The headline of a recent article in Computerworld magazine grabbed my attention: “Help Desks Under Siege.” An image of angry workers armed with flaming torches popped into my mind. They were storming the help desk, calling for an immediate moratorium on rebooting and demanding basic rights like software that doesn’t require patches and updates. There were even rumblings of self-serve password reset capabilities.
A supply closet as an office? For employees who are responsible for the computing capabilities of an entire company? Shame on them.
Alas, the piece wasn’t about corporate coups d’etat (it’s a little far-fetched, I concede), but it did highlight the pressing issues help desks are facing today, in this sorta-kinda-post-recession era. Namely…
1. Efficiency
The piece’s author, Cara Garretson, mentions improvements that would make help desks more efficient, such as a central knowledgebase, remote control capabilities, and a database of standard responses to common problems. The problem, says Garretson, is that those improvements cost employee hours.
They don’t have to.
There are companies out there, outsourcers or “best-of-breed” service providers like us, Read more…
admin Help Desk Cara Garretson, CIO, CIO.com, computerworld, Customer Service, outsourcers, temps
I can never get enough of articles like this one about the state of tech support and published recently on CIO.com. It’s easy to write about help desk horror stories – we’ve all had a few – but it requires a bit more insight to see things from every side, which writer Bill Snyder does quite effectively.
They are conditioned to expect terrible service from their IT department. That’s truly sad.
And although his anecdote is about the business-to-consumer market, it could just as easily be used to illustrate the state of customer service within companies.
This company, PC Helps Support, is an outsourced software support provider, so we’re chin-deep in issues surrounding customer service on a regular basis. When a firm partners with us, our consultants become part of their help desk.
One of the most surprising — and troubling — things I have seen in my time here is how taken aback callers are when a real person (one of our consultants) answers the phone and doesn’t put them on hold. And when we solve an issue within one call, it blows them away.
They are conditioned to expect terrible service from their IT department. That’s truly sad.
One point in Snyder’s piece that resonated with me was about lingo. Indeed, the lingo needs to go. I wrote a few blog posts on this subject, and in one in particular, I noted how the recession has made IT/business alignment that much more important — alienating the rest of your company by speaking in terms no one but programmers can comprehend is not alignment. Understanding how technical tools and practices relate to the business as a whole, now that is.
MORE INFO IN: Desktop Application Support | Contact PC Helps
admin Customer Service Customer Service, Help Desk, lingo
Sometimes it’s hard to explain in just a few words what this company does. Of course we help people with their PCs — that’s how the company got its start in 1992. But over the past 18 years, we have expanded our offerings. We help with Macs, mobile devices, Tier 1 help desk, migrations, and much more.
“The Ribbon” almost became a profanity in 2009. It’s central to the Office redesign, and it has rendered even seasoned Office users lost and confused.
Are we “efficiency experts”? We think so. Are we “leisure enablers”? Yes, we are. Are we “ROI generators”? Precisely.
Here’s a breakdown:
1. Mobile Device Support
I, personally, cannot imagine a world without on-the-go access to e-mail, documents, maps and every other feature my mobile device affords me. And, I suspect, most corporate workers would agree.
And smart phones will only become more central to how we work. According to a 2009 study, mobile use for business will double from 2008 to 2011 and the variety of devices being used will increase. Problem is, IT departments will continue to be ill-equipped to handle the support needs. Read more…
admin Customer Service BlackBerry, Customer Service, Help Desk, iPhone, mobile device, Office 2007, Outsourcing, smart phone, Windows Mobile
I’m an obsessive list maker. I’ve tried every list app for the Droid in an effort to become more list-efficient, but so far nothing has worked better than using a pen and scraps of paper. I am so dedicated that when I create a new list, I make sure to transfer incomplete tasks.
How many times have you avoided a problem or simply “made do” because the thought of calling the help desk was just too painful?
Unfinished business renders me uneasy, and one lingering task in particular – calling my VoIP service provider – has been giving me heartburn lately.
I do not want to call because I know I will spend too much time getting nowhere. And I’m speaking from experience.
A few weeks back, I called the company to set up the service. It was a Saturday morning, and I had about an hour to kill before I was set to begin making pumpkin pancakes for guests. Plenty of time to fit in a call. Or so I thought. Read more…
admin Customer Service, Rants Customer Service, Help Desk, language barrier, pancakes, software support, VoIP
We may very well be embarking on the decade of the customer. Social media, especially Twitter, has empowered customers, and the recession has reminded businesses that keeping clients is easier than bringing in new ones.
It’s like watching your siblings bicker at Sunday dinner. Ugh. Enough already. Bring on a solution.
With the current state of customer service, a renewed focus would be a welcome change.
Look at current tech publications and you will surely find a rant or three about horrific customer experiences (for a recent one, see CIO.com’s “Tech Vendors Behaving Badly”). Search Twitter for “customer service” and you will find scores of tweets cursing the ineptitude of Company X and Company Y.
It’s like watching your siblings bicker at Sunday dinner. Ugh. Enough already. Bring on a solution.
You can start by taking note of a recent book, “Your Call is (Not That) Important to Us,” written by Emily Yellin (http://www.emilyyellin.com/) and featured in a recent AARP Bulletin story. Yellin, a journalist, wrote the book after enduring a particularly frustrating customer service experience herself.
Her book presents a fresh look at the customer service industry, and offers the average person some insight into the reasons many companies opt to automate and outsource to foreign companies. Read more…
admin Customer Service AARP, CIO.com, Customer Service, Dell, Emily Yellin, FACEBOOK, JetBlue, Outsourcing, Twitter, Zappos
Recently, while reviewing the quality assurance surveys we conduct with our customers, I noticed a common thread in the comments: the importance of following up.
Quality customer service isn’t just a nicety or something you’d find in Charleston; it’s critical to the health of a business.
Here’s a sample:
“You were awesome and this follow-up e-mail speaks volumes of how wonderful your service was.”
And another:
“I was absolutely thrilled when I got an e-mail from [the consultant] the next day with tutorials. I thought that was amazing customer service. Customer service is dead these days. Your company renewed my faith in it.”
It’s standard practice here to send customers reinforcement learning tips and e-mails with topics that are related to the software issue that prompted them to call in the first place. Glass-half-empties may say it’s overkill, or that it’s akin to spamming. Read more…
admin Customer Service Charleston SC, Customer Service, InformationWeek
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