Virtual Help Desk - Application/ Techniques

Application/ Techniques

Organizations can gain considerable infrastructure and cost savings by deploying virtualization technologies in hardware environments, such as data centers. However, the concept of virtualization can also be applied to the way people work. When applied to the help desk, this translates into the same number of technicians being able to handle more support incidents. As tech support problems are typically handled by the call center, contact center, or a help desk, either by telephone or remote desktop software, it’s important that technicians be able to work independently (or virtually) to quickly troubleshoot computer issues. The following points provide a quick overview of the benefits to an organization virtualizing its help desk:

1. Increased productivity: Companies can increase the number of support calls handled per day and cut the costs of lengthy service calls. Also, companies can eliminate the time and travel expense of technicians going on-site to resolve customer tech problems, improving IT resource management.

2. Efficient routing: As technology becomes more complex, a virtualized help desk provides the infrastructure to better manage decentralized IT operations and assign expert technicians across the queue to handle a particular tech support issue. This helps streamline the overall customer service process, while minimizing the time a support caller spends navigating through an automated phone tree.

3. Improved control: Putting a help desk rep in the driver's seat to troubleshoot computer issues not only enhances the customer experience by lessening frustration, but also reduces the stress and aggravation IT staff often face when walking non-tech savvy users through a tech support session. Ensuring that your help desk staff is happy when dealing with customers significantly helps your company build and maintain strong customer relations, not to mention reducing IT staff turnover rates.

The virtual help desk resides between the systems management and service desk platforms to work with the systems that track when trouble tickets open and close, to provide an account of what happens during the support process. This level of granular support activity (e.g. the what, how, when, why and even whose mouse click is used) also helps organizations better manage its IT resources and optimize the help desk. Using a centralized, virtual help desk solution to capture important support details (e.g. record remote sessions, note where calls were transferred or how the issues were resolved) enables IT organizations to build an effective knowledge base. This increased level of understanding can be used in root cause analysis to minimize recurring help desk issues and begin to address the tech support issues that result in desktop incident resolution gap.