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IT Service Desk Best Practices

Published Date
Author Brooke Tajer

A well-functioning IT service desk can play a critical role in the success of an organization. As anyone with IT experience can tell you, even the smallest issues or problems with IT service and delivery can quickly become a massive bottleneck if the right processes aren’t in place.

Without the right IT Service Management technology to support your help desk or service desk, any uptick in requests for service can bog down your resources and cause unnecessary waits for those needing help.

Those long waits often result in unhappy customers or employees as people suffer through long hold queues and waste valuable work hours trying to resolve issues instead of focusing on their own projects.

People want their issues to be resolved quickly and accurately, but without the proper ITSM tool in place, IT departments can struggle to meet demands. That’s why we’ve put together this list of IT service desk best practices. By following these best practices, and using the right ITSM tool, you can set your service desk team up for success.

1. Automate Where Possible

One of the best ways to improve efficiency and reduce costs at your IT service desk is to automate where possible. Automation can help with tasks like password resets, ticket assignments and data entry. By automating these time-consuming tasks, your team will be able to focus on more important tasks that require a human touch. Additionally, automation can help to improve accuracy and consistency in your ticketing processes.

You can take your automation one step further by investing in a conversational AI chatbot that includes the ability to automate and take action from a conversation – all on your self-service portal. By allowing someone to chat with your conversational AI bot to resolve password issues, or submit forms, you can deflect calls, emails and ticket requests away from your help desk. 

2. Use the Right Tools

Another important best practice for IT service desks is to use the right tools for the job. The right tools will help your team to be more efficient and productive.

When choosing software for your service desk, make sure to consider factors like ease of use, integration capabilities, cost, scalability and customer support options.

Look into codeless ITSM and automation/integration tools like iPaaS – especially ones that can be used together to manage ITSM, Project Portfolio Management (PPM) and iPaaS all on a single platform. 

There are many other benefits to the one-platform approach for ITSM and PPM including:

  • Improved IT productivity
  • Improved quality of service (QoS)
  • Improved IT performance measurement and reporting capabilities

By combining ITSM and PPM with automation and integration, you get to have all relevant information in one place. Instead of switching between different pages or programs, everything you need can be right in front of you in a comprehensive, custom dashboard. This allows for a greater amount of information to be at your fingertips, including:

  • The amount of and type of work that needs to be completed.
  • The estimated length of a project or task.
  • Information on which areas need more resources within your organization.
  • Information on who is assigned to do what.
  • Information on who has the availability to help fulfill certain needs.
  • And information on when people have availability to do the work.

3. Foster a Culture of Customer Service

It’s important that your entire team buys into the idea of providing excellent customer service. Customer service should be more than just a department; it should be a company-wide philosophy.

By instilling a customer-centric culture throughout your organization, you can ensure that everyone is focused on providing the best possible experience to customers.

In addition, make sure your self-service portal is well-designed, searchable and easy to use. The easier you make it for your end-users or customers to find the information they need on your portal, the less likely they are to submit a ticket.

4. Continuously Train Your Team

Make sure that your team has the knowledge and skills necessary to provide excellent customer service by investing in continuous training. In addition to initial training on your chosen ITSM platform, make sure to provide ongoing training and development opportunities so that your team members can stay up-to-date on new features and functionality as well as best practices for providing excellent customer service.

In addition, keep up-to-date on ITIL and Knowledge-Centered Services (KCS) to make sure you’re optimizing both methodologies as part of your ITSM strategy.

5. Measure Performance Metrics

In order to continuously improve performance at your IT service desk, you need to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) on a regular basis. Some of the most important KPIs for IT service desks include first call resolution rate, average handle time, abandoned call rate, and customer satisfaction score (CSAT). By tracking these KPIs over time, you can identify trends and areas in need of improvement so that you can make changes accordingly.

By following these best practices for IT service desks, you can set your team up for success. From automating where possible to using the right tools to measuring performance metrics regularly, there are a number of things you can do to improve efficiency and quality at your service desk.

Investing in continuous training for your team and fostering a culture of customer service are also important keys to success. By following these tips, you can ensure that your IT service desk is providing the best possible experience for customers while also reducing costs and improving efficiency behind the scenes.

Want to learn more about how companies are optimizing their resources and using iPaaS to help supercharge ITSM? Check out Automate IT: A Playbook for Supercharging ITSM and Automating the Mundane.