Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

Help desk leadership is always an ongoing topic. People can’t seem to feel they know enough about it, so they keep digging, looking for new ideas, perspectives, methods, or whatever can make them even better at their jobs. And don’t get us wrong; that’s exactly what you should be doing! And to help you with that, we discussed “Service and Leadership in 2023” in April’s Ticket Volume podcast live recording.

Suddenly you have a spike in Ticket Volume, but you didn’t see it coming? Don't panic! The first step to effectively manage any help desk is to measure this service desk metric. Organizations want to provide the best possible support to their customers. Several metrics can help them analyze trends, forecast future demand, and optimize support team resources to provide better service. Understanding metrics leads to data-driven decisions.

Ticket triage is a central process of all service desks: when something goes wrong, it must be solved. It is at the heart of every support team's work and is related to what ITIL describes as Incident Management. Well implemented, triage can save time and help deliver consistent IT services, which is a main goal of all high-performing organizations. Complete service desk solutions include different features, such as automation, to triage support tickets simply and quickly.

Just as having help desk software is essential, so is measuring team performance. And the way to do that is through service desk KPIs. But which help desk metrics should you focus on for your team when there are so many to consider? The answer isn't always clear or straightforward.

We hear a lot about gamification in IT, but it can sometimes be unclear how to implement it, its benefits and challenges, and which tools are indispensable to succeed. Keeping agents motivated can be a struggle in itself, we know. Staff demotivation is not uncommon due to multiple factors – such as end-user complaints, burnout because of constant incoming incidents, and the monotony of some service desk tasks – and can lead to high agent turnover.

In the same way that a CRM and an ITSM tool are not equal, help desk and customer service fulfill different roles and therefore have different requirements. Customer service is about Customer Experience (CX), whereas help desks are more technology focused. Additionally, both functions have different toolset requirements.

Looking for help building your company's IT self-service portal? Then this article is for you! We're about to detail the ten self-service portal best practices you absolutely need to follow when creating it. From the design, delivery, and ongoing operation of a self-service portal to the critical mistakes to avoid when aiming for its success, here's a deep dive into practical advice derived from the real-world success of other organizations.

The customer support landscape is ever-changing and expanding, increasing both users’ expectations and challenges for IT teams. In this context, offering omnichannel customer support is not an option anymore. Users expect to be able to contact the help desk through the channel that’s most convenient to them, and support teams must try their best to provide a multiplicity of platforms to submit requests while attending to all of them in an efficient way.

Employee experience strategy is designing and implementing an integrated set of activities, initiatives, and programs that collectively create a positive and productive work environment. Gartner has identified that the employee experience (EX) is about more than just the technology used to enable work - it is about all the interactions employees have throughout their day-to-day work and how their contexts influence these interactions.

Dramatic shifts in how we approach and conceptualize work are always met with an initial tidal wave of skepticism and detractors. This is a good thing, even if those initial detractors may turn out to be wrong. Thinking critically about the tools we deploy and how we manage our workforce is paramount.