Discussion on:

Training tips can jump-start your help desk team

One of the most useful tactics I've discovered for training new Help Desk members is to rotate them through a session with each of my analysts. Then I ask the new hire with whom they would like to spend additional time.

Everyone has a different teaching style, and a different approach to customers. This increases the chances of finding a good "teaching fit". It also allows new hires to see help desk team members at different points in the learning curve: those who have mastered the technical stuff tend to build relationships with the end users, while those who are still learning the technical details are great sources for teaching the technical details--it's all still fresh in their minds, and challenges them to explain the concepts to a newer team member.

New hires will be helped by the tips that ctaylor and Jeff Davis give in their respective missives. Veterans probably won't. I'm currently working as a help-desk analyst/tech support/programmer, and even though I swore up and down I'd never work help desk again, this time it's different - it's not 8 hours on the phone. I go deskside, I work on "special projects", as do all our support staff. Certainly helps against the burnout.
I still will never work 8-hour phone days again. That's just asking for burn-out, no matter how good you are, how nice the end-users, or how supportive management is. Variety is what keeps me from burning out.
So what can be done about those poor souls in the 8 hour continuous phone shift? Two things - rotate offthe phones (doing documentation, reports, special projects, tech support - whatever), and management acknowledging the difficulty of the job. No one on help desk wants to hear "your time-to-resolution ratio is upsetting the group dynamic on my Excelchart, you're spending too much time with the caller." They'd rather hear, "the extra time you give to explain why the problem happened is lowing the call ratio from the department". What help desk analysts do takes a diverse skill set, and one thatis not always measurable by those tools managers learn to use in their MBA classes.
Disclaimer - this applies to real help desk people, not customer service people reading a script off their monitor. Don't even get me started on them. How to tell the difference? Ask a question right after answering their questions on your PC configurations, and see how much it throws them. I've had two encounters in the past week like that. It took me at least 5 minutes to convince the boy on the DSL helplinethat my PC did not have a name like Dell or Gateway on the box, because I built it myself. He didn't know you could do that!!!!

All of the suggestions and information that you have made are flawed. You seem to think that most of the help desks that customers call are free flowing and the consultants are highly technical in nature and have degrees in that area. Most of themare Community College Educated and have no practical experience. Therefore, these companies make the help desk consultants read from scripts, and in most cases if it is not in a script, then there is no problem. It is well understood why customersleave large corporations because of the "help desk experts" who suggested the scripted support in the first place have no idea on how to do support. Get rid of the scripted support, hire qualified people with outstanding PD Common Sense and your "help Desk Rage" will turn into a Thankful job.

- And Yes, I am a Helpdesk veteran.

Speaking as a burned out tech supporter, none of these ideas would bump me back onto the path of being happy with this business. What would be nice would be end-users who read through the "how-to" documents that we have on our web site that answer 90% of the calls we get, a menu driven phone system to separate the riff from the raff, coworkers that show up on time, and a boss that treats us like we are more than just an extension of the janitorial staff. I realize that this is a thankless business, at least from an end-user standpoint, but if you really want to keep the help desk staff happy, show some heartfelt appreciation. Thanks, not playacting and gimics, will bring about the change in attitude for your help desk veterans.

I share the sentiments of Ryan67203 wholeheartedly. Being a burned out tech support analyst, I strongly agree that play-acting and having the supervisor sit with me to review calls certainly isn't going to motivate me as an analyst, especially when you have a supervisor that feels each and every call you take should be with this perky upbeat "I can conquer the world" attitude no matter how many calls a day you take, and for management to realize that we are not machines, yet human beings. I would suggest management offering some little incentives (free movie passes, paid lunch once a month, company merchandise) to analysts who maintain good strong consistent support. Yes we get a paycheck, but this is truly a burn-out, thankless job and perhaps those little incentives could revitalize the analysts who do support a call center. Another suggestion is to provide fairness to all analysts, not allowing favoritism to rear its ugly head which allows a "pet" analyst time off the phone consistently under the guise of working on a project. Over a period of time, this type of "special treatment" surely is recognized by the other analysts which ultimately creates an atmosphere of discontentment.

I agree with you - this article is not a "jump-start" for current personnel, it could be used for a starting point for new tech support personnel, or a new start up support team.
I also like the suggestions made, incentives, real appreciation, and rotation is a must.
The "funny" bulletin board could fall into the wrong hands and be taken out of context. I think it would be dangerous.
Read and listen to some fo the stuff on: www.helpdeskfunnies.com
Users can get scary.

Getting users toactually read or understand is an uphill battle. I'd love to see seminars or training sessions offered for clients. (if anyone would show up)

my 2 cents

Annie, your link to helpdeskfunnies is 404...

I thank the good Lord that I was released from the bonds of being a Helpdesk 'Guru'. I'll agree with Ryan on most sentiments except the automated phone system. Even after the riff raff is seperated, you generally are going to get the worst of the bunch and they're going to be in a bad mood when they finally do get through. I would also say that Management MUST be willing to spend the $$$ necessary to get the tools that the techs need. If you have people calling techs who have never even seen orheard of what these people need help with other than last weeks memo then the support will be bad, people will be calling back a little more irritated each time....And we all know where that will lead.

I have to agree with jbruton about the automated phone system. I have been on both sides of the helpdesk and nothing makes me madder (than to have tried everything mentioned in my books and recommended by coworkers) to call somewhere for help and get an automated response system. I would prefer a message that says leave problem description and callback number.

Addtion to my last post:
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Tools for my job, and I'm not talking about improvments that makes my phone ring more. When I say tools, I mean things like decent Remote Control Software (the company replaced PCAnywhere with an IBM product that takes a reboot and 2-5 minutes to form a connection), A knowledge base that are not missing keywords (no wonder we don't use it - nothing worss than looking for an error you know is in there but your search doesn't bring a hit), a stream lining of policies and procedures (less of those I have to remember the better), a clear list of exceptions to the rules (ie we only support IBM PC's, but at this location we support HP - or we don't support Novell, except at these locations), a computer at mt desk that can have more than 4 programs open at once (my pc was 2 years old when I got it 2 years ago)

One really nice thing to have is some empowerment - not being told that an idea is not possiable right now.Sorry this sounded more like a moaning session, but again I'm in my 15th hour of my day now.