Top Strategies for Driving Service Desk Best Practices

Make the Most of What You Already Have to Improve Your Service Desk Best Practices

Making the most out of the little you have is the prevailing wisdom during times of economic challenge. Just how to get the most from what you have is the basis for best business practices. Business experts have shared their strategies for maximizing the productivity and effectiveness of your service desk. So rather than looking to new and possibly expensive software or expanded support staffing, why not listen to the experts who focus on practical suggestions which can sharpen the service team you already have?  Following are a few service desk best practices.

Proactively Answer Questions

One way to maximize the customer service team you already have in place is to re-route questions that can be easily anticipated and answered another way.  Experts suggest meeting with your service team to discover what questions surface most often and can be didactically addressed.  It is suggested that you address issues raised in at least 40% of your service requests. From there, you can create your own FAQs to post on the help desk website.  Be sure to keep the information simple.  Making the knowledge base information overly complicated will be self-defeating.  Another way to re-route customer service is to enable self-service ticket management.  First on the list of service desk best practices is making the most of the service team you already have.  Use their time and skills in the most efficient way by answering the simplest questions through other venues.

Train for Effectiveness

As with any other business function, the marriage of skill to efficiency will improve your productivity margin.  Next on the suggested list of service desk best practices is thoroughly training your service desk team.  Sure they need to have IT skills, but you need to equip them with the business skills that go along with their technical know-how.  Set clear guidelines for them in terms of how long customers should be allowed to wait in the queue and how much time each service call taken should last.  In other words, broaden their perspective and help set the standard for increased productivity.

A chief roadblock to productivity for your support services staff is the ability to prioritize needs.  Again, you will see immediate benefit from clearly training your team.  Service desk best practices means that your team is capable of ordering priority service requests appropriately and efficiently.

Build Team Identity to Support Service Desk Best Practices

You know how important the help desk staff is to the success of the company….do they know that you know?  The time you spend managing the call load and training for efficiency will accomplish more than the tangible goals of a more streamlined and effective customer service staff.  Service desk best practices say that the creation of a positive team atmosphere can be a key intangible.  Spending time with your customer support staff and showing an interest in their contribution to the company is important to helping them identify as part of the larger team.  In fact, one expert suggested having a key business leader from one of your supported clients stop by just to let the help desk know their role is of prime value.

Manage the call load your staff receives by creating a simple knowledge base, train your team to be better time and priority managers and show your appreciation – all great advice which will earn great benefits at no extra charge!