Many people think that the closer the help desk is the slower the support seems. However, response times relation to distance isn’t always consistent.
Internal support may not be well documented or communicated, so it may seem unclear or undefined. This can cause employees receiving support to have no expectations at all or too many expectations. Either way, it can be difficult to know what expectations they will have.
When you don’t know what your user expectations are, you will have no idea how to meet them. When this happens, help desk personnel will often just go about their business. This can cause users to think that the help desk is too slow or fast, while the help desk personnel may think their service is too fast or slow according to their own arbitrary measures. This can easily cause confusion and frustration.
Help desk personnels expectations are usually determined by an internal guide. They don’t necessarily know where they come from. The answer is, that user expectations come from experiences and requirements. If a user’s regular experience is that it takes two days to resolve an issue, then this will be their expectation. Problems can occur when a user has an urgent issue, but they expect based on experience that their needs won’t be met in time.
The solution to this is to make sure that everyone shares the same response time expectations from support services. Here are five tips for achieving this.
1. Create a clear catalog or service level agreement (SLA)
Clearly agreeing upon and defining your internal and external services will result in better customer service. This is not only because you will be able to measure how you are providing services, but because this allows you to set proper expectations.
2. Build a helpful culture in your help desk
If you focus on minimizing costs, then your customer service will be below average. Your focus should be on giving the users everything they need to accomplish their job. It’s important that your team is looking for opportunities to help users, instead of waiting for them to report a problem. A help desk should be a place to go for help.
3. Hire good employees to keep good employees
If your company’s help desk team is terrific, it means that the best hires will stick around. A good help desk results in the need for simple support vastly reducing, because employees will improve their skills over time. Eliminating simple problems will allow for managing more difficult issues more efficiently.
4. Track issues end-to-end
The user and the help desk staff should both be able to tell the status of any issue easily. Any staff member should be able to jump in on an issue while knowing where the previous staffer left off and what they need to do next. Users should be updated regularly when tracking an issue on the web or by email.
5. Remember that the help desk is a partner
It’s important to realize that the help desk doesn’t exist just to mop up mistakes. The help desk should be recognized as a valued partner in every department. It’s purpose is to make every users as effective as possible. If you remember that your goal is to make everyone’s job a little easier, you are on the right path to success.
Source: Zendesk
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