The software supplier's support person was quietly
handling a system upgrade in the corner when the screaming started.
A raised voice became louder and increasingly aggressive until it
reached full volume, at which point it was punctuated by the sound
of a monitor crashing to the floor.
Such is life for IT support staff in some trading environments,
where already aggressive users under intense pressure are driven to
extreme actions when their systems fail.
So relates Simon Nugent, general manager of helpdesk software
supplier Infra, who says his staff have seen it all. "The support
person jumped up and thought 'my god, what is going on here?' but
the helpdesk guys were used to it," he says. "Someone had a crash
and lost the trade, and that can cost them millions."
Managing an IT helpdesk is never easy. Generally, helpdesk staff
must deal with all types of query: from the technology neophyte who
doesn't know how to turn on a PC, all the way through to the
would-be hacker who thinks he knows it all - until he deletes a
registry setting and has to call in a support person to fix it.
Helpdesks facing such challenges can easily gain a bad
reputation. If response times dip below a certain threshold or if
helpdesk staff find themselves unable to resolve a certain number
of problems, the system can easily decay into chaos.
If people lose confidence in the helpdesk, they may try to find
their own solutions, or appoint a departmental "expert" who did IT
at school. That can lead to inflated IT support and management
costs, and can also damage the image of the IT function within the
business at a time when management disillusionment and flattened
budgets mean that corporate computing departments need all the
friends they can get.
One of the most common mistakes that IT departments make when
creating helpdesks is not to have a clear understanding of the
business, warns Pat Bolger, sales director at helpdesk software
supplier Hornbill Systems. "A classic example is an accounts or HR
and payroll department. A problem that those guys report at the
start of the month may be minor as far as the impact on them is
concerned," he says. "But that same problem could have a major
effect at the end of the month in the middle of a paycheck
run."
This lack of business knowledge can be a particular problem when
outsourcing your helpdesk to a third-party provider. It caused
headaches for Darren Ward, IS service delivery manager for English,
Welsh and Scottish Railways, which operates freight rail services
across the three regions. The company had outsourced its helpdesk
but was experiencing a very low fix rate. It brought the helpdesk
back in-house after deciding that workers within the railway sector
experiencing IT problems could be best served by people who
understood the industry.
"It is a 24x7 business. There are not many comparable
industries," says Ward, adding that the outsourcing provider
supplied different tiers of service - specialist staff were
available during peak hours, with more general support staff
working during out-of-hours periods.
The problem was that there are no out-of-hours periods in rail
freight, which meant that employees calling the helpdesk with
queries about certain applications at the wrong time would be
unlikely to get a quick resolution. "It really necessitates a
detailed understanding of how the rail infrastructure is actually
run, and the more in tune the IT department can be with that, the
better the service will be to the business," he says.
One of the other issues with the outsourced helpdesk service was
a lack of formal processes, says Ward. "There was a general feeling
of an ad hoc nature. Incidents were fixed, but no one could put
their finger on why or how they were fixed," he recalls.
To reverse this trend, EWS Railways used the IT Infrastructure
Library (ITIL), a set of documents outlining processes for IT
service management developed by the Office of Government Commerce.
ITIL, which was extensively revised in 2000, offers eight core
titles, including security management, service and support and IT
infrastructure management.
The company, which used Unicenter management tools from Computer
Associates, also focused heavily on asset management as an
underlying tool to help provide helpdesk services.
Understanding the equipment that employees are using is a
crucial part of servicing that equipment, and EWS Railways was in
the special position of being able to replace its whole IT
infrastructure from the servers downwards. It is putting Computer
Associates client-side agents into every new system and is using
Unicentre's Autodiscovery tools for legacy equipment that is in the
process of being replaced.
Another benefit of running the EWS Railways helpdesk in-house is
that Ward has better visibility of the numbers and types of
incidents arising within the organisation. This is an important
step towards refining ongoing service, especially self-service
mechanisms.
Self-service support appeals to Paul Copley, team head of the
customer information centre at electronics supplier Sharp. He uses
Hornbill's Supportworks helpdesk software to manage his
customer-facing helpdesk, which includes a knowledge base created
using the software.
"We are trying to drive for self-service for the customer. One
reason is to make it more cost-effective for Sharp, but the other
reason is that if we can provide it immediately for the customer,
they are sorted," says Copley, who points out that the company does
not staff the phones on a 24x7 basis. Putting a knowledge base in
place helped to reduce the helpdesk's incoming e-mail traffic by
45% compared to 2001, when it used its previous helpdesk software,
which did not include a knowledge base facility.
On the other hand, self-service has to be treated with care,
warns Max Staines, president of Compass Management Consulting's
North American operations. "A cynical person could look at it as
abdication of responsibility. In a well-functioning corporate IT
business relationship, the business owners are part of that
decision," he says.
"That does not always happen - the IT group is keenly interested
in reducing costs and this can often take a unilateral approach."
Taking self-service too far will frustrate users, whereas
emphasising the most common, simple problems can make it a helpful
problem resolution tool for end-users while taking some of the
pressure away from helpdesk staff.
Staff represent a critical point of failure that can be
overlooked on many helpdesks. Craig Parry, training officer for the
Wales & West Midlands region in the Defence Communications
Services Agency, Directorate of Information Services Delivery,
focused heavily on improving staff expertise and morale. He wanted
to help build a better image for the newly merged helpdesk
operations for two agencies - the Defence Procurement Agency and
the Warships Support Agency, which is part of the Defence Logistics
Organisation.
Training firm QA put together a custom course to train helpdesk
staff in the Microsoft certified desktop support technician
qualification. The MoD also certified staff in the
supplier-independent A+ IT support qualification.
"Helpdesks have typically had a high turnover. A lot of people
come into the helpdesk as a stepping stone and often do not stay
for the two years we envisage them staying," says Parry, who adds
that the training is making a difference in the stability and
capability of the helpdesk workforce. "It has made our people more
versatile. So they are able to help out and troubleshoot a bit more
in other teams, should the need arise."
Such training is crucial if your helpdesk is to become more than
a call centre in which front line staff do little more than log and
forward queries.
Integrating your helpdesk software with other tools such as
asset registries is therefore only one part of the solution.
Getting to the point where you can offer guaranteed response times
and increase your problem resolution rate involves a mixture of
well- defined processes and well-trained people.
Ideally, using data from the helpdesk to help identify commonly
recurring problems can enable a company to create a positive
feedback loop allowing it to take preventative action, either by
feeding solutions into a knowledge base or FAQ,, or preferably by
targeting the problem with user training or by modifying system
builds.
Once you get to that stage, you can finally begin branding your
helpdesk as a service within the company, perhaps putting its
telephone number or URL on items such as coffee cups and mouse
mats. If you build it (and run it properly), they will come.