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Who is Kevin Shoaf?
Kevin Shoaf is an expert in Information Technology from both the technical and business process aspects. Highly regarded as an asset to any company, Kevin is an excellent support professional with the skills and know how to setup, maintain, and manage a company's IT department.
Archive for the ‘Help Desk’ Category
Should My IT Department Have a Help Desk?
April 20th, 2011
Today, one of the most important departments for a small, medium, or even large business is the Information Technology (IT) department. Depending on the company, the IT department could be named Information Services or Information Technology Services. The IT department is responsible for keeping the business up and running. This is done by ensuring the network is functional at all times, all servers perform up to par, and all desktops and laptops are fixed within a timely manner. The IT department can even write custom applications to support the business’ need.
The help desk is a very important part of any IT department. Acting as the first point of contact, the help desk takes all calls from end users and performs the initial troubleshooting. Should the help desk technician not be able to resolve the issue, they can quickly and easily escalate the ticket to the correct department for resolution. Help desk technicians can also reset passwords for end users should they accidentally lock themselves out of their computers.
As the functions of the help desk expand, with additional training, the department can adapt to new needs and requirements of the business. One of the major additions that can help any IT department as it gets larger is having the help desk do reporting on different types of issues, outages, and problem management. Another would be creating a knowledge base for the IT department to utilize and better resolve issues.
If needed, the department can be split into multiple tiers for better support and customer service. Each tier (up to 3 total) would be responsible for additional troubleshooting with applications, where tier 1 would reset passwords, tier 2 would do basic troubleshooting, and tier 3 would be responsible for advanced troubleshooting.
So, should your IT department have a help desk? Even if your IT department is small, say 10 individuals for example, 1 technician can be dedicated to perform help desk tasks. As the company and its IT department expands, additional technicians would be required to handle the call volume. It is important that there be enough coverage to allow the system administrators and engineers perform their jobs with satisfaction in order to prevent them from being put behind on the important projects they work on every day.