We have noticed in our referrer logs that we are getting a number of hits from people looking for specific tech support desks, like Dell or HP. It must be all that new Christmas gifts that are now being installed and people needing help.
One speciality of tech support is IT Tech Support, where the IT department can help out their internal customers. There are a number of providers out there that will provide the software to run your IT help desk.
The main focus of IT help desk software is to provide formal structured support to an organization. All IT tasks are tracked using the helpdesk system, which helps the company maximize IT resources. The purpose of this software is to track IT incidents, assets and priorities.
By using IT helpdesk software, a company can determine whether or not additional IT resources are needed. At a glance, an IT director can see how the current assets are being used and to what capacity via the help desk software. This helps in the decision to buy more equipment or to upgrade current equipment.
Some IT help desks include a client web interface which will assist an end-user in tracking their requests, and help to provide them with a timeline of when the task will be completed. This same help desk web interface could help the end-user walk through basic troubleshooting tasks to help them self-correct the problem without requiring IT department resources. This knowledge base (KBASE) or Frequently Ask Questions (FAQ) database could be used to help end-users solve common problems, or answer common how-to questions, such as, How do I schedule a conference room? etc.
The following are the basic compents any help desk with an IT solution should include:
- Incident and Problem Management: Manages and resolves business impact and IT infrastructure events, and guides root cause analysis to prevent future incidents and problems
- Asset Management and Discovery: Offers the benefits of a populated configuration management database.
- Change and Configuration Management: Helps IT to identify the IT environment related to critical business services, respond to changing business and IT requirements, and control all business-critical configurations in the IT environment
- Service Level Management: Aligns operational technical metrics and service desk processes with the priorities of the business.
Your readers may also be interested in an article I wrote about converting your Outlook based help desk to a more formal web based help desk product. I also did another on help desk management which is relevant as well, though it's in reference to my companies product.
Posted by: Ian | January 7, 2006 5:02 PM | Permalink to Comment