This is the perfect time of year to look back and assess your team’s performance during the last twelve months. Think about moments that you wish you could go back and erase. As a help desk manager, you know you have not seen the last disaster. What are clear weaknesses, and how can you focus on them to make next year the best yet?
The very nature of "The Help Desk" causes it to be an attractive place to go when business needs have fallen short. Many organizations depend on their help desks to provide help even when needs are unrelated computers. People often call when they need building maintenance, telephony, and to find out if the office is closed due to foul whether. But calamity is when people really need HELP, and the responsiveness of your team will measure your greatest strengths and weaknesses. You cannot always foresee disaster, but having procedures in place that give your team direction can prevent things from getting out of control. The best test for your processes show through when you are not there, and when other people need to take action and follow through in your absence.
Here are some things I recommend you include in your procedures so your
team can get the issue resolved quickly and effectively:
- Who to call first: Is a critical application down? Who can you rely on to respond to your concerns about problems with that particular application or problem? Make sure that person is in your contact list.
- Who else needs to be notified in an emergency? These are people who don’t want to be rudely awakened by help desk blunders when their manager calls asking what is going on. They want to know before their key people ask them.
- An updated Contact List should be separate from your procedure. Make sure you have an updated contact list that includes everyone who needs to be notified in an emergency.
- Create a “Master” ticket for your team with all the details that you have collected. Your team should be trained to connect their tickets to the master ticket so you can get a look at the big picture. You may find that the problem is isolated to one geographic region, or you may pick up clues that show the problem is DNS or firewall related. With all of the tickets related, you can put the pieces together, get the right people on the phone, and stop all the dang finger pointing.
- Use the master ticket to inform the team about the status of the issue. Your techs should have a “bulletin board” where they can see all the master tickets.
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