The 6 Skills You Need for Top Helpdesk Staff

Growing in your willingness to learn will help you move beyond the help desk if that is your goal. It will also allow you to sharpen your help desk skills to better serve end users. Empathy doesn’t come naturally to everyone – it is a learned skill. The quickest way to become more empathetic is to develop your active listening skills. When you are actively listening, you should be able to repeat back what was just said.

Receive, review and contact end users to confirm issues with computer systems for State of GA workers. Handled incoming e-mails and phone calls, and kept records of all reports through a custom task management system. Track activities of technical support specialists and ensure work was completed satisfactory or determine follow-up. Tier 1 acts as the first line of human-to-human support interactions. Its analysts deal with routine support issues that can typically be resolved in ten minutes or less.

Hiring IT Help Desk Technician job description

Technology vendors’ help desks are critical for customer satisfaction. Many vendors view the help desk as the primary point of contact for end users. The quality of customer interaction can determine how satisfied the customer is. Help desk software is also used to track customer satisfaction and customer experience . The help desk tier system enables rapid escalation of more complex issues, while also resolving simpler tickets faster. “Have you tried turning it off and then back on again?” is no longer the first question a help desk technician should ask.

• Help desk technician is the first job role many IT pros find themselves in and is often a steppingstone to other job roles.
• Their primary intention is to ensure a client’s satisfaction and ability to properly operate any machinery or technology they may be having trouble with.
• This is a group of experts that uses help desk software to track the status of problems.
• Attend demos for all the tools you’re considering, and when you’ve whittled it down to your final few, do a live trial if possible.
• All of these KPIs can help you get a clear picture of how well your help desk is operating.
• Customer service and soft skills would be pretty basic and non-tech related.

As a help desk technician, you are responsible for responding to email, chat, or phone queries and offering technical support to customers using computer systems, hardware, and software. Resolve issues surrounding computer hardware, software, and telecommunications systems while demonstrating expertise in customer service and technical knowledge. So, when hiring team members, help desk engineer remember that you can always teach technical skills , but people skills are harder to develop. Traditionally, IT personnel have been tasked with understanding the business environment – or at least the parts that they serve and support. Much has changed for the humble IT service desk in the last two years. A great help desk agent simply enjoys communicating with customers.

Tip #3: Understand and anticipate business needs

Even if you aren’t using HubSpot’s tools, you can complete their academy lessons for general customer service skills. For example, the “Customer Success and Account Health Checks” training teaches participants how to use help desk tools to monitor and manage customer relations. The skills taught in these lessons apply to any customer service team using help desk software. You took the initiative and installed a help desk software for your customer service team, but like any new business tool, employees need to learn basic help desk skills before they put it into practice. When you sign up, you get access to tools like a shared inbox, a knowledge base tool, and chat capabilities for managing support requests. You also get an allowance of incoming minutes to handle customer phone calls .

Updating users on the status of their incident or service request. This person enjoys themselves at work, spreading a positive can-do attitude. A great support agent integrates a bit of fun into their daily tasks to make everyone’s loads a little lighter. If your agents can nail these six key areas, you’ll have a top-performing team that keeps your clients happy. For example, the helpdesk may get calls about connecting printers, scanners or other external devices to a computer. Earlier I mentioned the importance of network engineering skills, but if you plan to work in the enterprise and corporate world, you’ll need to take a deep dive into virtual private networks .

Help desk tier 1 responsibilities

If a customer is speaking with another one of your employees about an issue, teach the employee to politely direct the customer to open up a help desk ticket. All of these KPIs can help you get a clear picture of how well your help desk is operating. Use them to pinpoint any problem areas, make adjustments to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction, and boost team member morale by giving credit where credit is due. Second, when it comes to attracting the right talent, carefully consider the profile of your end users. Help desk staff working with doctors and medical staff, for example, will require a different approach—and possibly a different temperament—than those tasked with assisting students. Throughout the history of IT, especially in the early 2000s, the terms “help desk” and “service desk” were often used interchangeably.

• The agents offering assistance at this level are usually experts in their field and possess an in-depth understanding of the offerings they assist on.
• For example, some enterprises provide cloud-based help desks for global support.
• Moreover, the right help desk solution can go a long way in improving your service and your business overall.
• It can be best placed to signpost the end-user to other resources.
• They often have a centralized gateway for support through a help desk hotline or website and keep help desk workflows transparent for users.