Devoted to Help Desk and Technical Support personnel and applications

Part 3 of the Mike McBride Interview

Please check out the previous parts of the Mike McBride interview:Part 1, Part 2, where we've engaged Mike in a conversation about metrics, what he likes about being on the Help Desk, and some details about his Help Desk. 2 more parts, with this one talking about call tracking and about the "perfect" Help Desk rep. I hope you enjoy it.

PHIL: What call tracking software do you use? What do you like about it? What would you improve?

MIKE: We use Liberum. As far as what I like, it's easy, it's free, it runs on what we already have set-up for our intranet, and it uses Microsoft Access on the back end so it's very easy for us to make edits without having to involve our web developer.
I think there are products out there that do more, but for what amounts to 2 and a half people, it works well enough to keep track of what we're doing and be searchable for us when we remember fixing a problem but not exactly how. It has the ability to assign tickets but we rarely use it. We tend to be a little more informal when escalating an incident, which works out fine considering that most of the people we'd escalate to are within shouting distance of the help desk area.

The one thing I would improve, and which might get us to assign tickets in the helpdesk more often, is if the email you got when someone assigns a ticket to you actually contained the description of the problem, rather than a link to our intranet. When I'm away from the desk and getting emails on my blackberry, the link is pretty useless to me. I have to actually go back to my desk to get the detail, and most times it's being assigned to me because I'm the one not at the help desk at that moment in the first place. So instead of using the software, we're more likely to send an email and simply ask the tech to stop somewhere and look at something before coming back. Of course, as far as I know, newer versions may have solved this problem, I've not really spent any time looking in to it.

PHIL: Very interesting Mike. [READERS: If you know of a better software or how to make Liberum do what Mike wants it to do, please share it. Thanks!]

PHIL: If someone were thinking about becoming a Help Desk rep, tell me what you think the "perfect background" would be.

MIKE: Wow, that's a tough question. Obviously, you need some tech skills. You spend a lot of time troubleshooting all kinds of things, so you'd need to be familiar with the technology you're supporting, and you need to be able to do everything you can to continue learning about technology to stay ahead of your users.

On the other hand, while tech skills are a big part of the job, you don't get to excel at this job on just technical skills alone. When you scale away all the technical stuff you're dealing with, at the end of the day the job is about people, and communication. You start each incident listening to someone explain what is wrong, or what they're trying to do, and you end it by either explaining an answer to them, or turning around and explaining the problem to the person who can solve it for the user. You have to communicate all the way through the process. Even when you're troubleshooting, you have to have the people skills to explain what you're doing, and why, to people with varying degrees of tech knowledge.

So along with the tech background, I think you need a background that provides plenty of opportunity to practice communication skills. You also need to be able to read and understand people. In an internal helpdesk environment, over time you have to know your users. You have to know which ones simply need pointed in the right direction, which ones need a bit more hand-holding, which wants want you to explain something to them and teach them and which ones just want you to fix it for them.

For myself, I do have some teaching experience in my background that helped with this. I spent a number of years volunteering to lead bible studies for high school kids. It's a good way to learn how to read people, and how to communicate, and it's experience that I draw on quite frequently.

One other thing you need is some very good decision-making skills. You are the first line of contact, it's up to you to figure out what needs to be done, and do it as quickly as possible. (This is especially true in a law firm where time is, literally, money.) You have to remain level-headed and make good decisions in the midst of what can sometimes be pure chaos.

The last thing you need, is thick skin. Somewhere along the way you need to have learned not to take anything a user says too personally. People you are able to help out of a real bind tend to say things they don't really mean, and people who have reached the utmost frustration tend to do the same. I've had people tell me they loved me (aside from my wife), and people call me an idiot. You can't allow either to impact doing your job.

PHIL: All excellent qualities Mike, and interesting that you have a teaching background. I do too, as does 1 other person on my team, and my newest hire has worked at a high school for some time. Being a teacher, and being teachable, are very key elements.

Stay tuned for the 4th and final part of the interview where Mike shares his advice for an aspiring Help Desk person.