Helpdesk workflow

Helpdesk manages the process of submitting and attending to service or help requests. Each job goes through the following process
1>The help or service request is submitted. This can be done directly by the user who is making the request, or on the user's befalf by a technician or administrator. For more information, see Helpdesk role:
Helpdesk User Roles
Helpdesk understands three groups of users, called roles.
Normal User role
Normal users are the service request clients. As a user, you have the ability to enter service requests and to view the status of your help requests. You may also receive email notifying you of certain changes to the status of your request(s).
Technician role
Technicians are the people servicing the requests. Technicians have the ability to monitor the job queue, allocate and update jobs, and close jobs when completed. They may also receive email notifying them of new jobs and jobs allocated to them for attention.
Administrator role
The administrator role is responsible for maintaining Helpdesk and changing Helpdesk's configuration

2>The newly submitted job is added to the active jobs queue as an unclaimed job. In other words, the job has not yet been assigned a technician.
3>Each technician sees their own jobs and all unclaimed jobs in the job queue.
4>The job is assigned to a technician by the administrator, or is claimed by the technicians themselves.
5>The job can be updated any number of times to reflect the work performed, expenses incurred and the current status of the job.
6>The job can be transferred from one technician to another at any time.

7>If the job takes too long, Helpdesk will escalate the job. This results in the colour changing and an escalation message being sent to the designated person, who may be the Helpdesk administrator, or a supervisor or manager. For more information, see Helpdesk escalation:
Job Escalation in Helpdesk
What is escalation?
When a job has not been completed within a certain time, extra attention may be required. Escalation allows these jobs to be brought to the attention of the Helpdesk administrator or the relevant manager.
How Helpdesk handles escalation
Helpdesk escalates jobs according to the priority assigned to the job when it was first entered. Helpdesk considers both the controllable and the total elapsed time since the job entry and will escalate jobs which exceed the standards on either of these criteria.
When Helpdesk detects a job exceeding the escalation limits, it generates an email message that is sent to one or more designated mailboxes. This work is performed by the escalation component.

8>When the technician believes the job to be complete, they submit a completion report.
9>Helpdesk sends an email to the user with hot links for the user to sign the job off, if the issue has been fully resolved; reject the sign-off if not; or defer a response until a future date.
10>If the user signs the job off, then the job is removed from the queue and archived. If the user rejects the job as not complete, it is returned to the queue for the attention of the technician who closed the job.

Sources:http://www.intexnet.co.za/UserGuide/workflow.htm

Help Desk software

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is an IT help desk software which helps to manage all your help desk requests efficiently. Tracking emails and phone calls becomes easier with ServiceDesk Plus as it manages the requests with several automated process like request routing, business rule application, SLA management and escalation management. Its easy to install, implement and provides a good user experience.
ServiceDesk Plus offers Help desk Managers the right set of features that are simple and easy to use. It helps them focus on winning users' satisfaction without having struggle with technology or tools.

Self - Service portal:

The web-based Self-service Portal reduces the help desk call volume to a greater extent by helping the user to raise their own requests, tracking the statuses of their requests and browsing through the available solutions before they report an issue. Keep the end user informed about the major outages or down-times by adding announcements in their self-service Portal.

Knowledgebase:

Create a robust knowledge-base in your helpdesk application for the users to find their solutions before raising a request using ServiceDesk Plus. This also helps the technicians to reduce the turn-around-time in finding the resolution for an issue.

SLA Management:

Give solution to a request within the defined resolution time and improve the customer satisfaction by defining your SLA and setting up different escalation levels for the SLA violations in your help desk software. This helps to prioritize the request and set different colors to the priority levels.

API Integration:

Integrate your web-based help desk software with any thirdparty software with API integration and manage your events or requests created else where

Business Rules:

Enable the auto-dispatch of Requests to different levels, priorities, categories, technicians etc., by using business rules. Around 70 percent of the requests coming to your help desk software get assigned automatically into appropriate
classifications using business rules.

Notification Rules:

Send confirmation receipts to the users and support engineers automatically from your help desk software by enabling notification rules. Get these automatic alerts from ServiceDesk Plus at the time of request logging or a change inside the request or whenever the request gets assigned to a technician or a group or at the time of SLA violations.

Reports:

Get complete reports on IT Help Desk load, technician performance and SLA violation etc., using the Help desk Reports and do a trend analysis to find out how the service failure happened.

User Survey:

Get to know the satisfaction level on the issue resolution and the technicians competent level by enabling user-survey. This helps to streamline your IT service and improve the customer service to a greater extent.

If you need to any further detail on helpdesk software so you can visit..
http://www.manageengine.com/products/service-desk/help-desk-software.html

Phone Line To Technical Support,Techniacal Support

Technical support is a type of services which providing their help with technology product like Mobile phones, televisions, Computer or other electronic items. Tech support services gives their help the user solve specific problems related with a product. In general, Technical support services attempt to help the customer's problems through the phone calls like Call center.

Most companies provide technical support for their products, either freely available or a free. They provide their service through the phone technical support or remote technical support. Larger organizations have internal technical support which is available to their staff for computer related problems. Technical support may be delivered by different technologies depending on the situation like, direct question can be ask by online chat, through e-mail, through the phone and remote.

Many organization locate their technical support departments or call center in countries. Call center provide the technical support through the phone. We can ask any problem through the phone like computer's problem, mobiles phone's problem etc. But it is more expensive because it requires a technical to spend more time working on a problem as explained complex issue quire studying their history and making sure about the problem.

Many companies provides their services online like computer repairing by the help of taking computer remotely. Remote computer repair is troubleshooting common computers errors via remote desktop connection by logging into remote computer. These repairs are popular as remote technical support, online help and onsite technical support. Common repairs available with remote computer support provides are computer virus, spyware issue, virus issue, PC optimization, slow performance, registry repair, driver or software issue etc. If our Internet explorer is working fine then remote technical support service is much better services but if our Internet explorer service not working then we need to help phone technical support services because with Internet we cannot take any remote of the computer.

All companies needs technical support engineer or technician which s provide technical support services. He is responsible for maintain or repair their products like mobiles, computer etc. Example, In computer field area technical support technician are responsible for repairing and maintaining the computer, installation of software, hardware configuration, creating a new network etc. They provide the service through the online chat, e-mail, phone, remote and dealt with directly to the customer.

Phone Technical help and support is also divide into many levels for business purpose. The only reason to divide technical help and support in different levels because to provide their best possible services in the most possible manner. Another advantage of availing these tech help is their 24x7 availability.

ServiceDesk Plus - Helpdesk The World Loves

ServiceDesk Plus is a web-based helpdesk software that helps you manage all your communications from a single point. It offers an integrated Request management (Trouble Ticketing), Asset management, Purchase order management, Contract Management, Self-Service Portal, and Knowledge Base. ServiceDesk Plus packs all the modules at an affordable price.

ServiceDesk Plus comes in 3 editions - Standard, Professional and Enterprise Edition. Compare Editions Now!!

ServiceDesk Plus Features:


Helpdesk Management:


ServiceDesk Plus help desk management gives you everything to manage your help desk requests effectively. It includes self-service portal, knowledge base, auto routing of requests, notifications, sla management,email integration, LDAP, AD integration, API integration, custom request form,user survey, flash reports, multi-site support, help desk reporting.


* Self-service portal to enable login for users to submit their trouble tickets
* Web-based knowledge-base system for users and technicians to search and add the troubleshooting docs
* NMS Integration to integrate with Network Monitoring Software for tracking events and network failures
* Service Level Agreements to set escalation levels for the SLA violations
* Multi-site functionality to manage requests, assets and technicians separately for different sites in your organization
* Email Integration to handle all the help desk emails sent by the users
* Notification alerts via email or sms, to inform users or technicians for request handling
* Request scheduling to manage and track the preventive maintenance tasks
* API integration to integrate your web-based help desk software with any third-party software
* Active Directory integration to enable user authentication with single sign-on functionality
* Robo technician to automate the "reset password requests"
* Request survey to know the technician competent level and user satisfaction level on request resolutions
* Flash Reports to get a consolidated view on what is happening with your helpdesk
* Help Desk Reports to schedule and review the reports based on Request-status, SLA-violation and many more from the list of default reports or to create your own custom reports

Asset Management

ServiceDesk Plus asset management helps you manage and track all the assets in your organization. It includes integrated Asset Management, Purchase Management, Contracts Management along with Helpdesk(Standard Edition Features). The Asset management also comes with Software compliance & license tracking, Product Catalog, Asset Reports etc.

* Asset scan to add all assets across the organization without any manual effort
* Track information pertaining to all the assets and relate each request to specific assets
* Automatic asset discovery to detect and update the hardware and software changes periodically
* Remote Control to access any workstation in your network
* Asset relationship to find out the dependability of an asset
* Dynamic asset groups to manage asset based on its properties
* Product catalog to create and manage a comprehensive list of all the assets and product types that your organization owns
* Software license management to track software usage, license violations and ensure compliance
* Software license compliance to maintain accurate software information for software audits
* Software usage tracking to manage the purchase of frequently used software
* Purchase management to track and manage your IT purchases, Generate POs and automatically create assets from POs
* Contract management to track all your support/maintenance contracts and lease agreements and get alerted when contracts are due for expiry

ITIL Ready:


ServiceDesk Plus ITIL ready helps to streamline your IT service with the ITIL best practices easily. The workflow designed out of the box helps you implement without any expert consultations. It includes Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management and Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

* Incident Management - Restore normal services as soon as possible with workarounds or solutions to make sure that it does not affect business
* Problem Management - Find the root cause of incidents and reduce the impact on business. Problem Management is a proactive approach that prevents recurrence of incidents
* Change Management - Implement a comprehensive change management system that allows you to handle pre-approved changes and changes with complete approval cycle
* Configuration Management Database(CMDB) -CMDB is a centralized repository that holds all the information about all the assets. CMDB also manages the relationship between the Configuration Items (CIs)

Source:http://www.manageengine.com/products/service-desk/

How to change the business via the IT service desk (Next-generation enterprise IT)

When Chris Dunne, director of customer service at financial transaction service provider VocaLink, looked at some statistics from the IT service desk, he noticed an irritating trend. A lot of the calls concerned laptops.

"When you have a problem on a laptop, it's quite a labour-intensive thing to handle because you have to fix it on that laptop," says Dunne. "If 25 people have the same problem on their laptops, you have to go and fix it 25 times."
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But people love their laptops, unless you can offer them something better. And at VocaLink a shift to a central services environment meant people could work from the office or from home without the need to carry a company laptop around with them.

"It's only people who are truly mobile - sitting on trains and planes - who need that laptop," notes Dunne. So the shift in approach has ensured that most of VocaLink's staff have as good an IT service (or better) than when they were hunched in a foetal position over cramped laptop keyboards.

And the moral of the story? It all happened because the IT service desk could see what was happening and had both the wisdom and internal clout to feed back its conclusions to the rest of the business. Result: a change in IT support strategy which saves costs, but matches more closely to what the business needs.

More IT service desks ought to be taking this proactive approach to helping align IT more closely with their companies. But not enough are. It's not that they don't see the opportunity. It's more a question of them being so busy fixing day-to-day problems, they don't get round to the proactive work which could make them heroes to the rest of the business.

Quality improvement mechanism

"We see the service desk very much as a quality improvement mechanism for IT," says Howard Kendall, founder and chairman of the Service Desk Institute (SDI). "That message has pretty much got across to most people. It's just that not everyone has made the investment to make it happen."

One company that has is Danone, the international food business behind brands such as Actimel yoghurt and Evian water. It has installed a new help desk system to cover 17 countries in northern, eastern and central Europe. Help desks across the countries have an aggregate 200 staff serving 6,000 users.

And like Dunne, Aurelian Sin, Danone's IS manager for south-east Europe, has a story about how creative use of the service desk can feed back into helpful changes in the business. "We have sales people taking orders on their PDAs," explains Sin. "But we were having a lot of problems and most of the critical ones were coming outside working hours. As a result, they weren't being resolved as fast as the business would have liked.

"We used the service desk database to analyse the problem and realised that most were coming from a few individuals, rather than the salesforce in general." The solution: more training for the sales people who hadn't yet mastered the intricacies of booking sales on their PDAs.

Positive role

There is plenty of scope for more IT service desks to play a positive role in guiding IT so that it serves the business more effectively. But one problem is that not all service desks are a large operation, such as Danone's, using up-to-date software systems - in its case, the BMC Service Desk Express Suite.

Howard Kendall estimates there are between 8,000 and 12,000 IT service desks in the UK. "If you pinned me down, I'd go for the lower end of that range," he says. But only a fraction of them have 200 or more service desk professionals manning the phones and the keyboards - possibly as few as 20 or 30, according to Kendall. A large proportion would have around seven to 10 people and some even fewer.

When the IT service desk is this small, it becomes more difficult to develop a range of expertise across the technical, management and communications skills which define a best-in-class operation. It may also be more difficult for the IT service desk to get its voice heard in the boardroom.

That's not a problem for Sin, who sits on Danone's board of directors in Romania - although he points out that service improvements based on data gathered from the service desk are normally agreed at departmental level. "IT assesses the feedback from the service desk and, subsequently, makes and agrees proposals with the respective departments across the rest of the business operation."

Impact

But the impact which its service desk makes depends not only its presence at the top table, but also on the way it is organised. At VocaLink, Dunne is just seven months into a reorganisation of the IT service desk which is already delivering big benefits.

It's based on the principle of creating one point of contact for internal users and external customers. The people who pick up the phone to customers are the same as those who do it for colleagues with an IT problem. Dunne's rationale for this approach is that people with customer service expertise are the best people to deal with any kind of problem.

"Ultimately, everyone is a customer whether they're external or internal, so it makes sense to concentrate them on one service desk," he says. "If you have people who are dealing, day in, day out, with incidents, they are really adept at doing it. And, to be honest with you, it's cheaper doing it this way."

The VocaLink service desk now consists of about 30 people. They seek to resolve any IT problems at the first point of contact. But, if they're not able to, they refer the thornier problems to a specialist IT team of six or seven "resolvers".

"This means we shield the technically expert resolvers from a lot of the pain," explains Dunne. "They're not picking up on irritating calls from people who've forgotten their password." And, because they're spending all of their time resolving real technical queries, they're becoming more expert at their work.

As a result, there's plenty of time for the service desk resolvers to sit down for thoughtful discussions with the rest of the IT team to explore how themes revealed in service desk calls can be fed back into providing IT services that more closely match business need.

Important implications

Moreover, this approach has important implications for the rest of the business. When anybody in the company calls the service desk, they get treated like any other customer. So they know exactly what it's like to be a customer with a problem.

Dunne is now planning to enhance the links between the service desk and the rest of the business. He had been running an automated e-mail survey after each problem fix, so that VocaLink staff could comment on the quality of the service and the relevance of the advice. But because that's been running for some time, "survey fatigue" has set in and return numbers have dropped.

So now he intends to start "surgeries" where members of staff can drop in to discuss their specific IT problems. "We want to capture the people who have slightly non-standard IT needs," he says. "We operate out of a number of different sites and an increasing number of people are moving between sites."

SDI's Kendall believes the imperative is for IT service desk managers to take a step back from the day-to-day hurly-burly and look at incident resolution in the context of change management. "Take an over-arching view of what is hurting you in terms of IT-based problems that are knocking down your business users' productivity," he advises.

"One of the great attributes of the service desk role is to get a great opportunity to see every other aspect of the organisation." It's a vantage point which the best service desks have already shown can help them to see - and fix - problems which other parts of the business haven't even noticed.

Case study – Irish Life & Permanent

Irish Life & Permanent, the Irish financial services provider with interests in banking, insurance and pensions, is another company which has solved the secret of driving benefit upwards from the IT service desk into the rest of the business. The IT service desk has 14 staff serving 5,000 users and uses Axios' service desk management software.

One of the ways Irish Life & Permanent has found that its IT service desk can drive more value up into the business is by answering the kind of "how do I do that?" question which some staff ponder when they're trying to make their computer screen do their bidding.

Colm O'Shea, IT customer services manager, cites the example of a bank teller processing a customer request. Irish Life & Permanent has banks all over Ireland and there can be quite a big staff turnover. So when a newcomer encounters a problem, he or she would invariably turn to the more experienced teller at the next window to help sort it out. "But that meant you had customers in two queues not being served," points out O'Shea. So now the teller contacts the service desk to get an answer to the problem - and customers get served faster.

Recently, the company installed a new front-end sales system. Staff were trained to use it, but the service desk acted as a kind of back-up training resource, taking calls from staff baffled by aspects of the new system.

"We ramped up the service desk to handle that," says O'Shea. "We analysed the calls and worked with the IT development people and the business to fix the outstanding problems which they revealed."

But not all IT service desks are yet delivering these kinds of value-added services back to the business. "Most still operate on a 'first come, first served' basis, rather than prioritising action according to business need," says Michael Allen, director of service management at Compuware, which provides enterprise software and IT services.

"The underlying problem here is that IT managers do not truly understand the financial cost to the business of poorly performing applications and, consequently, cannot prioritise fixing those problems

Source:http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/11/27/233607/in-depth-how-to-change-the-business-via-the-it-service-desk-next-generation-enterprise.htm

Technical Help Desk Support,Tech Help,Technical Support,Technical Help

Technical support is a type of services which providing their help with technology product like Mobile phones, televisions , Computer or other electronic items.Tech support services gives their help the user solve specific problems related with a product.Most of the companies provides technical help and support for the products they sell,either freely.They provide their help and support may be on over the telephone or online by e-mails.Larger organizations have internal Technical support which is available to their staff for computer related problems.The internet is also a good source for freely available tech help, where experienced users may provide advice and assistance with problems.Technical support may be deliverd by different technologies depending on the situation.like,direct questions can be ask by Online chat , through E-mail or by the help of FAX and Phone.

To increases their Business most of the large organisation provide Outsourcing Technical help and support.Many organization locate their technical help departments or call cetre in countries with lower costs.for business needing to provide technical support,Outsourcing provides them with the ability to maintain a high availability of service. Outsourcing enables their core employees to focus more on their work in order to maintain productivity.

Many companies provides their services online just like Computer Repairing by the help of taking computer remotely.Remote computer repair is troubleshooting common computers errors.They provide their tech help via remote desktop connection by logging into remote PC with their username and password.This technology is very good for who hauling their Computer to a shop and wait weeks to get it back and also save time.Remote tech support services are extremely cost effective and generally offered with a free policy which means that customer don't pay any amount if their issue is not resolved.These repairs are popular as technical support , online computer help, and onsite technical support. There is many companies to get exclusive remote support at competitive prices.Mainly all companies provide computer Tech services on Computer virus and spywares removals, registry repair and any softwares issues.

Technical help and support is also divide into many levels for business purpose.The only reason to divide technical help and support in different levels because to provide their best possible services in the most possible manner.Another advantage of availing these tech help is their 24x7 availability.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Help Desk Outsourcing

Outsourcing has been proven to be a powerful business strategy to cut costs and enhance efficiency of business processes. But then, there are cases when IT outsourcing projects fail to deliver or they simply fail as a business strategy. This does not mean that there are any flaws in the outsourcing model.

IT Helpdesk services provide for cunsumers and small business or home based businesses live 24/7/365 support extends to technologies that provide every day.

Small businesses or home-based businesses that have a limited
number of employees or no employees at all have special
challenges when it comes to meeting their customers' needs and
expectations.
A small business operator can literally run him or herself ragged
trying to meet the demand with limited resources. For businesses
such as these, help desk outsourcing can be a lifesaver.

Large businesses can also benefit from help desk outsourcing by
outsourcing sales, service and technical support.

Outsourcing such functions to call centers is a growing trend
among big businesses.

The Helpdesk main advantage for them is significantly reduced overhead
expenses since they pay the outsourcing company a contracted
amount and are not responsible for personnel expenses such as
payroll taxes, workers' compensation insurance and employee
benefits for the employees of the call center that provide their
sales, service and support functions.

Businesses also save on the cost of equipment, software and
ongoing maintenance expenses associated with help desk services.

As the call center industry grows there is increasing competition
which is good for both large and small businesses because
competition drives costs down for the consumer of the
standardized services offered through call centers.

Advanced technologies have also improved the quality of service
that can be realized through help desk outsourcing.

As with any up and coming service option that has great benefits
for small and large companies, there are some disadvantages to
outsourcing sales, service and support activities.

For instance, when a company out sources their service functions,
the service that is provided is out of their hands; they entrust
the service provider with their sales, service and support
functions which directly impact their customers' level of
satisfaction and relatively, the company's reputation.

As a result, the quality of service can diminish making
outsourcing more of a burden than a benefit.

Help desk outsourcing for customer service or technical support
is an option for many businesses, including internet businesses,
which have a limited staff or wish to provide service and support
twenty-four hours a day.

The company that is outsourcing their service functions should
take care to ensure that representatives for the outsource
service provider are properly trained to meet service
expectations and that the training provided to those
representatives is effectively passed on to the help desk staff
that is actually providing the outsourced sales, service and
support to customers.

Training systems should be developed to ensure that your
company's expectations in regard to service quality, policies and
procedures are clearly conveyed to the outsource provider.

Ongoing monitoring of customer satisfaction is also necessary so
that you can determine whether or not the outsource provider you
have selected is meeting the needs of your customers in line with
their expectations and your quality service standards.

With adequate attention given to these variables, you are likely
to find that help desk outsourcing is a viable option for your
business. Truly, the decision to outsource can be either the best
or the worst decision you ever make.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Advantages-and-Disadvantages-of-Help-Desk-Outsourcing&id=126475