Much has been written about managing help desks and a lot of the writing is around customer services issues rather than the software used. A lot of the service desk publications can be purchased online so here’s our round up for help desk publications.

Customer Service for Dummies

The “for dummies” series is in fact books by expert authors and marketed under the dummies brand. In reality you get an excellent insight if the author is known in their field. The customer service for dummies book is written by Karen Leland and takes you through customer service in an easy manner and includes chapters on such important areas such as surveying your customers, improving your body language, dealing with unhappy customers and techniques for face to face, email and telephone contacts. Really a good first step into customer service development and etiquette. RRP £14 ISBN 0764552090 published second edition 1999

How to Manage an IT Help Desk

I guess this is where most help desks are - in the IT department and this book by Noel Bruton provides an excellent overview around providing “support” to people. It looks at defining business goals, support as an IT function (that also covers first and second line support), types of support that can be offered from the standard helpdesk to technical support and user training, client and customer management and terminology, how to manage customers and their expectations, how to prioritise customers from the CEO to the post room, developing communications with users and within the service desk team, an overview of customer service in general and how the company board may perceive the organisation, how to market the help desk, how to start and implement a new help desk, developing service level agreements with users, managing support tickets and escalation of problems and managing staff and workflow. Phew! it’s a whopping 345 pages and covers just about everything. RRP £49 ISBN 0750649011 published in 2002

Building and Managing a World Class IT Help Desk

Again from the information technology viewpoint this paperback book by bob wooten is another foray into building help desks that are admired. Rather like the publication above it covers almost everything but also why on earth you might want to develop a service desk in the first place and what’s actually driving that decision in the office or workplace (ie: users, owners, board of directors etc or just poor service from the IT function….).  This is another huge book at 573 pages but does do the subject justice. RRP £43 ISBN 007213237X published in 2001

Help Desk Service Desk Best Practice Handbook

Now this publication moves the help desk onwards into a service desk which kind of implies proactive service rather than reactive help. The book is by Gerard Blokdijk provides information on how to develop best practice in your organisation and covers some topics not in other books on this subject. The best parts appear to be on the best structure for the help desk and how to align it with the rest of the company for best results. RRP £29.95 ISBN 1921523417 published in 2008

Researching users or customers is an art in itself so if you have an in house research department you should contact them. We have often seen questionnaires go out with 50 or even 100 questions and to be honest people will get bored after the first 20 questions and just complete the questionnaire with any old answers just to fill it in. So keep it to the point.

Before you design your questionnaire keep in mind what you want out of it. Are you worried about the time you are responding to users or the quality of your staff. Think about what you might actually do with the answers you receive whether you get excellent or poor feedback - will you act on the results? Are you willing to share the results with the people who completed your survey or will it be kept confidential? These are serious questions you need to have answers to before you email out something.

Example Survery Questions

You’ll likely have your own questions you want to ask but here are some together will essential data gathering type questions so that you can analyse the results.

There are many online survey companies that offer cheap or free surveys so you can ask your customers to complete everything online. (also think about whether you want to provide multiple choice answers or simple open ended questions where the people you are surveying just write down their thoughts).

• Department name - if you want to segment by function in your organisation
• Job title/ function - if you want to see if the results vary by seniority

With the following you might want to add options such as very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied and very dissatisfied. Try not to add in “na” or “neutral” as you want to really find out what users think.

• Speed of response
• Was your question answered in full ?
• Knowledge of staff
• Ability for help desk to diagnose the problem quickly
• Helpfulness of staff
• Professionalism of staff
• Ability to get through to a staff member promptly
• Time to solve problem
• Kept informed of the progress of your ticket
• Ease of opening your help desk ticket

You then might want an open ended question about how your customer sees how you could improve your overall service or anything else they may want to add to help you and your team.

External Providers

The questions above are mainly for internal service desks but if you provide services to other companies you may want to ask additional questions such as:

• The price paid for the service
• Value for money of the service provided
• Expectations met ?
• Are the hours of opening adequate for your company’s needs
• Ease of access to the reporting systems
• Ease of access to the ticketing system
• Feedback from our company to yours

Overall only your customers can tell you how your department is performing so by using this free help desk survey we hope you get insights and can improve your operation to your customers.

The help desk institute was formed in 1988 around the notion of developing the help desk world but of course life has moved on since then and now they have evolved so that they are called the service desk institute to develop the world of service in a pro-active manner.

HDI Services

The main benefits from the HDI or SDI is their training and development programs which evolve into membership of their organisation so there is a professional body monitoring and looking after the interests of their members.

Membership

The SDI now offers a range of personal and corporate memberships for people in the service and help desk industry. These range from silver personal memberships, to gold and platinum corporate membership and the new research membership scheme.

Each member then receives various discounts to training events and conferences that are held during the year. You’ll also be kept up to date with changes in the industry through their support world magazine and newsletter which is sent to you via email.

There is also a dedicate research and advice line in case you need it and in depth publications to help your organisation provide an improved service to your employees.

The new research level membership is £145 + VAT per year and entitles you to all the research papers which are published and access to the help line and research buddy.

The personal silver member is £395 + VAT per year which gets you all the research published as above, the magazine and 2 event places per year. You’ll also receive various discounts off the training packages offered - if you require training this may be a good deal for you.

The corporate gold membership is £595 + VAT per year and gives more or less the same as the personal package above but with 3 different people being able to receive their magazine and one additional event place per year.

The ultimate platinum membership at £1,595 + VAT per year provides 10 magazine and 10 event places per year.

Help Desk Qualifications

The SDI offer 3 levels of training for qualifications in help desk management. You’ll start off at the service desk foundation level which is great for new analysts or if you need a refresher course. You’ll get a clear understanding and skills and techiques required in the role of a service desk analyst. The course is 2 days and not an insignificant £3,790 + VAT for non members and you still need to pay the £70 exam fee.
Next up is the service desk analyst course and qualification if you’ve been in the role for at least 9 months. This is £1099 + VAT for non members and is a 3 day fast track course which are held around the country (UK) where as the course above is only held at there premises.
The ultimate Help Desk Manager or Service Desk Manager course is for those with 3-5 years experience and is a 4 day fast track course at a cost of £1725 + VAT for non members. Again the training is held around the UK each month.