Techniques To Improve IT Service

Create SLA

Having well-defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs) is always useful for companies that offer technical support services. It simplifies the job because both the service provider and the customer have defined few service agreements and these services are expected to be provided. Now, the use of these potential SLA customers can prepare the defined KPIs for agents. This allows you not only to establish the correct expectations for your customers, but also to measure the service you are providing.

Evaluate your expenses

It is always a good practice to know what you are spending and, especially when it comes to providing services, you know that your phone bill will skyrocket. So understand how many calls are made, along with the cost and purpose of those calls. In both cases, support agents make calls for basic ticket issues, such as password reset, then find an alternative to reduce calls for minor issues.

End-to-end track inputs

Documenting the status and any communication of a ticket is a good practice to follow, as it allows others to understand the problem at a glance. Have full transparency on when the ticket was generated, the first response, in the call or email interaction, the ticket data resolved and the comment problems. Another reason why total transparency is useful because if the original ticket owner fails to resolve, any other agent can step in and still understand what has been done or not. Customers should receive regular ticket status updates and agents should follow the progress of the ticket.

Product information

Experience in product knowledge is always advantageous and can be used in difficult situations. Many times, support agents rely on product managers to answer a few questions and that's where they waste time. Fast ticket resolution is important to your customers and in-depth product knowledge eliminates addiction. Understand the features, use the product / service and get information from the developers; This will help you better understand the product / service.

Read Also : help desk services

What is ITSM?

It's full of gossip. It can be difficult to keep track of all the techniques, formats, tools and accessories. With all of the uncertainty of IT in the world, there are three major things related to IT support that we often find confusing, confusing or otherwise:

• Service Desk (or "IT service desk")
• Help desk (or "IT help desk")
• ITSM ("IT Service Management")

Does it matter if you use the word help desk, desk or ITSM to describe IT support? It does - how can you disrespect or ignore your capabilities (to yourself or others) including IT support technologies.

What is ITSM?

IT management - often referred to as ITSM - is the same way IT controls the end result of providing IT services to customers. Includes all processes and activities for designing, creating, preparing and supporting IT. The basic tenet of ITSM is the belief that IT should be delivered as a service.

Because of their daily interactions with IT, people often define ITSM as their basic IT support. In contrast, ITSM services oversees all types of technology in the workplace, from laptops to servers, to specialized business applications.

The ITSM is typically implemented in a number of policies, as described by ITIL, the most widely accepted or widely used strategy in ITSM. Here are some of the following:

• Application management information
• Skill management
• IT certification resources
• Emergency
• Problem solving
• Change of management

You will notice that some of these processes, such as asset management, problem management and change management, do not include IT support. This is because ITSM covers all activities including providing IT to the company. Although the scope of ITSM is broad, the service and desk support are more descriptive and are only a small part of ITSM.

Also read : helpdesk services

Where do IT services come from?

The IT support function was born in the late 1980s as an ability to help solve IT problems. It was a highly technical feature focused on technology rather than end users. The early IT helpdesks did not have the concept of SLA or temporal goals for solving problems. It was only when ITIL entered the scene in the 1990s, capturing the best practices of IT services, that the concept of a user-centered IT service center began to emerge. The service center was seen as an essential part of "IT management as a service".

In the mid-1990s, research by Iain Middleton of Robert Gordon University revealed that the value stemmed not only from a responsive response to user problems, but also from the unique position of the help desk to communicate daily. with many customers or employees. Information obtained on technical issues, user preferences and what satisfies users can be useful for planning and developing IT services.

With the release of ITIL v2 in 2001, the Service Desk function and its role in incident and request management have become an important component of IT service operations in many organizations. Over the decade, globalization and increasing pressures to reduce IT operating costs have led many organizations to centralize the functions of IT services with many attractive third-party support partners to assist them. The outsourcing of IT service center functions has led to greater standardization of processes and growth in the help desk ticketing software market.

Modern technological trends, including cloud services, widespread use of third-party components in the IT ecosystem, and advances in discovery and monitoring capabilities have led to the integration of stand-alone support ticket systems into ITSM platforms more complete which act as center operations not only for IT support, but for the entire IT function. As businesses seek to modernize and pursue their digital transformation initiatives, the IT Service Desk is evolving again to focus more on business, with greater awareness of business processes and data, becoming in many case an integral part of commercial operations.

Also read: helpdesk services

Why is the helpdesk software important?

Get the "help" you need to ensure minimal or zero downtime. Whether it's the customer or the employees, nobody appreciates when the system isn't working and complaints are suspended. Having a system of support services leaves a positive impact in many aspects, such as an improvement in customer satisfaction, greater productivity of agents and some of the operational / commercial advantages.

Customer satisfaction

Customers want their query to be resolved quickly and with minimal effort. Delight your customers by ensuring first contact resolution (FCR). Keep customers informed by sending timely updates on the status of their complaint. In addition, it is easier for customers to ask for help through the channel of their choice. A support service ticket system creates a ticket for each customer interaction, regardless of the platform through which it originates.

Productivity of agents

Automate repetitive activity to help agents do more complex but satisfying work. Using the knowledge base, agents can access an information repository to help them effectively resolve customer complaints. In addition, having a unified interface will allow service managers to have a 360-degree view of the customer. Therefore, it allows them to serve customers better.

Business operations

Simplify the process to meet SLAs and prioritize certain actions when needed. Provide the supervisor with intuitive points and graphical data to effectively monitor the operation of the contact center. The supervisor can get an overview of the operations and can make informed decisions based on this data.

Read More: help desk support services

What is an IT help desk?

A help desk, in simple terms, is a tool that helps organize customer questions and requests and direct those questions to the right person in your organization, so they can be handled quickly and efficiently. It is likely that you have also used this term interchangeably with the service desk and, in some contexts, it is okay to use the help desk and the service desk to enter the same general context. However, a help desk is not exactly the same as a service desk, and there is a story behind the distinction that deserves to be understood (at least a little).

Help desk vs. Service desk
In 1989 the service desk concept began. Working together with the United Kingdom government, the IT industry in the United Kingdom first published ITIL, or Information Technology Infrastructure Library. This library contained the concept later known as the service desk. In accordance with ITIL best practices, the service desk is an intrinsic part of both an organization's IT department and general business operations.

While help desks traditionally work with users, one problem at a time as a customer service tool, help desks are designed to do more to guide the impact and efficiency of IT departments and users and organizations They have served. The role of the service desk is to continually evolve in parallel with the advancement of technology, becoming more integrated in the operations of your organization. A service desk solution does this by acting as a point of contact for service requests and user problems (as the help desk did before), but it also serves as a centralized solution for managing IT problems and all Changes in configurations that affect the entire organization.

The service desk is committed to enabling business processes by providing integrated support, adapting support to the changing needs of the business, sector and user base it serves. Its main function remains to restore the productivity of the end user by meeting with the user where he is (technologically speaking) and helping him solve the problems he faces. However, it does so in a broader context of features that drive the overall success of the Information Technology Services Management (ITSM) of the organization.
Read More : it help desk solutions

Responsibilities of a Support Specialist?

When first level support is contacted, they first collect customer data, such as name and contact. They also collect information about the customer's issue or concern and create a ticket / support entry.

This documentation should be as detailed as possible to ensure the best possible customer service and a smooth transfer of the request to the next level of support, if necessary.

High level support alone can solve a customer problem or problem. This can be done with your knowledge or by consulting external databases. The answers are often collected in a manual of frequently asked questions.

Larger help tables will have additional levels of support to handle more complex issues. As soon as a customer's request exceeds the level of knowledge or technical scope of the current support level, the concern goes to the next level. This means that if the first-level support technician cannot resolve the problem and needs more assistance, you can ask for more advice on second-level assistance.

In addition, first level support is responsible for providing accurate and up-to-date information on the company's products and services. In addition, they record events and problems and resolve them in the files.

In the event of in-depth questions, they monitor and update the status and information of customers and transmit their comments or suggestions to the appropriate internal team.

What are the daily activities and responsibilities of technical support?

• Accept initial requests by phone or email from customers

• Call / email activity log

• Manage support software or ticket system

• Solve and manage simple software, hardware, or network problems.

• Provide assistance with the company's products or services.

• Stay up to date with updates, changes within the company

• Search for questions on available resources (frequently asked questions manual)

• Delegate difficult problems to second level support

Also read : service desk outsourcing

What is an IT Service Desk?

What is an IT service desk?

The IT service desk aims to be a main point of participation between users and an IT organization. According to ITIL, the service desk is the only point of contact (SPOC) between the service provider (IT) and the users for daily activities. A typical service desk handles incidents (interruptions) and requests for assistance (ordinary service activities) along with the management of user communications for things like interruptions and scheduled changes to services. A service desk generally has a wide reach and is designed to provide the user with a unique place for all their IT needs. This leads the service desk to play a key role in facilitating the integration of business processes with the technological ecosystem and a broader service management infrastructure.

Where do IT services come from?

The role of the IT support service was born in the late 1980s as a support capability to solve IT problems. It was a highly technical feature focused on technology rather than end users. The first IT support services did not have the concept of SLA or time-based objectives for problem solving. It was only when ITIL entered the scene in the 1990s, capturing the best practices of IT service management, that the user-centered concept of the IT services table began to emerge. The service desk was considered an essential part of "IT management as a service".

In the mid-1990s, research conducted by Iain Middleton of Robert Gordon University found that the value was derived not only from a receptive response to user problems, but also from the unique position of the help desk for Communicate daily with numerous clients or employees. The information acquired about technical problems, user preferences and what satisfies users can be useful for planning and developing IT services.

With the release of ITIL v2 in 2001, the Service Desk function and its role in handling incidents and requests have become an important component of IT service operations in many organizations. As the decade continued, globalization coupled with increasing pressures to reduce IT operating costs have led many organizations to centralize IT service desk functions with many external support partners who have hired them. The outsourcing of IT service desk functions has led to greater standardization of processes and growth in the help desk ticket software market.

Modern technology trends, including cloud services, the widespread use of third-party components in the IT ecosystem and advances in detection and monitoring capabilities have led to the integration of independent support service ticket systems into more complete ITSM platforms which act as an operations center not only for the IT service desk, but for the entire IT function. As companies seek to modernize and move forward with digital transformation initiatives, the it help desk services

 is evolving again to focus more on the business, with greater awareness of business processes and data, in many cases becoming an integral part. the commercial operations of the companies.

Read More @ outsourced help desk services