Since the Coronavirus pandemic, the use of help desk support in all industries has increased by over 15%. This is a burden on any company’s ability to offer help to its customers and clients, but not all organizations even have a help desk. So, do you know what help desk support is and what makes a good example of one? 

Below we answer these questions, starting with describing what help desk support entails. As you read this article, you should not only learn to understand how to provide high-quality help to those who work with you or your products. 

What Is Help Desk Support?

An IT help desk is often an individual or a piece of software that aids someone who is having trouble with a computer-related issue. Organizations use them to track and resolve problems that occur in the day-to-day of an employee’s use of hardware or software.

Help desk software is the application that handles all this behind the scenes. By using this software, you can have assurances that information and schedules are not lost. You can also use many of its specific functions to improve the efficiency of a help desk support system.

The use of help desk software gives oversight to the whole team. A manager can scrape data from this software to give an at-a-glance look at how the IT team is doing. From that, they can drill down into the data to uncover any reasons behind possible bottlenecks in the team.

This software improves a help desk team’s functions and helps them communicate with one another better. It also provides transparency to the whole team and beyond and to allow people to make better help desk-related decisions moving forward.

How Does an IT Help Desk Function?

When someone detects a problem in an office system, they can use an IT help desk to record this issue. A problem may not always be a breakage, but may be a recommendation of something to improve instead. More often than not, it is something that is bottlenecking the worker’s ability to be productive.

Examples of things that an IT help desk might need to handle include:

• Network stability issues
• Login username and password issues
• Problems with the interaction between devices
• Regular updates and maintenance
• Individual coding errors and bugs in software
• Requests for changes to help desk processes
• Requests for training
• Unlocking access to systems

When someone raises these issues, they create a single ticket. This ticket should contain as much information as possible. This helps the IT personnel diagnose and resolve the problem with the least effort.

IT help desk software then prioritizes that ticket based on any number of factors. It also passes it on to the employee who is best able to handle the type of issue that the worker raised. This creates a queue of tickets for the IT support help desk personnel to resolve.

One by one, the employees will claim a ticket and work on resolving it. Once resolved, the IT worker closes the ticket or passes it back to the person who raised it to confirm its resolution.

Why Have an IT Help Desk?

Some organizations may think that they are going to work seamlessly without an IT help desk or help desk support software, but this is a common misconception.

Many workers might have an understanding of the basics of computer problem solutions. This does not mean that they can handle complex errors, and they are more likely to create more problems by trying.

On top of this, IT help desk support allows specific people to dedicate their time to resolve any problems that may come up. If there are many priorities for the majority of an organization, many people will pass the buck. This means that minor issues, such as trying to solve another person’s login issues, will not move towards resolution.

As well as the solutions mentioned above, an IT help desk allows for a high level of information sharing. If an issue continues to crop up many times, you can use a single ticket to not only track the issue, but you can also provide contextual help for future times when a probem seems to be repetitive.

With such high levels of data on your IT functions, you can also retrospect on your IT performance with a greater degree of accuracy. This means that you can focus your attention on the biggest problems for the highest bang-for-buck when resolving issues.

In short, the many different functions and features of an IT help desk allow you to save money in the long run. This leads to a higher ROI for the whole organization and gives you an appearance of being a more professional outfit.

What Are the Signs of a Good IT Help Desk?

A business helpdesk, or IT helpdesk, is best served when it has the least amount of work to do. The simple answer to this question is that “the IT help desk is not busy”.

In truth, computer help desk support jobs are at their most efficient when people automate them. They can also rely on their organization’s rules to operate with less human interaction.

On top of this, an internal knowledge base could exist within the company. This can assist most workers with resolving their own issues instead of relying on the help desk.

Where to Get Help Desk Support Software

Now that you understand what help desk support is and how to use it to its highest potential,  you might want to look into investing in or upgrading your software. 

Lucky for you, the experienced team of IT specialists at Techromatic can discuss your specific needs and how our Helpdesk & End-User Support services can solve your problems right away. Send us a message to learn more about our help desk services.