Tips for success at your IT service desk

1. Understand the "reason for being" of your IT service desk

Given the increasing popularity and availability of IT support and ratings and blogging best practices with information about it, it is easy to follow the herd. Instead, for your IT service desk to truly meet the needs of the organization and the employee, you must first understand their "raison d'etre". This will encompass, among other things, the type of service desk that should be, for example, low cost versus high-touch, where there is more intervention by people and is therefore more expensive.

2. Remember that it is actually people support, not IT support

Of course, names don't help, from the IT help desk, through the IT service desk, to IT support. We assume that long ago, IT support was really about supporting IT, however today, it's about getting services and people back up and running as quickly as possible, minimizing downtime and offering at least an acceptable customer experience.

3. That your ITSM tool does not limit you

Just because your ITSM tool works in a particular way, or doesn't x, y, or oz, doesn't mean you should meekly accept it as the status quo. Ask your current tool provider about other possibilities (and ideally based on how you want the tool to work for you). If you can't do what you need to, then it might be time to consider alternative options (but not before considering many of my other nine tips).

4. Take into account customer advice as well as free consulting

Your IT service has likely captured end-user feedback for as long as you can remember. But what do you really use it for? We are not only talking about complaints (or the like) but also applause. Feedback potentially contains a wealth of information about what certain people do well, which can be developed as well as improved upon as needed.

5. Measure the status quo of your IT service desk against customer expectations

This will be far-reaching and should cover contact channels (variety and quality), opening hours, objectives of service level agreements for incident resolution and provision of service requests, among other things . An important learning point you could discover is that the industry best practice you have adopted may not be in line with your customers' expectations in 2019.