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Manage Help Desk Staffing

Identify and hire staff with a unique blend of customer service and tech skills necessary for a successful help desk.

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Your Challenge

  • Getting the right help desk staff is critical.
  • Hiring help desk staff with a balanced blend of customer service and tech skills is difficult.
  • The wrong help desk staff can isolate users and damage IT's reputation.
  • Getting the wrong person is expensive; replacing them is at least 30% of their annual salary.

Our Advice

Critical Insight
  • Hiring help desk people with the right attitude and customer service skills is more important than technical skill
  • The help desk is IT's face to the business, put forward the best image possible
  • Cutting help desk staff, while tempting, will render IT less productive overall
Impact and Result
  • Effectively structure help desk resources to minimize cost while providing the necessary level of customer service
  • Hire staff with the right blend of attitude, customer service and technical skill
  • Intelligently trim help desk staff when times are tough

Get to Action

  1. Assess current resource levels.

    Understand optimal resource levels, skillsets and roles required to support desired service requirements.

  2. Determine the optimal help desk staff ratio.

    Maximize help desk customer service at minimal cost.

  3. Staff the help desk.

    Hire and retain the right help desk staff rather than a bunch of warm bodies.

  4. Deal with staff cuts.

    Minimize the impact of cuts to customer service and employee morale.

Tags

help desk, helpdesk, help desk staffing, help desk tenure, help desk training, help desk management, help desk performance, Help desk assessment, help desk maturity, help desk growth

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Identify and hire staff with a unique blend of customer service and tech skills necessary for a successful help desk.

Solution Road Map

Other Solution Sets in Help/Service Desk (ITIL/ITSM)

  1. Develop an IT Service Desk Strategy
    ITIL is not a strategy. You’ll have to develop your own.
  2. Vendor Landscape: Mid-Market Service Desk Software
    All-in-one functionality can be great, but don’t overcomplicate just because you can.
  3. Vendor Landscape: Enterprise Service Desk Software
    A good tool starts with a strong process foundation: you need both.
  4. Take the High Road to Service Desk Effectiveness
    Transform common knowledge into common practice.
  5. Manage Help Desk Staffing
    Identify and hire staff with a unique blend of customer service and tech skills necessary for a successful help desk.
  6. Ensure Service Delivery with Systems Management
    Dump the bottom-up approach to systems management, and manage services for success.
  7. Outsource or Repatriate the Service Desk
    Plan to repatriate, and you may never have to.
View the full Solution Road Map