When the volume of help desk requests starts to rise, prioritization needs to happen before the situation quickly becomes overwhelming. Ad hoc prioritization (e.g. first come first served, he who yells loudest, etc.) leads to confusion and user dissatisfaction. Even smaller help desks can benefit from a clear set of rules. Create a help desk triage policy to align IT with business needs, ensure higher quality and timelier customer service, and to manage end-user expectations.
Are You on the Level?
Priorities set clear decision paths. Mission critical systems or problems that affect a large number of people should always come first (i.e. Severity Level 1). The bulk of reported problems, however, are often individual problems with desktop PCs (i.e. Severity Level 3 or 4). Some questions to consider when deciding on problem severity include:
- How is productivity affected?
- How many users are affected?
- How many systems are affected?
- How critical are the affected users/systems?