THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN STARTING A
SERVICE DESK Competitive pressures and tough economic times are forcing companies to do more with less. This mindset spans all industries and resonates with organizations large and small. To remain competitive, let alone survive, you must find ways to improve service and support. Today’s corporate service desk and support operations have emerged as a primary means to achieve significant productivity gains and improve all aspects of business. ITIL also considers service desk as a corporate nerve center, providing a centralized resolution tool to quickly address inquiries, issues,
requests and problems coming in from employees, customers and partners.
What is a Service Desk? - Service desk is the first point of contact for the company. The first point of contact can be known by a
number of titles in different organizations, such as a help desk, call center or service desk. It not only handles incidents, problems and requests for information, it also provides a route for customers to interact with all IT
processes including change requests, procurement, service level management, job scheduling etc
Benefits of a Service Desk – A major advantage of a service desk is the fact that it is a single point of contact for customers and service technicians. It provides communication, information, and resolutions to customers who have issues with their IT infrastructure. It delivers quick and responsive resolutions to busy individuals located all over the world and that small fact can be the difference between an organization’s success and failure.
Service Desk structure- There are a number of ways to provide service desk facilities within an organization. Deciding which structure to use must be made during the
planning phase. The different types of service desks are centralized service desk ( it supports all users regardless of their geographical location), decentralized service desk (it has number of service desks located at various geograhical locations) and virtual service desk ( it combines elements of both centralized and decentralized service desk).
Things to consider when starting a service desk - It is extremely important to clearly define and document the purpose and goals of the service desk. There are many things we should consider when implementing a service desk.
Know your user base –
Internal customers or External customers- The customers supported by a service desk may be internal users of an organization’s IT infrastructure, or they may be external customers. Depending upon the type of customer, the company has to lay down its objectives and decide the type of services a service desk has to provide.
Sophisticated or unsophisticated tools–The service desk is typically challenged with ever-dwindling resources and ever-increasing requests for service and support. The company has to decide whether to manage the service desk operations using manual, paper based procedures, e-mail stored on a single person’s drive or sophisticated tools like web based service desk.
C) Creating a schedule- The number of people required to staff a service desk is usually determined during a planning phase. When assigning personnel to specific work schedules, the two most important considerations are:
What
hours will the service desk be open for business?
How many individuals must be available to staff the desk for those hours?
Scheduling must also make allowances for absentee employees. It must also make allowance for unexpected peaks or valleys in service desk activities.
Determine your supporting technology - There are a number of tools and technologies available to support the service desk like telephone, e-mail, web based HTML, fax.. So the type of tool and technology to be used has to be decided when starting a service desk.
Define your processes and response parameters-
Defining processes early in the planning stage of the project enables to be in alignment with what the company hopes to accomplish. Once the service desk processes has been defined, the next step is to determine how to convey the information to customers. There are a variety of ways depending on who the customers are and their location.
4. Managing of service desk with knowledgeable personnel
A service desk personnel needs to be master of many essential skills with a mindset to match. Some of the essential skills required by a service desk professional are good communication skills, cool composure, forthrightness, responding quickly to requests for information or assistance, flexibility, real passion for computer technology, resourcefulness and an ability to learn from many angles.
Regionalized service desk approaches to address long or continuous hours of operation- Establishing the service desk’s open hours is very important. The services might be required 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This information should be determined during the planning phases of the service desk project.
Once the hours are established, it is possible to assign individuals to work specific shifts and provide adequate coverage throughout the appropriate time frames.
6. Managing costs and cost recovery -
When planning and developing a service desk, it is also essential to consider the costs involved and how to charge the costs back to customers.
So, an efficient service desk can be a strategic asset that offers tangible value and measurable ROI. More companies are realizing how this capability can be a competitive differentiator – especially in today’s economic climate – and improve their bottom-line while increasing customer satisfaction, retention and productivity.
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