Software

3 Tips for Successful Help Desk Solutions

These pearls of wisdom will ensure your company's help desk gets the job done right.

Heather B. Hayes has been covering technology, business and education topics for more than 20 years and has written more than 2,000 published articles. She lives in Virginia.

When deploying a new help desk system, heed the following advice:

1. Map Out Your Processes

Before going shopping, organizations should develop processes for incident, request, change and problem management and create a flow chart. “That way, you know what you want to do, who does what and how the workflow process works,” says Steve Villalpando, manager of IT governance and service delivery for the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation. “Once you have a defined, mapped out process, it’s repeatable by everyone, and you can choose a tool that supports it.”

2. Don’t Jump Too Quickly

Before moving forward with implementation, take the time to write down your expectations of a help desk tool and what you want to accomplish. “There are a lot of little things that need to be configured, and if you do one thing the wrong way early on, it could affect you further down the road,” says Bob Kay, IT network and operations manager for Vistex.

3. Take a Balanced Approach

Organizations need to invest just as heavily in their processes and people as they do technology. “If I’ve got dummies on my help desk, it doesn’t matter what tool I bring in, they’re still dumb,” says Jeffrey M. Brooks, research director at Gartner. “Too many organizations hyper-focus on the software as the integral component of the help desk, and it really isn’t. The technology is just a tool, not a cure-all.”

For more information on help desk solutions for your business, read our story "Finding the Right Help Desk Solution for Your Business."

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