIs should pinpoint the issues and help you design a solution.

Better Process and Methodology

It’s not always easy to stay ahead in everything. You might be burdened with a massive ticket heap that runs from “Why don’t I have the internet connection?” to “why is my desktop running so slow?” Sorting them all might take time. Setting up a better process for categorizing, resolving and documenting fixes in self help portals will lead to faster resolutions and lower ticket volumes over time.

Invest in Training

Investing in continual improvement programs for your people is vital.  You should be updating training material and internal processes regularly, ensuring all Help Desk staff is familiar with the changes.  Investing in a training program plays a huge role in empowering your Help Desk in delivering an outstanding user experience.

Quantify Your Staff Experience

Take time to understand the end user experience. These will help you to gauge how satisfied users are with your support services. You can pick up specific KPIs that supports your Help Desk function objective and measure them by use of metrics. Be agile in your approach to improve your understanding of what your staff need and how you can deliver as much value as possible.

Outsource (some of) your IT Help Desk

The primary goal of the IT Help Desk is to deliver business value by maintaining stable operations on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes it becomes quite difficult for in-house support teams to address a spike in issues or support of a new system immediately. Many modern organizations rely on outsourcing the Help Desk function to augment their capabilities.  This may take the form of an overflow commitment (too many tickets for the existing staff to handle), or afterhours support (evening and weekend coverage).  Using a blended approach is cost effective, reduces the burden of scheduling and, the right partner will ensure the experience is completely transparent to the end user.

Need help expanding your IT Help Desk coverage? We can help you find the gaps in your existing service.