IT Help Desk best practices are not just something written out of sheer enthusiasm but out of unavoidable necessity.

If you are someone running a help desk, then you must know that helpdesk best practices are crucial to make your help desk float like an acorn without drowning in the ocean of eternal death.

You should be wise enough to follow the best practices – which we have clustered together– in order to avoid any regrets in the near future.

Due to poor practices and subpar customer service, about $62 billion is lost by companies with help desks in the US every year.

We sincerely believe that you are here as you are well aware of the essentiality of incorporating the IT helpdesk best practices into your business to stop being at loss.

P.S Help desk Support services can easily be outsourced yet, a CEO must know full well that the IT help desk best practices can’t be ignored at any rate.

The top ten IT help desk best practices are as follows.

A help desk team can become sluggish due to too complicated ITSM (Information Technology Service Management) solutions. Instead, look for something straightforward, dependable, and logical.

An efficient ticketing system maintains the organization and priority of Employee requests. No matter where the conversation starts, a help desk team can track, manage, reply to, and resolve every problem thanks to an Omni channel ticketing system.

Create an IT service catalog as one of the first tasks. Make it your top priority.

This roadmap ought to be created with the end user in mind and contain all the details they want to submit a service request and file a ticket.

It should have instructions that are simple to understand and be worded clearly. Your service catalog requires certain essential items, such as:

• Name of the catalog item
• Category (software, hardware, support, infrastructure)
• Approval process
• Fee for service
• Security and permissions for access
• Process for tracking issues
• A delivery deadline
• Contact person for inquiries

Knowing who to call for IT assistance is one of the major issues that workers encounter. Institutional knowledge is continually evolving and never seems to be recorded. So, building a knowledge base for your company is extremely crucial.

Internal help desks or workflows based on directories can help automatically route inquiries to the appropriate departments.

Create a self-service portal where people may easily view your service catalog once it has been finalized. Additionally, make it simple to reach that site, for instance by typing “IT assistance” into a browser.

Help desk software should always offer a knowledge base option. People frequently only want a quick fix for an easy problem. Employees can use a knowledge base to look up and fix problems without having to file another ticket.

As a result, the ITSM team is freed up to handle more challenging problems that require one-on-one assistance or support. Plus, it gives your users the resources they need to perform their responsibilities.

According to SaaS expert Matthew Monahan, if the help desk manager is overly concerned with cutting expenses, you’ll wind up providing subpar customer assistance.

However, if you concentrate on providing the users with all they require to complete their tasks, you succeed twice.

The first benefit, according to Monahan, is that your team will become more proactive, seeking out chances to assist users rather than waiting for them to report issues.

The help desk will start to be seen by your user base as a collaborator in problem-solving as opposed to someone to yell at when things go wrong, which is the second victory.

And communication is always the key.

Be sure to exchange information. How much time should clients allow for a response? How quickly are issues resolved, and what level of priority is their ticket?

Make sure everyone in the organization is aware; doing so can make everyone feel less frustrated.

It’s one thing to hire fantastic employees; it’s quite another to keep them, and this is where your employee experience comes into play.

According to Gartner’s research, empowered and engaged staff were more willing and able to influence the customer experience.

On top of that, since 2009, a portfolio of the “Best Companies to Work For” according to Fortune has beaten the S&P 500 by 84.2%.

You can take some actions to position yourself for success. Spend money on customer service training to provide your personnel with the skills they need.

Your more seasoned agents can assist with onboarding and training as well; they have a wealth of useful information to impart, and it can make them feel appreciated.

Look for job candidates who not only possess the necessary technical skills but also have a strong desire to assist others. After all, you are in charge of a help desk.

Investing in retaining the top talents will prove to be a bang for the buck, without a doubt.

Because, replacing employees is expensive, with costs ranging anywhere from 16% to 213% of an employee’s salary. U.S. organizations pay up to 1 trillion in turnover expenses annually.

Hence employee retention is more crucial than you can imagine!

A company’s success depends on its ability to deliver seamless internal support. The customer and the support team should be able to quickly determine the issue’s status.

This improves the entire customer experience by lowering stress and irritability for everyone involved.

Any staff member at the help desk should be able to access any ticket at any time and view the whole workflow of the issue in order to advance it toward resolution.

It also greatly impacts the FTR (First Time Resolution) rate which in turn triggers your KPI.

Help desks may be a goldmine of information that can be used to measure and enhance the employee experience, from discovering team-building opportunities to knowing how workers communicate with you.

Support desk staff can respond to current events and comprehend historical trends thanks to real-time and historical analytics embedded into your help desk solution. You can predict what your staff will do using predictive analytics and historical data.

Your support team can provide a better experience if they can anticipate employee demands and spot patterns, many thanks to the advanced analytics of today.

Your support desk personnel is able to personalize their working environment thanks to automation, apps, and integrations.

By doing this, you can guarantee that your support desk can access tools for change management, asset management, team collaboration, and more from a single location.

Into the bargain, you can construct unique workflows, integrate well-known apps like Slack and Zoom to minimize system switching, close tickets after a predetermined time period, and create request forms that route specific requests to the relevant team.

Furthermore, if your company operates internationally, you’ll probably require your help desk to handle translation software.

Gather employee opinions on how your IT or HR help desk currently functions in order to enhance it. Help desk representatives from IT or HR will benefit from their insight in order to better identify problems and potential solutions.

OpenTable to Open Your Eyes

By polling the team, OpenTable was able to improve its IT help desk experience.
Russ Gangloff, director of customer support at OpenTable, recalls that “Our employees said it was cumbersome to submit support tickets to our internal help desk”.

His team came to the realization that OpenTable staff required more ways to submit tickets and frequent information on the status of those problems.

The smooth, open procedure that staff members requested has been created by OpenTable’s IT support desk, and their follow-up surveys confirm it. According to Gangloff, “We keep hearing [from employees] that we’re so much more responsive now”.

So, set up triggers in your support software to automatically email surveys to employees after their tickets shut in order to gather feedback from your staff.

Ask respondents to survey how satisfied they were with their interactions with the service desk and how much work was required of them.

A support desk workforce can work well with chatbots.

To enable employees to self-serve on a one-to-one (1:1) basis, they might suggest help center articles, freeing up agents’ time from dealing with routine inquiries.

Because bots are “always on,” clients can access assistance at any time, round the clock, 24/7/365. A help desk crew can scale as a result of shorter wait times and more ticket responses.

Constructing and running a help desk without implementing the IT Help Desk Best Practices (approved by leaders around the world) might make it end up as a fool’s gamble.

Pick and adapt the suitable ones from the IT help desk best practices mentioned above, if you want your help desk to survive with dignity!