The service support chain to solve a particular customer’s problem usually flows from helpdesk to technician/engineer to field support representative (FSR), or some variation. What we want to focus on in this article is the support request that involves the FSR and requires good notes in the call history from both the helpdesk person and the technician or engineer.

Firstly, you need to make sure that accurate note taking and logging is enforced throughout the entire service support cycle. Encourage great work and discipline shoddy effort. All employees must take the note taking process seriously and the only way that will happen is if management takes it seriously. A huge frustration to customers is when they have to repeat their problem over and over again to different levels. Folks don’t mind confirming the problem, but they don’t like having to repeat it.

In order for the customer to have that experience, it is a must that at every level in the support chain they document and/or update the following:

• A detailed description of the problem.
• The error message, if any, or resulting negative output.
• How often it occurs.
• Step by step instruction on how to reproduce the problem, if reproducible.
• All information about the system and any recent changes to the environment.
• Customer information and product serial number.

These should be captured in a form that is clearly written (preferably type-written) and automated. The information should be part of a template that repeats the same information in the same manner each and every time. Again, an automated tool is highly recommended. Many tools now come with the ability to record the conversation. If you have such a tool that audio file should be available to the FSR so he can listen first-hand to the customer describe the problem.

However, no list can be complete. Many products differ widely and it is extremely useful to have the FSR’s review the forms and templates used for each product to evaluate if they are getting all the required information they need to do the job effectively. Moreover, you should have a periodic review with your FSR’s on a bi-yearly basis (or, as required) to ensure that the information gathered is meeting their needs.

Lastly, make sure the FSR reviews thoroughly the information he receives from the helpdesk, technicians and engineers before going to a call. It will mean more to your customer relations to have the FSR arrive a little late with all the information required then to arrive on time and have the customer have to explain the problem all over again. The latter makes the customer feel like the helpdesk was a waste of his time and has no value-added.

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Most folks have heard the story of the super keen service desk analyst that received a call from a panicked assistant, who spilled some coffee on her boss’s keyboard. The service desk analyst quickly figured that the cost of a keyboard replacement would be minimal, and that the situation would be best remedied by first calming down the assistant. So, the service desk analyst told the assistant to unplug the keyboard, wash it under a running tap, and then let it dry before plugging it back in. There would be plenty of time for the service desk analyst to send over a replacement keyboard while the assistant was performing these tasks. That afternoon, a furious service desk manager was looking for the idiot that told an assistant to run water over a $3000 laptop!

While this story is funny at first blush; at a deeper core level, it also highlights the absolute importance of the service desk team members asking the right questions. Reasons abound to support the importance of asking the right questions. Let us examine some of the most popular reasons and theories.

First, a major issue shared by most service desks is the overwhelmingly high volume of calls, which usually results in longer wait times for customers. Wait time is the number one complaint that customers have about the service desk, and anything that can speed up this process will undoubtedly increase customer satisfaction. Thus, it is extremely important that when a customer does speak with a service desk team member, that the team member can quickly diagnose the problem and get the proper technician or department involved. The ultimate effectiveness of this series of actions is foremost dependent upon “correctly understanding the problem.”

Therefore, regardless of how frantic or chatty a customer may be in explaining the problem, the service desk analyst must ensure that he or she has systematically asked the standardized questions designed to diagnose the problem and then guides the customer towards the correct solution. Moreover, diagnosing the problem correctly the first time will speed up wait time significantly because an incident ticket will not be sent to the wrong assignment group—thus eliminating the customer’s need to waste time waiting in the wrong group’s queue or to repeat his or her stories to a new support engineer.

Furthermore, collecting data metrics on your products is an intricate part of any business model. Data collection regarding service support normally comes from two areas: 1) the service desk and 2) the service provider.

Using Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) software, the service desk logs an incident under a certain category when the call comes in, and the service provider engineer will log the problem under the appropriate resolution category when the incident is resolved. Thus, managers can review and decide where they need to spend money on resolving product issues, either by patches or upgrades. If your service desk is misdiagnosing the incidents, or not quite fully understanding the incidents and miscategorizing them; as a result, the manager will not receive the accurate and precise metrics that they require. Thus, the whole company becomes affected for many change releases because the proper resources were not working on the right problems. This whole process begins with your service desk team members asking the right questions and ensuring that they completely understand the problems being explained by the customers.

Finally, one of the main objectives of your service desk is to instill customer confidence. When a good service desk member quickly guides a customer through explaining his or her problems, and then either resolves the incident or connects the customer to the correct service provider for resolution, the customer gains great confidence in both the product, and, by extension, the company. However, as a manager, you do not want customer confidence to be exclusively dependent on the temperament of your service desk team members. While you may have a fantastic service desk team, every member has bad days, and every team member makes mistakes. Thus, it is extremely important that the service desk manager has good service desk practices that ensure the proper and standardized questions will be asked up front—every single time; and that each and every problem will get answered and resolved in a timely manner. Moreover, the incident will be logged under the proper category; and if it is a reoccurring problem, it will be addressed in the form of future patches and versions.

In sum, the first contact with the customer is important because it affects the entire service desk process. Additionally, it is equally important for service desk managers to ensure that their service desk team members are asking the right questions. Many service desk managers often overlook and underestimate this aspect of the service desk. If you already have a good bank of clear and concise questions, make sure you continually review and test these questions to validate that they are still the right ones. Otherwise, the whole company will eventually be affected.

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