By Henry Amon
Help desk
A help desk is a little more than what it sounds like. The help desk is generally referred to as the department that takes care of computer and computer-related problems for a company or organization. As as result, the help desk is often the busiest department in an organization. The best way to build a help desk is one employee at a time rather than hiring a whole team at once. Building a help desk is really just a matter of understanding the company's problems and needs and building and applying a system of rules and techniques to solve those needs on a regular basis.
Instructions
Step 1
Build a team. This depends on the size of the company or department the help desk will be supporting. You may need one person to several hundred people. A good rule is to have one person for every 50 to 75 people who are supported. With a small team or just a one-person help desk, you will need someone who can do a variety of jobs as well as have administrative abilities. The first person will have to be able to do things such as hardware repair, network support and software troubleshooting. When you add another person, regardless of where they belong on the organizational chart, they should have varied experience and abilities The second person, for example, might need to be someone who specializes in networks.
Step 2
Get or make a reporting system. You need a way for users to report the problems or requests they have. If it is a small organization, the system can be just filling out a note and dropping it in a request box or making a phone call or sending an email. For larger help desks, there is help desk software that can be deployed to accept help requests from a website or by email or manually by an analyst.
Step 3
Develop procedures that everyone can follow. Create procedures for special requests that are urgent or different in nature from regular help desk requests. Such a request might be to borrow a laptop or a request to set up an online meeting that will need to happen right away. Make it known what the procedures are to all on the help desk and to the users it supports.
Step 4
Create FAQ lists and other "self help" documents to hand out or to put on the website or Intranet. Make these help sheets for common issues that can be resolved by the users with a little guidance. This will cut down on requests and save time.
Step 5
Communicate effectively with the users about upcoming changes. Word of mouth is good, but a website explaining common procedures as well as upcoming changes is essential.
Step 6
Determine your limits. Make it clear what kind of help you can provide and what you are unable or unwilling to do. Mission creep can easily slow down a help desk. You don't want to support every application a user buys, and you may not want to be making house calls for users who have problems at home.
Tips & Warnings
Take your time to get it right and be willing to revise the system.
support desk software
