Reimagining Your IT Service Desk

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on IT teams. The current crisis has highlighted existing weaknesses while creating new challenges for service desk teams. So how can companies reimagine their IT service desk so they can get back on track?

Have you checked in with your IT service desk lately? How have they coped with the impact of COVID-19 and a remote workforce?

Chances are, how well your IT has been able to handle these changes has had a significant impact on how your organization transitioned as a whole.

CHALLENGES FOR IT TEAMS

As we approach the six-month mark of when companies sent their workforce to work from home, IT teams are still grappling with doing more with less.

Possible impacts could include:

• Reduced IT budgets
• Reduced staffing
• Increased number of tickets related to new devices and environments
• Compatibility issues
• Increased security and privacy concerns
• Managing ongoing training and support for end-users
• Managing new remote support tools
• Securing company data and information

All this can amount to IT tickets stacking up, resulting in lower satisfaction by end-users and higher workloads for IT professionals. Neither of these is desirable scenarios for businesses. Here are a few ways that companies can increase productivity and user satisfaction for their IT teams.

REIMAGINING YOUR IT SERVICE DESK

Here are a few tips to lighten the load for your IT team.

Setting up a Knowledge Database

Why reinvent the wheel each time the same question comes up? Today’s office workers are more likely to be able to do a certain amount of self-service when it comes to IT issues, and some people may even relish being able to understand how things work. Over time, self-education reduces and even eliminates the need for repetitive, easy-to-solve service desk tickets—a win-win.

Perhaps an individual on the team holds knowledge about a particular type of ticket or system. Or you might notice that there are common tickets that are frequently arising. Have a person on your IT service desk team document the fix and make it accessible for your workforce. Make it a regular practice to add to the knowledge database and update them with new best practices.

Seek Feedback

Ask for feedback from users and customers. There might be an issue that was creating a bottleneck, or you might uncover a way to improve the end-user or customer experience that wasn’t apparent until you asked for specific pain points by employees and customers.

Whether the feedback is negative, neutral or positive, this will help your IT team improve their performance over time.

Look into Hiring a Managed IT Service Desk

Having a dedicated on-site IT service desk team has its advantages. As a natural result of being on-site (pre-COVID), it was likely that the team got to know your employees and management. Working closely on-site meant your service desk team had a rapport with your workforce. Pre-COVID, it was also advantageous to have a dedicated on-site team to respond to any tickets immediately.

A lot of these benefits post-COVID have waned. With most office workers working from home, including IT professionals, there is no added benefit of being on-site. What’s more, your IT team still works regular business hours while some of your workforce might need IT assistance during irregular hours.

As a result of these changed circumstances, many organizations are moving towards the externally managed service desk model because of cost savings, better IT resource allocation, and 24/7 support.

By hiring an external service desk, you’ll be covered 365 days a year, seven days a week, 24 hours a day if any emergencies or security breaches occur. This can increase productivity for workers who might keep odd hours, especially following COVID-19, if part or all of your workforce works remotely. It also means you’ll receive immediate service if a security breach occurs and time is of the essence.

You’ll also be freeing up resources for your IT team so they can stop putting out fires and instead move on to high-value tasks such as proactively implementing new technologies and finding areas where it can increase productivity.

Hiring a managed IT services desk also means your company enjoys the expertise of many individuals as well as their robust resources instead of a smaller team with fewer resources.

Find out more about what our US-based team of service desk professionals can do for your organization.