Help Desk Support

Finding the right people to support your help desk is very important. They must have certain qualities. Help desk support can be either internal or external, meaning you can either hire support to work for your company or you can hire another company to support your help desk.

A help desk representative is a professional who supports, mentors, and improves the efficiency of computer users in an organization. Being a help desk rep requires having an in-depth knowledge of one or more applications and systems so as to be able to quickly and effectively help users--whether internal (users) or external (customer)--with their problems.

Duties of a help desk representative are:

• providing answers to computer users' problems
• supplying training and feedback to those users to lessen the occurrence of future problems
• troubleshooting difficult or unusual situations
• suggesting workflow improvements to management

Helpdesk support is generally an introductory technical role. A good understanding of PCs, operating systems, networking and applications, whether in-house or shrink-wrapped, is necessary for help desk personnel. Equally important to the help desk expert, however, are strong interpersonal skills such as effective listening, empathy, patience, and the ability to carefully walk a user through problem resolution steps, either remotely or in person. In terms of remote help desk support, the capacity to visualize what's taking place on the user's desktop is hugely beneficial.

When outsourcing the support of your help desk, research becomes the key, make sure you are getting what you pay for and that your customers will be treated correctly.

Here are some simple steps to choosing an outsource center for your help desk:

• Research the various help desks
• Get opinions of those who have already made the step to help desk outsourcing
• Make sure the help desk relationship is well-documented, so if part of the help desk agreement has been broken, it won't cost you.
• Make sure the cost of outsourcing is acceptable to your company

After looking into all these factors of help desk outsourcing, you still may want some guidance. There is a great tool out there just for that: www.outsourcing-toolkit.com; the cost is $199, and is well worth it to get the support you need.

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