The first and most immediate interaction between your company and your customers will come at the service desk. In many organizations these positions are considered entry-level positions. While this may be true, given the importance of that first impression, it would be extremely valuable for your organization to consider a certification program for you helpdesk employees.

There are a number of routes organizations can take to getting their helpdesk employees certified. You should first and foremost research into what helpdesk certification actually is and means. In most cases, companies that provide helpdesk certification offer courses in Helpdesk Etiquette, technical etiquette, computer skills required for helpdesk operators, helpdesk terminology and best helpdesk practices. Or, some version of that skill-set. What is essential is that they also offer an exam that verifies the certification information learned and also adds some credibility to the entire process.

An avenue that I have consulted business in pursuing is a helpdesk certification train-the-trainer program. By that, I mean that your business choose your senior (or who will be your senior) helpdesk personnel to take part in a formal helpdesk certification course. They then come back and develop a helpdesk training program for the entire organization based on what they took part in and learned. What this gives you is an extremely cost effective helpdesk training program that is also tailored to meet the requirements of your organization. Also, having your own personnel develop and deliver the training re-enforces the material. In the end, this will develop very senior and knowledgeable helpdesk staff.

The benefit of having a helpdesk that is certified is many. First and foremost, you will have personnel that completely understand the helpdesk concept and how it should work and support the company. They will be shy to let you know when the company is straying away from the helpdesk mission, or if they don’t think the current structure is supporting that mission. Obliviously, having personnel certified ensures that they are qualified for the job they are doing and are thus, more confident in the job they are doing. Moreover, they will know what skill-sets it is that makes them better helpdesk professionals and, as a result, become aware of the need to constantly improve their active listening and problem solving skills.

You will see that the negotiating skills of you helpdesk staff drastically improve and you will have less and less high stress calls. Your customer – helpdesk interaction will become a more positive experience. Your customers will feel that they are interacting with a real professional that is focused on quickly and efficiently solving their particular problem. Thus, you will have folks that are not only experts in a certain technical aspect of the company but are also experts in being a proficient and valuable helpdesk specialist.

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The helpdesk is the face of your company to your customer. You require a dedicated and talented staff to deliver critical services that will define your company to the customer. Typically, these folks are educated and have great problem solving skills. They want to break into the IT technical field and typically the helpdesk job is the entry level position for those new IT techs.

Thus, you end up with a number of folks, in your helpdesk, that are looking towards their next job and not the actual job they are doing now. How do you keep them motivated? How do you keep it fun? How do you keep helpdesk personnel happy to be helpdesk personnel?

The answer is to be a great leader that values the helpdesk position and truly makes it a job that is the entry level for the next great IT technicians you will have in your company.

You should be offering or cycling your helpdesk personnel through apprentice tech positions on a weekly basis. I.E. A helpdesk person would work every 3 weeks on the helpdesk and one week in an apprentice tech position. The tech position requires some thought and ideally should be part of bigger program that is structured and leading towards certification within the company as a technician.

Of course the problem comes in that you do not have an endless amount of technician positions. However, folks should understand that they are number 1 for the next position available or number 2, etc. In the meantime, as you become more and more certified within the companies program it should result in higher pay. Good, qualified, motivated helpdesk personnel are invaluable and the modestly higher wage will be extremely valuable to the company in the long run.

Another, great way to build team unity with the helpdesk is making it a fun place to work. Not an out of control place to work, but a fun place. Some easy to implement ways to make that happen is encouraging holiday themes for the workplace, recognizing birthdays with pizza and cake, develop a recognition program that rewards exceptional service to the customer, organize a Crazy Friday for the last day of month where employees dress up or down and party food is served, or, have one day a month that the manager servers lunch to everybody.

Whatever you decide to do, use the philosophy that the helpdesk are your frontline soldiers. Great generals visit their frontline troops a lot, they give them great accolades and they promote those frontline troops to higher positions because they understand the battle space. You expect great things from your frontline troops so treat them as your companies greatest asset. Your helpdesk and your company will be prosper and grow beyond your expectations.

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Whether your helpdesk services external customers or internal employees you need to make sure that you have a clear Service Delivery policy that is plainly written and easily accessible to all who have a reason to use your helpdesk.

You may ask what a Service Delivery policy is? Well, it is a clearly defined document that outlines your helpdesk availability and your helpdesk service level priority description. That coupled with a great customer relationship management (CRM) tool will allow you to clearly calculate, define and re-calculate your helpdesk call response times and, more importantly, set clear customer expectations regarding response time.

Let’s first look at service availability. Service availability should clearly outline the hours of operation for your helpdesk and, if anything other then 24/7, the exact times for different regional locations. This should be large and clear, the customer should see this first and foremost and it should be available online, in product documentation, in workplace memorandum and/or via a recording in phone “welcome” message.

The service level priority description breaks down responsive actions by priority. These priorities can be: critical, high, medium, low, none or 1, 2 ,3 ,4 , 5. Then for each priority you would correlate a response time and a resolution time to each priority.

With this type of detailed matrix you can then give customers feedback that their problem is designated- “A level 1 priority and the expected resolution to their problem within 2-4 hrs.” Thus, the customer having seen this breakdown before contacting the help or service desk (because you have made this information available as per the instructions for the service availability information) now has a confirmation to what he expected would be a reasonable resolution time.

Now having outlined clear service response and resolution timeframes you can use the metrics that you capture with your CRM tool (many, many excellent tools are available) to track the following must-know metrics:

• Average time waiting for phone calls to when helpdesk answers
• Percentage of calls solved first time
• Percentage of incidents or service request breaching resolution time targets
• Customer satisfaction

With these metrics you can track whether you are meeting your response time goals and re-define those resolution time response and resolution times as required for your helpdesk, identify where you require more staff or identify choke points in your helpdesk.

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