HDI Member Discussion Room / HDI Discussion Rooms / General Problem Solving

How to teach general problem solving

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:13:44 GMT

For myself and many of my employees, the problem solving process comes naturally. However, from time to time I have a need to teach problem solving.

Does anyone have any suggestion of resources or tips that would help me "teach" problem solving?

Glenn Robinson

International Speedway Corporation

Setting up a Help Desk-Phyisical Arrangments

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:13:44 GMT

We are relocating our entire office to a new building and have the opportunity to arrange the Help Desk appropriately. Currently we are in two separate areas with a lot of foot traffic. 6 HD staff members are in an office with a glass window, they feel like they are in a fish bowl. They other half are outside that office in cubicles that have very high walls. Those staff members have to yell over the cubicles to communicate information to each other.

Does anyone have a good resource for Help Desk configurations? I also need some supporting documentation to present to my management. Ideally I would like a separate office area for the HD.

thanks

First Steps

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:13:44 GMT

Hopefully this is the right location for a thread like this. I couldn't tell exactly if the "General Problem Solving" section was meant for troubleshooting or for discussing general problems related to the help desk or service desk function.

Anyway...thinking hypothetically. If you're going to be changing jobs soon to be working for a company with a struggling helpdesk what would be your initial first steps once hitting the ground? This scenario - the helpdesk is completely broken down. Issues are rarely reported to the help desk due to either long wait times or just poor service experience. Attitude is bad among HD agents. Employees having issues are grabbing any other IT staff walking down the hall. More than likely there are issues outside of the service desk with communication regarding issue resolution, change management etc. The other item to consider is you (as HD Manager will be new to the company/organization).

Thank you,

Jerry

Scheduling and Calendar

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:13:44 GMT

Just curious if any call centers have recommendations on products or technologies to use for scheduling. The need is to generate a basic monthly schedule for various roles based on preference and availability for a given month.

Help or advice would be appreciated.

Billing Customers For Call Center Support

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:13:44 GMT

Our call center currently offers a toll free number to all of our customers. We do have service agreements and over 50% of our customers purchase them, which includes priority phone assistance which in most cases will be "on the ring" support. We are currently looking into the possibility of billing our non-service agreement customers for telephone support. I have been assisgned the task of doing the research. I'm starting from "square one" and am looking for any information, personal experiences, resources, ect. What I'm looking at is examples of the cost to the customer, billing info ( are you billing by minute or a flat rate per incident?) If you had switched from no cost support to billing for support, what type of customer reactions, if any, did you get. Any info would be appreciated. I'm in the Los Angeles (Buena Park) area.

Thanks in advance.

Greg Hitchler - Technical Support Manager

PDA Support

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:13:44 GMT

Every January we go through the same old Christmas present PDA calls. We are supposed to support only company purchased assets. How is everyone else responding to the PDA support issue? Thanks.

Wireless Support

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:13:44 GMT

We have approximately 300 laptops that have wireless capability. At this time, we are not formally supporting their wireless connections as the connections/routers/etc. can all be so different and difficult to support remotely.

I am interested to hear how other organizations are supporting (or not supporting) computers in the field trying to connect at hotspots (airports, hotels, etc.). We have been taking some calls to get a feel for the support level and finding that we are having difficulties with this level of support as we don't know what is on the other end and how it is configured.

thank you in advance.

Lisa Hart
Manager, Desktop Support
Haemonetics Corporation

The 5 Ws for quick troublshooting

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:13:44 GMT

I was at the HDI conference last week and attended the triaging brain bite, but can't seem to find the document that showed the quick triaging questions. I wanted to share that with my team, anyone have it handy?

Track Help Desk Analyst Training Curriculum

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:13:44 GMT

What is everyone using to track help desk analyst training? We have several classes, both hands on, electronic and instructor led. Scheduling/tracking is becoming a challenge. We have a corporate LMS system, has anyone been successful using an LMS system in this manner?

Any feedback/suggestions greatly appreciated.

Debra

Split level helpdesk for small IT group

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:13:44 GMT

Our IT department is made up of 15 people. We have network admin, SAP support and Helpdesk. We have approximately 650 users to support and I have 3 Technicians and 1 person that handles Notes Administration and partial troubleshooting on other issues.

Is it feasible to split those three into a tiered group? Right now I've tried to change the responsibilities somewhat in that there is one person responsible for recovering machines from terminated employees and "quick calls". All calls go through the Helpdesk but we are very limited on SAP support within the 4 people. Most of those calls are reassigned almost immediately.

2 Questions

Admin — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:13:44 GMT

I have a couple of issues that I am trying to battle...we are a 24 x 7 help desk logging approximately 250K calls/year. While the help desk is not "Union" many of the employee base that we support is and there is a overall "Union" mentality at the help desk.

The staff is 2 tiered with the 1st tier working rotating schedules that change on a monthly basis. We supplement the employee staff with contract help, but the majority are employees. Due to the large amount of propriety applications supported, the learning curve is quite long, 6-9 months best case scenario. As of late we are having a lot of turn over. Especially with contractors. I am trying to build a case for set shifts. I am looking for any experiences or articles that you can share that will help me to build this case. The night shift is a skeleton crew, the majority of our calls come in between 5AM - 6PM.
The second issue is that we do not have assigned seats for tier 1 or tier 2. There are many reasons for doing this (cost savings, space, equipment needs) but I feel (gut instinct here) that this is adding to our attrition and also increasing the amount of absence due to sickness etc.

If you have any experiences that you can share with me that would be great!