3 keys to an all-star helpdesk

Your IT department may have the skills, but can you back it up with efficiency? At the end of the day, response time can seem just as important as sheer expertise when it comes to a reliable helpdesk.

Newmind Group’s IT helpdesk tackles hundreds of support tickets every week, so we spoke with our team about how we stay as productive as possible, and broke it down to three simple tips.

Documentation

When you’re juggling many clients or end-users, clear documentation is the easiest and most effective way to stay efficient. If too much time is being spent on researching issues and solutions every time an issue gets called in, your response times will plummet! Our preferred tool for ticket tracking is Zendesk, which helps us look back on tickets and pertinent information quickly and easily.

It also works well for sharing permissions between two companies, which is a no-brainer for an MSP who needs to quickly share tickets and reporting with a client. Beyond Zendesk, we also keep client files in Google Drive, with links and information pertinent to troubleshooting their issues in the past. The less time we spend on personally researching a solution, the better. Having a template for how to keep notes can help your team maintain clear and informative documentation.

Communication

Quick, clear communication can significantly reduce your response time in both critical and day-to-day situations—this inhibits some helpdesks where staff are geographically separated (according to skill level, for instance). On Newmind’s team, our helpdesk team works closely with higher technicians, and rapid internal communication has played a big part in solving problems quickly! Good communication between the helpdesk and the user is a given, but you can lose certain things in translation if you don’t take care to communicate well with teammates.

Stay on your level

There comes a point where a problem simply becomes too complex for the helpdesk team to continue spending time on it, and it’s important to recognize where that line is. If your priorities as an IT helpdesk are to solve issues and keep response times down, then you don’t want to get mired in high-complexity issues.

When we reach points like this, our help desk coordinates a hand-off where the problem goes to a happiness engineer, who has the time to dedicate towards deeper tasks. Below is a map of where new tickets go as soon as an end-user reaches out to our helpdesk:

Could your helpdesk use some extra bandwidth? You should check out these 3 ways working with a Managed Services Provider can increase your IT team’s efficiency! If it sounds like our IT helpdesk philosophy would be a good fit for your company, you should give us a call to learn more about our team.