the demand on the help desk has never been greater ... · the three principle ways help desk...

The demand on the Help Desk has never been greater. Technology has become the lifeblood of the modern business environment. Should that technology not perform as intended, the effects are palpable across the organization. The task of supporting this increasingly complex web of solutions and tools is massive, yet it’s one today’s Help Desks must be prepared to confront head on. Arraya Solutions is no stranger to life on the Help Desk. Many of our team members came up through the ranks, either leading or staffing Help Desks at some point during their careers. Our expertise isn’t merely informed by the past. As part of our Managed Help Desk offering, our team serves as an extension, or the entirety, of customers’ onsite Help Desks. As part of this service, Arraya has overseen support teams of all sizes, from within all verticals. The following 12 best practices have been drawn directly from the experiences of the Arraya team. They can be implemented right away to better position the Help Desk to contend with the challenges presented by an increasingly tech-reliant world.

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Submission refers to the process by which incidents are brought to the Help Desk team’s attention. This first interaction between the Help Desk and its supported users can have a tremendous influence on how the rest of the process goes. A good first impression can reverberate throughout the remainder of the interaction, while a negative opinion can be just as hard to shake. Should the Help Desk and an end user get off on the wrong foot, users may be slower to bring issues to the Help Desk’s attention in the future, potentially and unwittingly allowing problems to intensify.

Typically, submission is handled in one of four ways. Each of these methods has its own pros and cons.

Web Portal – In this option, employees log in to a company-branded portal and submit a pre-built form about their situation. An employee’s info and their answers are dropped directly into a service ticket. This is a great option for support teams as it provides them ample context they can leverage as they work toward solutions. However, it can also be seen as a slower (and less personal) avenue by concerned end users.

Email – This approach captures a user’s basic details, such and name and department, based on their corporate identity and email address. Meanwhile information about the problem can be pulled from the message itself. However, without a structured form, it’s unlikely employees will include everything support needs, resulting in a time-consuming, back-and-forth exchange. Email is also subject to the end user’s concerns surrounding expediency and openness, as described above.

Phone – This option represents the direct line to the Help Desk that many users crave, easing concerns about speed and personal service. Additionally, it provides Support with on-demand access to information as they initiate remediation. The challenge is on the back-end, as Help Desk staffers must enter the details required for service and incident tracking manually, increasing the risk of errors.

Live – End users often view live support as the most efficient way to get a problem solved, however, this is a fallacy. It pulls Help Desk staffers away from their current workload and asks them to gather context, develop solutions, and formulate solutions, all on the fly. They must do this with little more than their own knowledge of the technology, the organization, etc. Rather than increase efficiency, in-person support is more prone to errors than any of the other approaches to submission.

In some cases, Submission preferences are driven by cultural bias. For example, larger, predominantly remote workforces tend to be more accepting of email or phone support while smaller, onsite teams tend to


gravitate toward more personal avenues. Preference can also be established, on an individual level, if specific workers feel more comfortable with one method compared to another. Personal preferences aside, there is a way to juggle these varied approaches while keeping in mind what’s best for the end user and the Help Desk.

Best Practice #1: Steer submission based on severity

Regardless of how a ticket initially comes in, Help Desk leaders should attempt to guide users to the most appropriate communication option based on the issue’s severity (For more on determining severity, see Best Practice #5: Put a number on severity/priority). Low severity issues should be directed to self service. Medium severity issues can be responded to via email, while phone calls should be reserved for higher priority issues. Live support can serve as a next step to all of the above should an issue require escalation. By gathering as much context as possible before engaging in live support, it ensures the most efficient use of the Help Desk’s time while still facilitating a high-quality service experience.

Not all tickets are equal and neither are the users submitting them. An issue impacting a lower-level user in an organization is no doubt important to that person and worthy of the Help Desk’s attention. However, the scope of such a request is likely limited. A ticket that comes in from the C-Suite could have far-reaching implications given the person’s standing within the organization. The Help Desk is almost certainly aware of this and able to prioritize accordingly during the Submission process. Take a step down the organizational ladder, for example to the Director level, and priorities become less clear, particularly for Help Desk teams that often have minimal understanding of big picture business objectives.

Acknowledging that no ticket should go unaddressed for long, the Help Desk particularly can’t afford to allow issues experienced by high-priority business functions to remain untouched.

Best Practice #2: Know all of the organization’s VIPs

Ensure staffers recognize VIP tickets by automatically flagging requests from high-level users and placing them into a separate queue. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) (or agreements between the Help Desk and the business regarding what’s acceptable and what’s not in terms of service delivery) should be developed concerning how often staffers check this queue, how long tickets are allowed to remain in it untouched, and more. Addressing high-ranking tickets takes submission prioritization out of the hands of the individual and ensures decisions are based on business need.


Once a ticket has been submitted it must be allocated to a specific technician. This is known as the Assignment phase, a step that is focused on ownership. Assignment is about weighing a person’s experience, knowledge, and workload against the needs presented by a new ticket and finding the right team member to take ownership of it. However, that’s only one of several roles that may be assigned.

Owner – As described above, the owner of a ticket is like a quarterback on the football field. This is the person charged with orchestrating the work that goes into successfully closing a ticket. Chief among their responsibilities is managing ticket state. This designation indicates whether the ticket is open, closed, on hold, and more. It’s up to the owner to ensure state changes and updates fall in line with what is dictated by SLAs. Supervisor – The Supervisor is like the head coach. They are there to oversee the process, interject when needed, and essentially do what it takes to guide a project to a successful conclusion. Backup – In football, you never want to get caught with only one quarterback. If you do, and your starter gets hurt, the loss could be catastrophic. The same is true should the lead ticket owner need to step away. There must be a capable backup ready to step in without the project missing a beat. Tasks – These are fullbacks, centers, and placekickers. These are the members of the team who, while they lack the prestige of the quarterback, still have a vital role to play. In Help Desk terms, these are the technicians responsible for completing the individual tasks that make up a ticket. They may run diagnostics or implement updates. Whatever their responsibility, a game can’t be won (or a ticket closed) without their contributions.

A lot is riding on ensuring the right people end up in the right roles. Should a staff member be assigned a responsibility that is over their head, or one that they don’t have the bandwidth to complete, it can lead to significant delays or mistakes. That, in turn, can cause end users to lose faith in the Help Desk’s ability to support them.

The three principle ways Help Desk staffers receive assignments, and the pros and cons associated with each option, are as follows:

Programmatically – Assigning tickets programmatically means entrusting the Help Desk’s intake system to match staffers with tickets based on pre-built profiles highlighting each person’s strengths and weaknesses. This guarantees team members are only getting tickets they’re qualified to handle, but there is a possible drawback. An automated system may overload one team member while another goes underutilized. Vacation time can also present a problem should absent staffers continue to receive pressing tickets.


Queue-Based – In a queue-based system, all tickets enter into a workflow where they wait until a qualified technician becomes available to claim them, eliminating issues with overloading and capability. The cons of a self-assigned, queue-based approach were discussed earlier, however, in summation, leaving prioritization up to employees – particularly those who may not be in-tune with the company’s big picture objectives – allows too much room for personal preference to dictate action. Gatekeeper-Assigned – This approach positions a manager or supervisor in the role of Help Desk gatekeeper. As tickets come in, he or she must categorize them and assign them to an available technician. While the human element makes this approach better-suited to consider workloads and availability, it’s still not perfect. Managers are susceptible to biases and may favor assigning higher-priority tickets to one staffer over another. Additionally, requiring them to touch every ticket that comes in adds a substantial amount to their existing workloads.

Best Practice #3: Use a hybrid approach to queueing

Rather than committing to any one of the above-listed approaches, Help Desks should instead leverage a hybrid technique, incorporating manual and programmatic elements. When tickets are submitted, they can be programmatically assigned to a team member. However, if a ticket sits untouched for too long, a manager must intervene. What qualifies as “too long” is defined in the SLAs signed with a supported group. Should a ticket risk violating an SLA-established timeline, a manager must know to follow up on the status of the ticket and, if necessary, assign it to another qualified technician who will be able to act on it more quickly.

The typical structure of a Help Desk is a multi-tiered model. The intention behind this structure is to promote something of a funnel effect. As issues move across the various tiers, the volume of tickets decreases until only a few remain at the most severe level of escalation. This ensures team members assigned to this level are available to address the organization’s most challenging projects.

As tickets are reassigned in this way, it exposes the organization to the risk of an issue falling through the cracks. This could stem from a miscommunication during the hand-off from one staffer to the next or result from a technical mix-up. In either case, the ticket sits untouched and with the Help Desk unaware of any issue.


Best Practice #4: Preserve staff accountability

Accountability is key to preventing ticket stagnation. Preserving accountability requires Help Desk managers to instill policies which enforce the notion that ownership over a ticket doesn’t end the moment it is escalated. Instead, the ticket must remain locked to the original owner until the new owner commences work on it. Only when that occurs is the original owner freed of responsibility for the ticket. This approach ensures owners only pass tickets on to qualified, available technicians and encourages all personnel to take a more active role in ensuring tickets aren’t misplaced.

Help Desk leaders must rely on a diverse collection of mile markers to assist them on their quest to provide excellent service to their organizations. For most Help Desks, these mile markers are contained within their SLAs. Some of the core stages of the Help Desk process that should be governed by SLAs include:

First Response (or First Contact) – SLAs governing First Contact outline how long a Help Desk has to respond to a ticket that enters the system. This isn’t necessarily a pledge that the ticket is top priority. It’s simply a communication to end users that the Help Desk is aware of their problem and will begin remediation as soon as possible. Often, a timely response can do a significant amount to moderate user frustrations. Assigned/Escalated – This step marks the true start of remediation. It occurs when a staff member assumes responsibility for a ticket and begins, in earnest, to remediate it. The other piece of this, escalation, will not be a part of every ticket that comes in. However, should a task fall outside the purview of an initial responder, SLAs must consider how long that person has to move it on to a more appropriate, or available, member of the Help Desk team. Triaged – During this step, Help Desks determine the severity of a ticket. Once the assigned staffer understands the nature and necessary priority of the ticket, he or she can adjust their individual workloads accordingly. Resolved – Resolution time is going to differ greatly from ticket to ticket, based on the issue, workloads, staffer ability, and more. Some tickets may even be outside the Help Desk’s sphere of influence. For example, replacing a piece of hardware will require that others, such as finance and purchasing, get involved. SLAs must appreciate that, in such cases, resolution is no longer up to the Help Desk. For these instances, how long it takes to triage a ticket will likely be the last established timeframe the Help Desk will need to concern itself with.


If these stages are governed by SLAs and those SLAs are informed by the severity of an issue, the question remains: How should severity be gauged? Ask end users and, in their eyes, every request is going to be a code red, severity one event. Since user demands don’t always align with organizational priorities, it’s up to the Help Desk to amend their input with additional data to accurately prioritize incoming tickets.

Best Practice #5: Put a number on severity/priority

Severity can be determined by using a Severity Matrix. This tool measures the urgency of an issue (e.g., how long an end user can survive without a solution) and the impact (e.g., the scope). Using the information provided by users, as well as their own experience, a technician can complete the Matrix to determine the ticket’s priority. Example: If the urgency is high and the problem is widespread, a check should go in the box in the upper right corner of the Matrix. Once completed, the Matrix can be cross-referenced against agreed-upon SLAs regarding severity to allow the Help Desk to figure out a ticket’s acceptable timeframe.

Priority must be fluid and designation must be flexible. Consider what would happen if Help Desk staffers spent their day exclusively resolving top priority tickets while ignoring lower priority items. If this cycle repeated the following day, when a new slate of high priority tickets came in, eventually those lower priority tickets would start piling up. Before long, the users who submitted them might start to believe their tickets weren’t just low priority, but zero priority.

Best Practice #6: Keep your priorities flexible

Ticket priorities must be re-evaluated regularly. As tickets near their SLA-designated completion deadline, they should be assigned a higher priority level. If the current owner will be unable to address it, despite the new designation, the Help Desk supervisor should reassign the ticket to someone with greater availability to ensure compliance with the SLA. This type of sliding scale approach keeps high-risk tickets at the top of the Help Desk’s inbox and prevents low-risk tickets from being buried and potentially forgotten.


Every journalist knows a news story starts with the 5 Ws. Finding answers to the questions who, what, when, where, and why provides the backbone around which the story coalesces. In very much the same way, categories are the backbone of the Help Desk. Not only do they tell the story of tickets and provide valuable context, categories also help structure the processes at the core of the Help Desk itself.

Carefully curating a robust directory of categories enables Help Desks to:

More intelligently route tickets. Tying Help Desk staffers to specific categories based on their specializations adds clarity and ease-of-management to Assignment. This ensures tickets quickly reach those best able to remediate them. Gain greater insight into corporate tendencies . By running reports based on categories, Help Desk teams can clearly see which issues come up most often. This can lead them to expand staff size in overworked disciplines or take steps to better address frequently reoccurring issues through better user education or other corrective actions. Get to the bottom of problems more quickly . Aside from speeding up ticket assignment, well-designed category catalogs can help triage go more smoothly by providing staffers with further insight into the nature of a problem, earlier in the process. This could shave time off time-to-resolution metrics.

Categories provide Help Desks with useful knowledge and structure. However, too many categories can make ticket submission needlessly convoluted by forcing end users to choose from a lengthy list of ways to define their issue. The longer that list of categories gets, the choices may also begin to get too technical for some users, leading to misidentification.

Best Practice #7: Build a better category catalog

To best support the Help Desk on its mission to serve end users, category catalogs need roughly 5-20 parent-level categories, such as Server, Network, and Connectivity. Any less and the categories may be too broad to be effective. More than 20 categories can result in the aforementioned clarity issues. The parent-level should be the top of a three-tiered structure. The next level down should provide more context. The third and final tier should inform the Help Desk whether the issue is classifiable as a problem or as a request.

Information, unlike categories, does indeed offer value by volume. The more information Help Desks compile, the better positioned they will be to find solutions to end user tickets. Categories can bring to light the trends taking place within the organization, but this ability can be supplemented to provide the Help Desk with even greater insight.


Best Practice #8: Keep a closer eye on problematic devices

Consider this hypothetical scenario: If a laptop only has one owner during its lifespan at a company, that owner has a great deal of knowledge regarding its service history. Should a laptop pass between multiple users, that service history can be lost. By integrating a Help Desk ticketing system with a CMDB, it’s possible to more accurately track the asset history of the laptop. Help Desk staff members can leverage this interoperability to pull up a serial number and view every ticket ever opened concerning the laptop, empowering them to make more informed service decisions.

Help Desks, by their very nature, are reactive. When a ticket comes in, the Help Desk comes alive, searching for the best solution to the problem at hand. While this basic setup will never truly change, it is possible to at least take the Help Desk off the defensive to some degree.

An in-depth Knowledge Base is the best way to make the Help Desk less reactive. A Knowledge Base compiles the Help Desk’s years of expertise into one searchable location, giving end users the ability to dive in and find their own, expertly-vetted solutions to problems. In addition, staffers can use the Knowledge Base themselves, sharing experiences with each other, enabling faster ticket turnaround times and creating a more informed, efficient Help Desk.

Building a Knowledge Base takes time. Securing a worthwhile return on investment on that effort necessitates a finished product that is user-friendly and that offers high quality answers to the questions plaguing users and staff members alike.

Best Practice #9: Build a Knowledge Base they’ll love (and use)

Four points must be considered during the construction of a Knowledge Base:

How solutions enter the system – Once a ticket is closed, the responsibility for entering that solution into the Knowledge Base falls on the Help Desk. This involves more than compiling a document and migrating it into the Knowledge Base. Formatting errors, broken links, and more can negatively affect the usability of Knowledge Base articles if left unchecked. Taking the time to proofread and edit articles ensures they can achieve full value.


How to navigate it – A Knowledge Base is only as good as it is searchable. If the answers it contains aren’t easily accessible, users will abandon the idea of self service and continue to direct all issues to the Help Desk, doing little to reduce ticket volume or boost user independence. If a Knowledge Base is searchable by familiar elements (such as article name, keywords, topics, etc.), users will be far more likely to consider it a wise stop on their search for answers.

Who can access the information – Information control is an essential part of any Knowledge Base. Not all of the information contained within is going to be appropriate for all audiences. For example, certain solutions may have been created with a more tech-savvy audience in mind, leaving them outside the abilities of the average end user. In this instance, restricting permissions can prevent users from getting in over their heads.

Who can edit articles – Processes must be created to ensure the information contained in the Knowledge Base is periodically updated and verified. If it’s no longer accurate and an update isn’t possible, that page must then be removed. Even before information has a chance to age, an assigned gatekeeper must guarantee the information that enters into the Knowledge Base is accurate in the first place. Without a team-wide commitment to information management and validation, a Knowledge Base will prove to be of minimal lasting worth.

In most organizations, Knowledge Base usage is heavily dependent on culture. No matter how robust or well designed a Knowledge Base is, the idea of self-service won’t catch on overnight. For some end users, it may never catch on at all.

Best Practice #10: Rein in your expectations

Help Desks shouldn’t expect an immediate, sizable drop in ticket volume following the launch of a Knowledge Base. Instead, they should adjust their expectations based on the 20-60-20 Rule. This states that 20% of users will dive right in to self service, consulting the Knowledge Base whenever possible before checking with the Service Desk. Next are the 60% of users who will be much more cautious, those who are open to self service in some cases but will continue to seek out the Help Desk in others. For the final 20% of users, checking the Knowledge Base will never become a habit and they will continue to rely on the Help Desk for support.


Help Desk reporting is about much more than the number of tickets closed. There can be simply too great of a variance between the effort required to close one ticket versus another. As such, leaders must track a more diverse collection of metrics to accurately gauge the health and efficiency of the Help Desk.

By expanding the metrics collected and reports compiled, the Help Desk can:

Justify current processes and procedures – Delivering a more well-rounded picture of the Help Desk’s successes, using average cost of downtime, time to recovery, and more, showcases how much value the Help Desk injects back into the business.

Drive necessary improvements – Robust reporting allows staff to spot and address areas where the Help Desk may be lagging or identify problems that may not have been immediately evident otherwise. This allows for valuable improvements to be made, potentially even in real time. Provide context for issues – The more context the Help Desk has regarding the who, what, and where of an issue, the better-prepared staffers will be to solve it and prevent it from happening again. Show opportunities for automation – Metrics can allow Help Desk staffers to study how they serve their customers. If the metrics show the same issues coming up time and again, it may be a place where automation could make a difference. Finding and taking advantage of these opportunities can streamline the Help Desk’s workload and deliver faster solutions to users.

Accurately quantifying the Help Desk’s performance requires more than technical statistics. The Help Desk must also consider the opinions of its customer base, namely, end users. Should it fail to take user opinions into account, it can lead to a disconnect between what end users want and what the Help Desk delivers.

Best Practice #11: Keep tabs on customer satisfaction

Help Desks can ensure users are satisfied with the service they receive by using a simple survey. Once a ticket is closed, a customer satisfaction survey should be automatically sent to the person who submitted it. The purpose of the survey should be to make sure a project has been completed to the ticket-submitter’s satisfaction while also asking them about any adjustments that can be made to provide an even better service experience next time.

Of course, even with many of these metrics in place, communication gaps between business leaders and the Help Desk can remain. It can be particularly difficult for either group, whether it’s the technically-focused Support Team or the business-leaning leadership team, to put themselves in the other’s shoes.


Best Practice #12: Develop a Service Profile

Service Profiles allow outsiders to become better acquainted with the routines of the Help Desk. A Service Profile displays ticket volumes, types of tickets submitted and more. This information can be depicted in a number of ways, however, a visual component is always advised. Charts and graphics make the information contained much easier to digest. These reports can be tracked over short or long periods of time. Tightly-focused reports can help support desks plan out their day by depicting the times when they’re least busy. Broader reports can spotlight organizational trends that may be worth addressing.

The preceding best practices can position Help Desks to achieve great things for the businesses they support. However, Help Desks are as complex and unique as their organizations and users. Processes and procedures must be reviewed and updated regularly, ensuring they continue to meet the always-evolving needs of the IT environment. It’s only through in-depth analysis and review, backed by a suitable commitment of time and effort, that the Help Desk can achieve service excellence. Arraya Solutions designed our Managed Help Desk offering with that idea of service excellence in mind. It’s reflected in every action the members of our team take, whether they’re instituting operational changes (such as any or all of the 12 best practices above) or receiving, triaging, and solving the tickets that cross the Help Desk each day. Arraya’s Managed Help Desk can ensure a support experience that radiates positively throughout the business’s internal structure, one which end users can leverage to better service their own customers, helping raise an organization’s profile across its industry.

Arraya Solutions is a leading technology consulting firm and managed services provider. With a proven track record of meeting the needs of customers of all sizes and industries, our objective is to serve as a strategic partner. This drives us to work closely with our customers to develop and implement IT solutions that deliver real, meaningful business value. In the process, Arraya’s engineers educate, engage, and empower IT departments and entire companies to succeed.


the demand on the help desk has never been greater ... · the three principle ways help desk...

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