By Roman Kruglov
First, let me start with saying there is no magic formula of 1+1= success, but here are a few key points that will help you get there. It all starts with people; having the right team in place is essential, and knowing each person’s strength and weakness is a must. Develop the trust of your people and do not be a manager but be a leader instead. Get your hands dirty if needed, do not ask your team members to do things you are not willing to do yourself. Also, remember a simple thank you goes a long way. When the team members feel appreciated, they will work harder to achieve the common goal of making the customer happy. Having a weekly meeting helps to make sure that everyone is on the same page, in some cases that meeting may need to happen daily. At first, when you are trying to get things under control, you will want to assign tickets based on each person’s strength that will help you maximize the performance of the service desk to get the backlog under control. FCR- first call resolution is very important the more incidents you can resolve on the spot, the better it will be. Once you have a stable environment, you can take your time and work on the weak points. Keep in mind that each company and environment will require slightly different ingredients to accomplish success. Second, you must create service desk documentation: Standard Operating Procedure, Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Service Desk Mission Statement, SLA Managements, and Service Desk Flow-Chart. Here is an example of the service desk flow, which can be different for each customer or business:
Those documents will need to be agreed upon with management and then distributed to all team members to follow. Documents should be updated as often as the business requires, and the changes should be communicated to everyone. Documents should also be made public on the company intranet for all employees to see. Communication plays a key role here to make sure everyone is on the same page and not just the service desk.
Third, this one can be tricky, but it does start with the right team, that we already talked about, if you have the right team in place, this should be easy to accomplish. We are talking about Service Desk Principals, the following list should be memorized and can apply to any business and any service desk, helpdesk or plain old service department. This list is how you accomplish trust and success with the customer:
Customer Obsession
Everything starts with the customer. Service Desk will work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Put yourself in the customer shoes.
Ownership
Think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. Never say, “that’s not my job.”
Learn and Be Curious
Service Desk is never done learning and always seeks to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.
Think Big
Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.
Bias for Action
Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study.
Frugality
Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention.
Earn Trust
Listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. It takes times to build trust
Dive Deep
Operate at all levels, stay connected to the details. No task is beneath us.
Deliver Results
Focus on the key inputs for the business and deliver the right quality and in a timely fashion. Rise to the occasion and never settle.
To summarize, all of the above is just a framework that will need to be adjusted and changed based on the requirements and the environment you are in. Be prepared to change things on the fly and do not be afraid of the change, as the business grows and the requirements change, what worked in the past may not work in the future, you have continually look at the environment and adjust accordingly.
Bonus Round: 2 things that will help streamline things:
- Eliminating Common incidents by finding the root cause
- Automating by using tools such as self-service, knowledge management, zMan by Gavs
About the Author:
Roman Kruglov was born in Moscow but has lived in New York City where he is constantly shooting pictures when not working as Service Desk Manager with over 22 years of experience Implementing, managing and delivering IT services to drive company growth and technical innovation.
His love for photography came at an early age. He says, “ I remember the dark room and watching the pictures magically come to life.” He says he tries to photograph every day and his camera goes with him everywhere he goes. The inspiration for his photos come from seeing them develop on the screen much like they used to develop in the darkroom and then being able to share those developed pictures.
Roman’s work has been published in Dodho Magazine, Popular Photography June 2014, Bloomberg, Popular Science, Business Insider and a book called “How to Photograph Everything.”