5 Golden Rules for Help Desk

Working on a Help Desk is not for the faint-hearted. Help Desk only hears from you when something has gone wrong, usually at the worst possible moment imaginable; when you need a print-out for a meeting or a report for an important deadline. It’s rare to get a call from a user saying, “Thanks team, all of my technology worked today!” Actually, that never happens…

As a support team, Help Desk technicians are regularly dealing with panicked, frustrated and sometimes angry people, and we get it! We know you’re busy and have other priorities, but there are a few easy things that you can do on your end to help us help you – here are our top 5:  
‍
‍1. Try turning it off and back on again
Yep, it’s a cliché, but it really, really, like really works. Rebooting your computer every day is a great habit that can prevent problems in the first place.

‍2. Log the job correctly
It’s tempting, we know, but don’t contact the last technician, or your favourite technician directly (everyone has one!) as they may be away, or on a project, and your ticket could be missed completely. Every Help Desk has a process for logging jobs – if you don’t know yours, find out! Logging the job correctly saves time that can be better spent solving your problem instead.

‍3. Log the issue as soon as you can, with as much information as you can
Screen shots of error messages, details of the programs you were in, the time it happened, how many others are impacted. Experiencing a weird sequence of events? Grab your phone and video it for us. Users who also advise windows of availability for troubleshooting are cream of the crop too. The more information you can provide, the better. And remember, if you don’t tell us, we don’t know.

‍4. Be patient
It’s unlikely there’s a technician sitting idle, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for your call. Your support request will be triaged and prioritised according to impact, available resources, and the service level your company has signed up to. Managing ticket flow is highly unpredictable, so the same ticket logged on different days delivers a vastly different experience.

‍5. Understand it’s a diagnostic process
Help Desks are technology doctors, and today’s computers are highly complex organisms. They have moving parts, dozens of general and industry specific applications, an assortment of peripherals, and highly variable internet connections, all of which combine together in unique and wonderful ways to work (or not). There are lots of issues Help Desk techs see regularly and easily diagnose; there are also many that no one has seen before and requires a process of elimination over time to diagnose.

The Cloudwize Help Desk has been designed to prioritise response and resolve times. We triage tickets on average in 2.5 minutes, identifying critical issues and escalating rapidly. High priority tickets are immediately escalated to senior engineers. Our customers value our approach as evidenced by our customer satisfaction score, currently at 98%. If your business would benefit from a partnership with us, we’d love to hear from you.