Most organizations have a wide range of systems and applications that they rely on to run their business. Sales, customer service, and internal roles all require working technology, and any disruption can have a major impact on your business.
When issues occur with the technologies required for these roles, a professional IT help desk can provide the on-call support your company needs. The help desk will help you resolve technical issues as quickly as possible to help keep your business on track.
Depending on your company’s requirements, you may require help desk support for employees, customers, or other parties to access.
You need to find the right partner to work with to address your specific help desk needs , and the best help desk managers will be able to meet all of these IT help desk best practices .
In this article, we will discuss eight of the most significant IT help desk best practices and their benefits for your business.
The Top 8 IT Help Desk Best Practices
1. Help Desk Teams Should Know How to Solve Common IT Issues
Many of the problems you’ll be dealing with, whether resolving network issues or resetting passwords for email addresses , will come up with some regularity.
Working with a professional help desk allows their team to get to know your business and common issues, so they can have fixes on hand.
Keeping track of common issues and having their solutions ready to go can greatly reduce response time for a large number of tickets. This can let your employees get back to work sooner and improve customer satisfaction .
Work With a Partner That Prioritizes IT Help Desk Best Practices
Improve your customer experience with CalTech’s help desk services.
2. Support Teams Must Cover All Tiers
Dividing tickets into support tiers is an industry-standard IT help desk best practice .
When tickets arrive, they are either resolved or escalated to the next tier, generally running from Tier 1 to Tier 4. The support team members at each level will have different levels of experience and different skill bases.
It’s important to have support available for every level. Benchmarks from MetricNet show that an average of 17.8% of issues dealt with at higher tiers were perfectly suitable for tier 1 resolution.
To ensure rapid response time and to manage ticket volumes , organizations should be sure that the solution they choose includes quality support staff at every tier.
3. Always Track Ticket Resolution Rates
Tracking and analyzing KPIs throughout your organization is an important part of how you continue to grow your business. Support is no different from any other area of your organization; you need to track and monitor KPIs to gauge performance.
Ticket resolution rates are one of the most important KPIs to monitor for help desk services. Understanding how long tickets take to resolve, how often they’re escalated, and other key details help you understand whether or not your help desk services are working.
4. Streamline Support With a Service Portal
A service portal is a website or application that your employees, customers, or other parties can access to start the help desk process.
They can submit information about their issue and have it enter the system without the need to tie up resources with a phone call.
A service portal can also help deliver Tier 0 support. This tier refers to self-serve support, where users can access a knowledge base of common issues and other help desk software . Tier 0 support can only help in so many situations, but it does so incredibly efficiently.
5. Clearly Define Your Service Level Agreement (or Objective)
Your service level agreement (SLA) or objective (SLO) defines the obligations and requirements of your help desk. When finding the right partner to handle your help desk services, be sure to define your SLA/SLO carefully.
Your business needs to ensure that its help desk meets all of its needs, so maintaining clear communication and transparency is vital. By working closely with your help desk services provider, you can have a smooth customer experience .
6. Handle Service Support Proactively
The best help desk services aren’t just reactive. Instead, they’re part of a larger set of managed IT services that your business relies on for both reactive and proactive support.
A comprehensive IT solution can handle support, security, maintenance, business continuity, strategy, and so much more.
7. Implement Automation for Support Tickets
Ideally, your help desk system should implement automation wherever possible. Ticket routing is one area where automation is an absolute must.
When tickets go to your help desk, automated routing ensures that they are immediately sent to the appropriate individuals to take action and resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
This prevents the waste of significant time and resources trying to track down who is responsible for what.
8. Choose a Support Team With the Right Skills, Knowledge, and Experience
The impact of working with a help desk on your business can be significant if you work with the right team.
A survey by HubSpot indicates that 86% of teams that implement help desk services have noticed an increase in productivity. However, you can only attain that benefit when working with professional help desk agents .
Both internal and customer support cover such a wide range of potential technical issues. The partner you choose for your help desk should have long experience in the field and have a highly trained support team to deliver reliable performance.
Interested in learning more about IT help desk services? Check out these blogs:
Work With a Trusted Partner That Relies On IT Help Desk Best Practices
Now that you understand the importance and benefits of each IT help desk best practice , it’s time to choose a partner whose help desk experience prioritizes complete customer satisfaction .
For over 30 years, Integris has provided comprehensive IT support to businesses of all sizes. We meet all of your needs by following IT help desk best practices , in addition to offering a full range of managed IT services.
Get started on the path to an enhanced customer experience today with help desk services dedicated to superior customer support . For more information, contact us to schedule a consultation and receive a free quote.
