What are some best practices to improve your help desk performance?

Ensure the IT help desk is the single point of contact (SPOC)

Your help desk should be the only point of contact for all IT-related issues. This reduces confusion among end-users, collects all tickets in a central repository and streamlines help desk processes.

Build a knowledge base

Building and maintaining a knowledge base allows users to find resolutions to common problems, which results in fewer tickets being logged. A knowledge base also helps technicians provide resolutions by assisting them with known solutions.

Archive known resolutions to expand your knowledge base

Solutions to common issues should be archived in the knowledge base after approval by designated technicians.

Set up automation

Automated processes and workflows provide numerous benefits to an IT help desk, like timeliness, accuracy, cost savings, higher efficiency, etc.

Implement a self-service portal

Empowering end-users to create their own tickets accurately with the help of self-service portals allows technicians to focus on more critical tasks.

Offer multiple communication channels

E-mails from within the application and notifications to both users and technicians help disseminate critical information and maintain transparency in the help desk.

Track and analyse KPIs

You should measure and analyse key metrics and KPIs to understand how well your help desk is performing and build future roadmaps.

Generate and schedule reports

You can use help desk reports to present a quick overview of the state of IT operations to high-level management or to give detailed data points to IT staff and managers.

Implement native asset management

You can manage your organisation's hardware and software assets if your help desk application offers native asset management. This leads to better licence compliance, purchase management, hardware asset scanning and tracking.

Utilise native problem and change management

In addition to incident management, your help desk should also offer problem and change management. Bringing them together on the same platform streamlines overall IT operations.

Set up integrations

An IT help desk solution that supports integration with third-party applications has the potential to scale up into a bigger system capable of managing all IT operations from a single application.

Develop SLAs

IT help desks should support SLAs with automatic escalations to ensure that service is consistently delivered on time.

Offer technician training

Technicians should be trained regularly to keep them up to date with the latest technologies, best practices, and company policies. Also, feedback from technicians should be collected and considered to balance out each technician's workload.

Implement a multi-tier architecture

Structure your help desk in a multi-tier architecture to maximise its efficiency. This structure supports a better flow of tickets, with complex issues finding quick resolution by higher level technicians and simpler issues being serviced at lower levels.

Send out end-user surveys

Collecting feedback from end-users helps organisations understand the pain points users face and paves the way for continuous service improvement (CSI). You can administer surveys either periodically or every time a ticket is closed.

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