Tag Archives: it help desk

5 Tips to Increase Your IT Help Desk Inquiry Efficiency

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IT Help Desk Inquiry Efficiency Concept

How efficient is your internal help desk?

The usefulness of your IT help desk isn’t just in the software you use or the skilled technicians solving problems. It’s also in how your employees approach their problems that need solutions. If you really want to increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of your IT help desk, part of that formula is helping your staff ask questions efficiently and learn to solve more common or basic problems on their own.

Here are five highly effective ways to increase the inquiry efficiency of your IT help desk.

1) Include Live Chat and Ticketed Inquiries

Traditional help desks function with ticketed inquiries. Employees send an email or use a form to submit an asynchronous request for assistance with any information they have. This works well for off-hours or long-solve solutions, but it can actually slow down the solve on quick or surface-level problems. Live chat has been found to be more effective at high-speed and interactive IT support than email or phone because it allows both parties to ask and answer questions quickly, share files, and run troubleshooting tests in real time.

2) Build a Detailed Tech FAQ – Keep it Updated

Interestingly, you can also increase help desk efficiency by eliminating a percentage of inquiries made. The answer is simple: A really helpful and well-build FAQ. FAQs have evolved well beyond a list of question-and-answers into ‘help portals’ that assist the user in finding the answers to common and easy to solve problems.

For example, you probably don’t need as many IT help desk calls about troubleshooting printers or employee emails as your help desk handles. A good FAQ as your first line of defense can help employees quickly solve any problem that is already known and has only a few simple steps to try.

3) Equip Chatbots to Answer FAQ Questions

Of course, not everyone is apt at searching a FAQ or help portal for the answers they need. Others don’t have time to explore the interface. For your rushed employees, the key to streamlining quick IT services and access to the FAQ is a simple chatbots. Programmable chatbots can be ‘loaded up’ with answers to common questions. And a common question is a FAQ by any other name.

What this means is that not only can you provide a FAQ answer portal, you can also equip a chatbot assistant to listen for ‘FAQ’-like questions and give the standard answer. This will speed up early troubleshooting immensely. A Chatbot can also direct employees to a real live IT help desk member for questions that go beyond the scope of the FAQ.

4) Provide Micro-Learning on Common IT Solutions

You can even teach your employees to handle increasingly complex-yet-common fixes through the use of micro-learning modules. These ‘just-in-time’ lessons can walk employees through how to do complex fixes that your company may deal with on a regular basis. The best part about micro-learning lessons is that you can ask your IT help desk team to create or map them based on the questions they really do get and solve the most often. From there, employees can summon the lesson and walk themselves through common solves without having to call IT again.

5) Have Employees Mark Category and Urgency

Finally, for problems that can’t be handled through FAQ best-practices or a quick live chat, you want a superb ticket sorting procedure. Your IT help desk can do their job best when they know what each ticket is about, how much time it will take, and how urgent the solution is before they start. Which means your team needs to know how to convey this information when they submit a problem.

When possible, ask employees to mark the category, severity, and urgency of every support ticket they request from your IT help desk. The more detail you encourage to be shared, the better. This gives your IT team a clear place to start when they pick up the ticket, live or asynchronously.

Providing an IT help desk to your employees is an important step in streamlining any modern business. But the help desk doesn’t have to be on your permanent staff. Take advantage of internal streamlining techniques and the logistic advantage of outsourced IT professionals. For more information about how to make your IT help desk more efficient, contact us today.

IT Help Desk Support: The Knowledge Base

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IT Help Desk Support - woman on a phone at her desk

IT Help Desk Support

One of the most important tools that your business’s IT help desk will need is a knowledge base. When your business does not have a knowledge base, your organization will increase the chances of providing support that is inconsistent, as well as customers who are unhappy and long telephone calls.

An effective knowledge base will also hold information that will help your customers and your end users to resolve some issues on their own, a long list of frequently asked questions, and additional documents that everyone in your support staff can access at any time. There are multiple ways that your IT help desk and IT management systems can benefit from using a knowledge base.

Obtaining More Knowledge

There will be many organizations that will have one person who knows a significant amount of information about IT and technical issues. While these people are always great to have around, sometimes others in the organization will direct all the hard questions to the IT help desk expert without taking the time to learn what needs to be done. Many people in the workplace will feel that documentation can be placed on hold because there is already someone who knows what to do. What will happen if that IT expert leaves the workplace? All of the knowledge that was once there is gone now and where will that leave everyone else? You will not have to worry about this happening with a knowledge base because the knowledge will always be there.

Reduction in Call Volume

Since your IT help desk agents will have the knowledge they need to find answers to their questions, the length of time they will spend on the telephone speaking to customers and end users will decrease. Instead of your customers and end users being placed on hold while IT help desk agents are asking questions, the help desk agents will be able to find the document they need, resolve the problem, and take the next customer’s phone call. When you can resolve problems quickly, customers will now spend less time waiting to receive assistance.

Reduction in Ticket Volume

When customers use your IT help desk’s knowledge base to find answers to their own problems, there will not be a need to constantly create support tickets with the IT help desk. Your IT Help Desk’s knowledge base can be used in the portal, the customer will be able to access the knowledge base area to create a ticket. When a customer finds information that helps them, they will be able to return to their job task with a solution.

Reduction in Costs

When you are able to save time by reducing call volume, tickets, and the length of phone calls, it is very likely that a knowledge base will help your organization save money on all support costs. While you are saving money by lowering costs, you should feel confident in knowing that you will not reduce the level of quality when it comes to the support you provide. You will actually be improving the quality of support because you will be providing support that is effective, efficient, fast, and consistent.

An IT help desk that has a knowledge base that is available at all times of the day will give everyone the opportunity to research a problem and find a resolution even when the help desk is closed. Not only can a knowledge base help you save money when it comes to operational costs, but you will also improve your chances of providing high-quality support that will remain consistent.

How efficient is your IT help desk? Does your help desk have a knowledge base that provides quality support? For more information on our IT help desk services, please do not hesitate to contact us today.

5 Reasons Your Company Can Benefit from Managed IT and Network Monitoring Services (Part 2)

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Managed IT and Network Monitoring Services Help Desk Woman with Headset

Managed IT and Network Monitoring Services

Welcome back to the second half of our two-part article on what managed IT services can do for your company from the top of your software stack to the bottom of your hardware infrastructure. Rather than relying on break-fix solutions and intermittent infrastructure maintenance, managed services can catch problems before they occur and make sure you’re always up to date on updates. Last time we talked about ensuring your online services are reliable for your customers and dynamically managing your server load during high traffic times. Let’s pick up where we left off at optimization!

3 Optimizing Your Data Structure

You don’t just need network monitoring in times of crisis, it is a 24/7 job of keeping your website and business network healthy and online. One of the best uses of server and network monitoring services is to identify the most and least efficient processes in your company network. With detailed monitoring and metrics analysis, you can discover things like which programs installed on company computers are slowing down the network and which company data procedures are creating unnecessary calls for redundant data. With these small but influential pieces of information, your managed IT team can begin to optimize your software suite and business procedures for the smoothest possible company network.

4 Identifying IT Issues Early

Computers work in predictable ways, iterating the tasks they have been assigned endlessly and without fail, that is until something goes wrong. A network monitoring team can help you keep an eye out for issues that haven’t caused problems yet but will in the future. Often, a computer system will fail in a way that can be caught days, sometimes even months, ahead of time and cut off at the pass. Detailed monitoring will reveal dangerous sequences in which a program has begun using a massive amount of bandwidth or is using up company storage space on an endless log file that will eventually top-out a server’s storage capacity.

Monitoring is a good way to watch the horizon of your data infrastructure. While some issues will be caused too quickly to predict, most computer problems will ramp up for at least several minutes and often much longer before coming to a head and creating a critical error. Dust in computers can slowly increase heat to crashing levels, redundant processes can eat up processing power, and resource expensive processes can lock up an entire server if they get too bloated. All of these issues can be spotted early and resolved before they interrupt business procedures or client services as long as a dedicated IT team is on the ball.

5 Repairs Immediately When You Need Them

Of course, the aspect of managed IT services that most businesses understand best is having a technician ready to step in the moment an unavoidable or truly unforeseen problem occurs. If one of your servers dies without warning or a software update fails and corrupts an entire database, having monitored services means there’s an expert already paying attention and likely aware of the problem the moment it occurs. The troubleshooting and recovery process begins immediately with a dedicated team of technicians so that your IT infrastructure can be fixed, restored, or properly updated and the interruptions to your business kept at an absolute minimum.

Server and network monitoring are an important window into the technical health of your company. Data flows between company computers, servers, network hubs, out to clients, and back again into CRMs. Servers hold that data, processing and storing it as instructed. Your business runs on its tech infrastructure and managed IT and network monitoring service can help you keep that infrastructure optimized, problem-free, and quickly repaired. For more information on finding the right managed IT plan for your business, contact us today!

IT Help Desk Advice: Do Not Let The Holidays Bring You Frustrations and Headaches

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smiling woman help desk during the holiday season

Holiday Help Desk

Today, customers have expectations that many businesses may see as unreasonable. These expectations are seen as even more unreasonable during a holiday break. One of the things you want to avoid doing as a business is letting your customer service fall by the wayside.

The holidays are one of the most important times of the year for any business, and this means your customer service should be at the highest level. If you want to be a bright star in the middle of frustration, confusion, and headaches, you need to have the right support team in order to provide outstanding customer experiences.

Make Plans Early

We recommend that you make plans for the holidays months ahead, preferably two or three months ahead. When you make plans ahead of time, you will be able to set goals that you should be able to obtain. If your business has seen an incredible amount of growth this year, you should certainly plan ahead of time. You can review customer feedback and surveys from previous years in order to get a better idea of what needs to be improved and what can remain the same.

Instill Confidence In Your Customer Service Agents

If you want your customer service agents to deliver outstanding customer service to your customers, you should do your best to instill confidence in all your agents. Remind your agents that you trust them and believe in them. When you have an entire team of customer service agents that can deliver outstanding customer service, you will give your business a competitive advantage over the other businesses in your industry.

Make Sure Customers Are Being Heard

You will receive a variety of messages in your email inbox and social media inboxes. When you receive so many messages at once, your customer service agents may be slowed down. One of the best things you can do is to make sure the customer messages are being assigned to the right it customer service agent. You want the right customer service agent to be assigned to address a particular problem the customer may have.

Allow Customers To Find Answers

Many customers do not always want to call or email a company in order to get an answer. Sometimes customers ask the same questions, and one of the best ways to resolve this issue is to provide an area where the frequently asked questions will be answered. If you provide an area on your social media page or your website that answers the common questions, many of your customers will be able to resolve their own issues with the support page you are providing.

Resolve The Issues In A Reasonable Amount Of Time

When customers have an issue that needs to be resolved, you will want your customer service agents to resolve those issues as soon as possible. You should set goals to deliver quick response times. When you can resolve issues in a quick timeframe, your customers will appreciate the efforts your customer service agents are taking. Your customers will also be assured that you will always deliver support when it is needed.

The holidays will always feel stressful, regardless if you are at home or at work. Thankfully, there are outlets for you to use. When you outsource help desk support, you will not have to worry about any issues regarding the internet, routers, etc. You do not want to be caught off guard with an IT crisis in the middle of the holiday season.

Are you worried about your help desk during the holidays? Please do not hesitate to contact us today for more information on what you can do to avoid a frustrating holiday season.