As the number of IT applications increases, so does the need for help desk resources. But they can not be delivered as fast as they are needed.
Various studies show that not only the number but also the variety of professionally used devices has increased dramatically. Added to this is the higher level of employee mobility, which places additional demands on service departments and, at the same time, makes communication difficult in the event of a problem.
Add to this the need for high-availability IT in every situation, which means an increased volume of inquiries (tickets), higher quality requirements and the call for faster response times for the internal service desks. With the resources available, this task is virtually impossible to fulfill. The solution to the service dilemma should be the combination of greater automation of the service offering and the expansion of self-services.
The die is cast
A study by Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) therefore probably no longer asks for pros and cons of such help desk portals. PAC Analyst Andreas Stiehler sees it as a solution of the future: "We assume that they will soon be indispensable. That's why we've highlighted the requirements that they should meet from the employee's perspective. "500 respondents from companies with at least 1,000 employees who regularly use IT applications as part of their professional activity were surveyed. In an emergency, 83 percent of them are currently using a traditional service desk, with 12 percent using online forms or a ticket system and 2 percent accessing a central web portal.
Half of the respondents are satisfied with this service offer when used occasionally and less than a third when used intensively. Most of the complaints were about too long response times and limited help desk staff's ability to provide information (40 percent each), as well as their lack of initiative and lack of transparency in problem-solving status (39 percent each).Again, just under half of the occasional help desk users - the vast majority under certain conditions - would be doing more IT tasks themselves. However, with 52 percent, this group rejects the majority of their own employment with IT problems. By contrast, among the "heavy users", the objectors are clearly in the minority with 21 percent.
The ideal help desk
For the concept of a helpdesk, four points are at the top of the list: the user-friendly presentation of the information, the important information at a glance, a wide range of self-help options and intelligent search functions. The popularity scale is followed by chat features, mobile access and off-hours use.
Computacenter used these insights for the conception and implementation of its own Next Generation Service Desk (NGSD). For Christian Herzog, Director of Sales Support at Computacenter, the core of the knowledge database is all about NGSD: "Similar to Google, the user describes his problem and then gets suitable solutions for him. However, it is important that the information is actively maintained and presented in a user-friendly way. "This is the responsibility of an in-house knowledge management team. "For us, the provision of such a team is a key lever to win the acceptance of the users," says PAC expert Stiehler.
Another important element of NGSD is crowdsourcing, which pools the resources available to customers and service providers through the platform. The IT experts of the customer companies (administrators, super users) are involved in the IT support activities and can access existing knowledge in the databases of the customers.
Computacenter plans to expand its self-help offerings. So users can successively do certain tasks, such as a password reset itself. Push, messages mobile apps and a chat option should also facilitate communication.
