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Hi again everyone. I’m Donna Earl, aka “the Help Desk Coach”! Working on the help desk is a job for problem solvers. The best help desk agents are born and hardwired to solve real problems. However, most complain about having to solve simple and routine problems end users could very easily solve themselves.

Some of the most frustrating and repetitive calls are from end users who could have quickly solved their own problem if they simply took the time to check the basics – connections, plugs…start button! Help desk agents (sometimes grudgingly) have to ask what seem like dumbly insulting questions to their end users. “Is your machine turned on?” “Is your laptop plugged in?” “Is your network cable in?” And of course most users will respond they have checked all connections…even if they have not. The more tactful agents have learned some variation of “let’s do it one more time while I’m on the phone. I have to ask you to re-check all connections again because it’s my job.”

Of course, end users can annoy help desk agents by not at least trying to re-boot and solve the issue on their own before calling in. Sometimes the agent will know in advance if the user hasn’t re-booted. To this, the more patient agent will repeat some variation of “let’s re-boot one more time while I’m on the phone to see what happens.”

Given the self-service capabilities of today’s modern help desk software, agents are unanimously annoyed when users do not avail themselves of self help tools. Rather, certain users will prefer waving that ‘big red flag’ and calling into the service desk versus turning to their iPhone for that latest self-serve support app the IT folks recently provided everyone. To this, there are some users who have become totally dependent on the help desk, and feel it’s simply too much trouble to utilize self help.

For all of these frustrating calls to the help desk, the effective agent will avoid becoming angry at and antagonizing the end user. This response results in nothing less than a black eye for the agent, and earns the help desk a reputation for arrogance and unhelpfulness. Rather, the best service staff will take the time – in fact, make the time – to engage with the end user, empathize with their problem, and work emphatically to solve the problem. The best technicians will close out the call by providing the user with a quick overview of the ‘self help’ process, and why self service benefits the end user. Not only does this benefit the reputation and effectiveness of the help desk, it also stands a better chance of creating a learning experience for the end user.

In closing, I worked with a help desk once that changed the recorded message their users heard while in queue. The message reminded users to re-check all connections, re-boot twice (!) and browse self help while waiting in queue. This particular help desk also worked to mitigate the avalanche of frantic end users calls in instances of unexpected network downtime – a feat by any means. Simply, the outgoing service desk message would be immediately updated to alerts callers to the downtime situation.  This prevented the queue from being inundated with calls that, at end of day, couldn’t be serviced and would only detract the help desk from effectively addressing the real problems. Simple solutions like this can go a long, long way to easing end user frustration AND stopping those annoying calls that ultimately can’t be serviced!

With a little forethought, care and effort, reducing redundant and needless calls is possible. What are the repetitive and annoying calls which haunt you and your help desk? How can they be proactively reduced or prevented? Let me know, and I’d be glad to write about it!

In my related article, “Migrating End Users to Self Help,” I address motivating the different types of users to use self help tools. http://www.helpdeskcoach.com/articles/MigratingUsersToSelfHelp.html

©Donna Earl 2012

www.HelpDeskCoach.com

Help Desk Coach Donna Earl has been interviewed for numerous publications, including

• The Wall Street Journal, in an article titled How to Keep Your Cool in Angry Times.
• Investor’s Business Daily, where she was quoted in an article titled The Fine Art of Defusing Irate Customer Phone Calls.

>> Visit Donna’s ‘Help Desk Coach’ Consulting Site

>> Visit Helpdesk.com

An astounding 50% of workers polled stated they’d consider switching their present job to have a more technologically free work environment. In technology-restrictive environments, upward 17% of information workers said they’d use tools and software regardless of IT approval or support.

In today’s technology driven and dependent world, businesses rely increasingly on the help desk to service employee issues, problems and needs. Historically IT had far more control over the software and applications being used and deployed by its workers. As the average worker has grown more technologically “aware”, the proliferation of free and cheap software, apps, and gadgets poses an increasing challenge to providing support and controlling assets and software licensing.

Many of today’s help desk solutions are well equipped to handle software, hardware and application issues, but for known and officially “supported” technologies. With the ease and proliferation of ‘rogue’ software and applications, the help desk challenge — servicing the technology needs of the workforce efficiently and effectively — gets much more difficult.

Read the article below for more. And be sure to visit us at Helpdesk.com for the latest in industry news, vendor listings, upcoming industry events, white papers, and more!

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/employees-aren%E2%80%99t-waiting-around-it-deliver-new-apps?source=NWWNLE_nlt_daily_am_2011-12-20

Article:

Today’s tech-savvy employees aren’t waiting around for IT to deliver new applications. They’re taking matters into their own hands, according to new survey data.

Intuit QuickBase found that among 900 information workers surveyed, nearly 20% have built or customized a Web app or software for work purposes without support from IT. In addition, 50% of workers said they use tools such as online databases, Web-based productivity apps, instant messaging, video chat and social networks to solve their own business problems.

The DIYers work pretty quickly: 68% of respondents who’ve built or customized an app said they completed the work in less than a week. The majority (82%) also said their DIY solution is still being used within their organization or team.

FAVE RAVES: 22 IT pros name their favorite products

DIY apps can increase productivity, enable better collaboration among employees, and improve customer service, according to Allison Mnookin, vice president and general manager of Intuit QuickBase, which makes business and financial management software for small and midsize enterprises.

“These motivated employees are taking advantage of easy-to-use, Web-based platforms to respond to the accelerating pace and increasing complexity of business demands,” Mnookin said in a statement. “With intimate knowledge of customer and workgroup needs and easy-to-use cloud tools, information workers solve their own problems faster than IT can accommodate them. IT departments that embrace and empower these employees can drive competitiveness for their businesses.”

Of course, not all companies see it that way. Despite the potential benefits of allowing employees to find their own tech solutions, many companies won’t sanction employee-developed apps: 35% of workers polled said their businesses do not enable or encourage employees to create solutions independently.

As expected, there are also a fair amount of employees who are determined to create their own apps regardless of corporate policy and don’t care a whit about getting permission. In technology-restrictive environments, 17% of information workers said they select tools and software to meet their needs without IT approval or support.

“These ‘rogue’ employees can be extremely beneficial in their motivation to solve business needs, but their energies are best harnessed if management supports them by providing the resources they need to succeed,” Mnookin said. “Otherwise, if they leave the company, IT will not necessarily know how to replicate or maintain the success.”

Intuit found the flight risk among rogue employees who feel technologically restricted at work is high: 50% said they’d consider switching jobs to have a more technologically free work environment. Among workers who feel empowered to solve customer and work process problems on their own, far fewer — just 26% — said they’re open to switching jobs.

Ann Bednarz covers IT careers, outsourcing and Internet culture for Network World. Follow Ann on Twitter at @annbednarz and check out her blog, Occupational Hazards. Her e-mail address is abednarz@nww.com.

Help Desk agents worldwide have either submitted these questions to HelpDeskCoach.com or asked these questions during customer service training for helpdesk agents presented by Donna Earl (The HelpDeskCoach). Enjoy!

>> Click Here for More Q&As!

Q. Dear HelpDesk Coach: As a supervisor, I’m struggling with one of my helpdesk engineers. He is the smartest agent on the helpdesk, but users don’t understand him and get mad at him. He’s made some enemies in the company and although I try to explain that he’s really smart and I need him on the helpdesk, he’s giving the department a bad reputation. He completed an online customer service class, but it was worthless. How can I make others in the company see he’s really a good guy, and leave him (and me) alone about it?

A. Dear HelpDesk Supervisor: One of the truisms about customer service is: perception is everything. If your internal users don’t perceive your ‘star’ to be helpful or user-friendly, then he is denting your reputation. You realize his behavior could use tweaking, and since you provided online training for him. You didn’t mention how others on the helpdesk team react to him, but I’ll guess they feel he drags down the group’s reputation. Here are some considerations for you:

1) Online training can be very effective in many areas, however without interaction with other people, its hard for the agent to transfer behavior to real world scenarios. If your agent could participate in a coaching or training session and receive feedback, it would be a fairer means of helping him learn people skills.

2) You don’t mention whether or not calls are recorded or monitored. I would strongly recommend you begin recording and monitoring calls, and provide your agent coaching and counseling on effective call handling. (see article on providing coaching for call monitoring: http://helpdeskcoach.com/articles/CallMonitoringFeedbackTips.html). If you and the agent can hear what users hear during calls, it can help him develop a more user friendly communication style.

3) Make improving customer satisfaction a goal for the entire helpdesk, and an individual goal for this agent. Make sure the agent understands customer satisfaction is part of the job. Managing the performance of helpdesk agents includes insistence on standards of customer satisfaction and user friendliness.

4) Not everyone is cut out for constant customer contact, especially in a helpdesk setting. Some talented technical people find dealing with people for 8 hours to be overtaxing. They aren’t cut out for a high people contact job. Often these techies are best at dealing with escalated issues, recreating and researching issues and bugs, and functioning as a ‘coach’ to others on the team. If they can be assigned some non-people contact responsibilities to break up the day, it helps them deal more effectively when they must be ‘on’ for customers.

Q. Dear Help Desk Coach: The company I work for just acquired two other companies. IT support for these companies was centralized into our helpdesk. Prior to the consolidations, the other companies had onsite desktop support. Now they have phone support from our helpdesk, and can request onsite support, which takes a while. Users are upset about the changes, and when they call they complain to us about the changes in IT support now available. Not only are their complaints demotivating, but they don’t know how to use phone support since they’re accustomed to ever present desktop support.

Diligent Derek

A.Dear Diligent Derek,Every end user’s dream is on demand desktop support, however it is more costly to the organization, and when companies merge, often the IT support function is consolidated. However this reality does not make your job easier, or your end users happier. Brace yourself for a few months of organizational change ‘shock’ on the part of your users. When they complain, don’t take it personally. Tell users you’ll do your best to solve their problems, and help them get accustomed to phone support. Then ask troubleshooting questions. End users who are not adept at describing issues over the phone, will need extra patience addressing their issues. You might consider emailing troubleshooting questions to new users when they enter a ticket so they’ll be more prepared for the call. Keep your tone positive and encouraging, and thank them for their patience at end of conversation.

Q. Dear Help Desk Coach: Our organization has been acquiring other companies, and then converting their IT structure and software. This has been really stressful for our helpdesk, not only due to extra work, but mainly the bad attitudes of users due to the conversion. I used to enjoy my job, but now hate getting up in the morning.

Clara Lead

A. Dear Lead Clara: Conversions are a fact of IT corporate life and never well received by the user base.  As in my reponse to diligent Derek above, don’t personalize frustration of end users. Conversions are stressful while they last, especially on leads who take escalated calls, and provide a role model to other agents. Often companies provide a customer service course just before a conversion to refresh agent skill in defusing frustrated users. Coach your agents (and yourself) to maintain your cool while dealing with upset users. Remind the users that although the changes are unsettling, your job is to help and you promise to do your best. Then move into troubleshooting questions. Maintain your professionalism and stay focused on problem solving through this challenging time.

>> See More Help Desk Q&As!

It would likely be a highly intuitive, user friendly platform that provided “just enough” of the basics required to run the business— call tracking, alerting, knowledgebase, self service — without convoluting the experience for the technicians or end users.

Just like all Apple products, elegance and art combined gracefully with technology, feature and functionality. Jobs was able to strike the perfect balance of usability, expectation and performance. Which is why Apple products simply rock. And why the iHelpdesk would reflect Jobs genius in providing “just enough” and not ‘too muchy’ — but to get the software done just right and strike that perfect balance between form and function.

Throw out the fancy mobile, social, and other ‘bell and whistle’ perks, buttons, levers, dials, radio buttons, and integration fudge that hallmarks our more ‘modern day’ help desk software. Just provide a simple, elegant software platform that does one thing, and one thing well — enable staff to quickly and easily satisfy the end user. Period.

Now, if Jobs got around to doing help desk software, well, who knows where the industry would be today. Perhaps the iHelpdesk will one day happen. It may not be Jobs that provides it…but that’s okay.  Steve has given us enough.

Thanks for reading.  For more about help desk and CRM software, please be sure to visit our web site - helpdesk.com

To this, the below article appearing on ICMI touches upon some of the critical measures critical for successful call center (and help desk!) management.  We hope you enjoy this article.

The Measures Every Call Center Should Have

These key categories of measures and objective are as important for Facebook and Twitter interactions as they are for traditional contact channels.

Establishing the right measures and objectives is one of the most important responsibilities in leading and managing a call center successfully. But there’s a significant inherent challenge, which has only become more difficult with the introduction of new channels and social contacts – we produce mounds of data! And even so, many organizations are operating without information that is essential to creating the best results.

Ultimately, you will need to establish measures and objectives that are right for your organization. But there are seven key categories of measures that should be in place in every customer contact center. They build on each other, and it helps to order them from the most elemental and tactical, to strategic. They include:

Forecast Accuracy. If you don’t have an accurate prediction of the workload coming your way, it’s almost impossible to deliver efficient, consistent service and achieve high levels of customer satisfaction. And that’s just as true for new social interactions as it has been for telephone, chat or email.

Schedule Fit and Adherence. If you have a good handle on the call center’s workload, you can build accurate schedules that ensure the right people are in the right places at the right times. This is best managed from the bottom up, with ample buy in, and is an important enabler to everything else you’re trying to accomplish.

>> Read the full story

>> Visit Helpdesk.com

Be it internal help desk support or external customer care management, social site integration — as part of the overall support mission and strategy — is now critical. Users engage with these sites every day…in fact several times a day. Engagement begins where the users are…and the easier you make it for your users to engage…or complain…communicate…or simply report an issue…the better a job you’ll have in mitigating frustration and increasing response time and user satisfaction.

There’s a reason why help desk and CRM providers are increasingly integrating social support and integration into their software and platforms.  In fact, many vendors have already begun to introduce smart phone apps — for users and help desk technicians — taking social integration — and help desk support in general — mobile! As a help desk manager or software buyer/evaluator, it’s important you consider this increasingly important channel — social and mobile! — when making updates and changes to how you provide your support.

We came across the following article in InformationWeek and thought we’d share it as part of this quick write-up — How Social Can Improve Customer Service: Expert Advice. We suggest you give the article a read to get some interesting insights and perspectives into social site usage and how it’s changing…if not bettering…the help desk.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

Kate Leggett, senior analyst at Forrester, said it’s important for organizations to understand what communications channels customers want to be interacting on, then develop a social networking service model from there. For example, “once you have established that Facebook is the right medium to engage with your customers, you can offer customer service either from a separate tab on your Facebook page or by listening to comments on your Facebook page and engaging customers who need help.”

Leggett added that there is no right way to set up customer service presence on a social network, but that there are some basic tenets companies need to follow. For example, if you do decide to leverage Facebook, “ensure that your customer service services are tied back to what is offered by your company on your site, and ensure that you follow the same business processes for inquiries routed over Facebook as what you offer from your company website [so] that Facebook is not seen as a backdoor to your customer service organizations.”

Social networks can provide important data on the problems customers are having most often, as well as the products they would like to see changed (and how)–but only if you listen.

>> Click here to read the full story!

>> Click here to visit Helpdesk.com

Since we know how crazy the help desk environment can be — and how difficult it can be to streamline operations and ensure your support personnel AND end users are happy — solid guidelines like these can go a long way.

Enjoy this read, and then stop by helpdesk.com for more tips, tricks, and advice on how to optimize your help desk operations. Be sure to visit our ‘Help Desk Coach‘ resource section for real help desk Q&A, white papers, case studies and more.

Enjoy!

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Abstract:

Ten rules for a slick and sane helpdesk

1. Patience
If you’ve done any remote support, you’ll know that users can really tax your patience. I have actually had users seize control of the mouse from me while I am trying to solve their problem — just so they could compose an email.

Many users seem to think their problem is the only one you have to deal with and prevent you from working efficiently. Some of them struggle with the terminology needed to communicate their problem to you. It is essential to have patience in reserve when dealing with these types of people. Not only will your patience help them, it will keep your blood pressure down.

2. Compassion
I have experienced users crying on the phone because of an IT problem. In these instances, your compassion is essential. You must remember that in some cases their problems are preventing them from completing an important task or doing business. When users have a lot at stake, their stress levels can be high and they’re bound to be tetchy. Put yourself in their shoes and imagine how you would deal with it. Try to be understanding so your users feel you are on their side and doing everything to make the problem go away.

>> Click here to see the rest of this story

Our feature “story” this month isn’t so much a story, but rather a spotlight on our new interactive column “Ask the Coach!”, which features real-world Q&A on critical help desk related topics. Enjoy!

Here’s a preview! For the full edition, click here

FEATURE STORY

Help Desk Q&A: Ask the Coach!
The ‘Help Desk Coach’ is helpdesk.com’s new column, courtesy HelpDeskCoach.com – that features real-world help desk agent Q&A questions

(Source:helpdesk.com)

Excerpt:Help Desk agents worldwide have either submitted these questions to HelpDeskCoach.com or asked these questions during customer service training for helpdesk agents, as presented by Donna Earl (The HelpDeskCoach).

See real-world questions and answers on such topics as: How to handle rude or obnoxious callers? How to more effectively help users to ‘help themselves? How to say ‘no’ to unreasonable support requests, especially those involving “illegally” downloaded software?

And best of all, you can submit your questions and receive professional advice and feedback free of charge. What could be better!

Most major — and not so major — help desk software and CRM vendors now offer cloud-based solutions.

The appeal of the cloud is simple to understand, with benefits including:

• Remote hosting — no “messy” installations required
• Affordability — at least in the shorter term, you’ll pay less for ‘cloud’ vs. ‘physical’ software
• Scalability — the cloud makes this very easy!
• Automatic updates/maintenance (you’ll always have the latest version at the ready,  if you opt into auto updates)
• Newest technology — with cloud software, you’ll be getting the ‘latest and greatest’
• Reduced staffing requirements — a big plus for leaner organizations

Of course, tangible ‘real world’ software also has its benefits. Cons of the ‘cloud’ include:

• Less control — you won’t ‘own’ this software
• Increased third-party dependencies — it’s up to the ‘cloud people’ to take care of you…to a certain extent
• Performance — connectivity  and bandwidth issues can impede speed and program execution
• Security concerns — a real concern, so be sure to check your cloud vendor carefully on this

Do cloud-based help desk and CRM packages include all the great things you need to manage your internal/external support requirements? Yes!  Ticketing, call tracking, remote alerting, backoffice integration, ITIL support, and more, are available through many cloud-based solutions.

But like with any business critical solution, be sure to do your homework and research the vendors on your shortlist carefully. The ‘cloud’ isn’t exactly a new technology or phenomena…thought IT marketers would like you to think otherwise! Software-As-A-Service (SAAS) has been around for years now, but only in the last few years has the ‘cloud’ emerged as a recognized and better understood and trusted ‘platform’ for serving critical business solutions.

For more help desk articles, news, vendor listings, and more, check out our website at helpdesk.com! Thanks for reading this, and we look forward to your feedback.

Setting up a helpdesk for your startup can be a daunting task. Outside of enterprise circles, it’s not something that’s discussed very often — in fact, many startups don’t bother to go much further than services like Get Satisfaction to begin with.

But it’s not as difficult to set up a great helpdesk for your small business, and in an age of faceless startups who often seem more interesting in getting that next round of funding than making customers happy, one at a time, providing the best support experience you can is an easy way to get ahead.

Planning: Choose Your Software

The first thing you need to do is decide on the backbone that’ll be running your helpdesk. The software that every member of your support staff relies on needs to be top-notch, reliable and offer the features that your specific business needs to do a stellar job.

If you’re going to be running a call center, you’ll need to take a different approach to your completely digital brethren — tools from companies like NCH or Interactive Intelligence will prove useful.

Read the full article at below. Enjoy!

http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/05/31/how/