Any organization with an IT department requires an IT service desk that can quickly and adequately manage different technical issues, compared to the support tasks that help desks handle. IT service desks work in a broader field. Their tasks include knowledge management, asset management, problem management, and incident management.
While help desks offer reactive support for end-users, an IT service desk takes a proactive and strategic approach to manage all IT tasks within the organization. This team also handles a variety of requests concerning end-users, such as issues in troubleshooting user accounts, setting passwords, and distribution to support. To help you create a suitable IT service desk and improve its performance, here are some strategies that you can do.
1. Identify Challenges and Solutions
Challenges in IT service desks are typical, but so are improvement opportunities. Your team needs to focus on ways to improve your performance and processes as you identify the issues or pitfalls. One of the most common concerns that require improvement is the changing technology landscapes and business needs. Most companies acquire more technology than they can handle or support because they desire faster innovation.
An IT service desk might also face issues with the tools and equipment they use. Either the tool cannot deliver the expected return on investment or the promised performance. Other challenges you can improve on and resolve are increasing employee expectations for support, employee recruitment and retention issues, and receiving higher IT support volumes.
2. Have an Internal Knowledge Base
Creating a relevant knowledge base is a smart way to ease your IT team’s volume of support requests. It helps you save valuable time and boost the productivity of your IT service desk. A good knowledge base should contain how-tos, articles, and other content that answer the usual technical or IT issues. Readily providing solutions for simple or most frequent problems can help your IT experts focus on complex and urgent concerns.
Also, you are encouraging your non-IT staff to solve their technical issues independently. To determine what specific issues to include in your internal knowledge base, you can create a ticket-creation report and use tags to check the results. Only include the recurring problems that your staff can solve independently. The basics are getting a second monitor, resetting passwords, securing accounts, or connecting printers and devices.
3. Upgrade Your Team’s Gear
An IT service desk cannot function productively and accurately without the right gear. The first one on the list is the service desk software you’re using. The software should have basic features like self-serve support, ticketing system, shared inbox, reporting functionality, and automation capabilities. Self-serve support is basically your internal knowledge base with helpful content curated by your team. To improve your team’s performance further, you can install a good knowledge base software that will feature related content recommendations, site-wide widgets, easy access, and data and reporting.
In terms of hardware, the most important gear is the type of computers your team is using. It’s advisable to use high-performing computers like PCs powered by AMD. These computers can support multitasking and other extensive software processing and tasks. Investing in PCs with high-speed memories can reduce delays in your IT team’s performance and keep them productive. Other basic hardware an IT service desk needs are wireless routers, webcams, printers, and mobile devices.
4. Create and Share a Service Catalog
Service delivery is crucial, particularly if you’re running an IT-focused company. IT services should be delivered in a timely and frictionless manner, regardless of whether it’s for your internal staff or clients. For that reason, experts recommend to have an IT service catalog that your employees can refer to. It should contain information about what IT services are available, the expected service level and the costs, and how they are delivered.
By creating and sharing a service catalog, you can ensure that your IT team and the users and management are on the same page. You can also automate multiple processes, improve ticket deflection, and reduce costs. As for creating the IT service catalog, some practices to consider are ensuring easy navigation, avoiding the “IT speak,” and integrating it with your self-service portal.
Having an efficient IT service desk, your organization can improve your IT landscape by easing scalability processes and reducing costs. These desks can also help boost the productivity of your other departments by offering a detailed knowledge base, omnichannel experience, and live chat support. Other advantages include increased visibility and communication, detailed analytics and reporting, and improved service experience.
