Define "What Has Value" at help desk ?

Generally speaking, any call where someone is looking for free advice would have no value. eg. how can I overclock my cpu?. In cases like this you should politely suggest the person bring the computer to you. Not sure if you are an "in house" help desk, or a repair centre.

How does your manager define "value"? If you are providing support for your corporate users then any time you help an employee get back to doing productive work has some value, hard as it may be to quantify, to the company. You've got to face the fact that a help desk doesn't generate revenue and will always be looked at as an expense. If you spend all day re-setting Lusers passwords because they're careless (#1 help desk time waster) then the company needs to do a better job of educating employees. Of course you can't just hang up on someone who locks themself out. On the other hand, if you're helping to resolve an issue that results in improved efficiency of users, then you are providing value.

I agree with the second poster, it is obvious that training is extremely important in reducing unnecessary Help Desk/Call Center calls. There are many users out there with equipment on their desktops that they just have no idea how to use. If you add to this equation the fact that some of these users, do not have any intention to understand their computer, you see the problem that many Call Centers face. I have seen situations where the Call Center is inundated with "valueless calls" over a known problem that everyone is struggling to correct. The best solution that I have seen is to have a three level Call Center. The first would simply log the calls and if it is something that they are trained to resolve then to take care of it (these should be the shortest of the calls - like taking a message, with the exception that they must get the best possible description of the problem). The second level would try to resolve the problem with remote tools, etc. and if necessary physically visit and resolve issues. The third level would the escalation to the "expert"s. Sometimes without any intervention, some of these calls resolve themselves with a system reboot, etc. I would not recommend as the first poster, that you should tell the users that they should bring in their (personal) systems for you to work on. This makes you and/or the Help Desk liable for any problems that might arise during or afterward. Hope this helps.

The way to filter out "time waster" calls is to get them to fill in a form that will charge them a set fee if their call turns out to be "user abuse"
This worked for a company I worked for in the early 90s.We had contract customers and ad hoc customers,customers on contract had free support incl hardware except in cases that were deemed to be negligent on the part of the customers.
I would add that in all companies I have worked for,"help desks" do not produce revenue directly but usually indirectly because a customer may decide to buy a product that they can get good support on

At a help desk, all calls have "value". yes there are abusive users, but you usually figure them out in a hurry. The whole purpose of a help desk is to assist users with questions/problems. If you do your job right, you should find the "valusless" questions decrease. One company I works at hired a sectary of limited skills. She would call our help desk 3-4 times a day. No one wanted to take her calls. In our staff meetings, the manager said put her in a low priority. But you know what, after helping this woman for 4-5 months, answering her questions, showing her ways to get her job done, her calls ended. She became proficient! Some months later, I pointed this out at a staff meeting, and we all realized, we had done our jobs. And done themwell. There was no extra money for the company or in our paychecks, but it's that kind of thing that tells you that you're doing your job right, that your making a difference, and that the calls, all of them, had value. End of sermon.

Gahhh!

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IMO, that manager of yours should be involved a bit more instead of placing the responsibility squarely on you to "figure out which ones have value".

That's a lot of BS and when I was managing the help desk it's the kind of thing that really pissed me off.

If there are no Service Level Agreements with your internal or external customers then you might as well treat all people the same otheriwse, you may become a scapegoat for decisions you and others make based on whatever the phone technician feels is right at the time.

If there is a business reason to treat one customer a different way than another, that's got to be a upper management decision and it should be explained to eveyone in support services. But too many businesses fail to consider the help desk's role in providing services to others and the result is that you are expected to play the roles of technician, trainer, psychologist and abuse-taker.

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