Focus Book Series

Do you need more information on current trends? Do details on how to implement common support center initiatives like measuring customer satisfaction and selecting outsourcers escape you? HDI focuses on hot topics in must-read mini-books you can download immediately.

HDI members receive a hard copy of the current Focus Book each quarter but may downloaded the books as well. Non-members can purchase a Focus Book from the HDI eStore.

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Emerging Practices in Desktop Support

By: HDI Executive, Retail, and Support Center Leadership Forums

While the desktop support function has a long history in IT support, there are few established best practices, standards, or ongoing research efforts to support its growth and maturity; its ubiquity has made it invisible. This Focus Book is HDI’s first step toward bringing light to the work of thousands of men and women in the desktop support community. It identifies the operational techniques that are used in the desktop support world, and lists and discusses forty-nine emerging practices in desktop support. As far as we can tell, this is the first time such a list has been compiled!

Without a Jacket: Good Practices in Implementing Virtual Employee Programs, Part Two

By: Robert S. Last

While virtual employment is growing in popularity in all sectors of the global economy, what is often overlooked is the fact that despite the glamour and perceived ease of “telecommuting,” it’s still work, just in a different location. Virtual employees have the same deadlines and deliverables their office-based colleagues have—they have to attend meetings and they still have to deal with last-minute emergencies. The ability to be successful as a virtual employee goes beyond the work of the employee; successful virtual employees are part of an organization and the best organizations help them to be successful. In this Focus Book, we will identify and discuss ten good practices for virtual employment.

Without a Jacket: Good Practices in Implementing Virtual Employee Programs, Part One

By: Robert S. Last

With the explosion of the global economy and information technology it is now possible for a knowledge worker to work, literally, anywhere. The act of working from one’s home on a regular or even full-time basis is generally called “telecommuting,” but the practice has grown in sophistication and become so commonplace that it is increasingly referred to as “virtual employment” or “working virtually.”

Like any organizational undertaking, virtual employment has developed a large body of literature relating to its operation, successes, and even failures. What has been lacking to this point, however, has been a set of easily repeatable good practices (enough of the best practice mythology already) that a manager can follow to create, implement, and maintain a virtual employee program.

This focus book is part one of a two-part series on good practices relating to a virtual employment program. It contains ten good practices and four appendices that a support center manager should follow in developing a virtual employment program. Part two of this series will be published during the fourth quarter of 2009.

Best Practice Methodology for Selecting Support Center Tools, Technologies, and Software

By: Chris Farver and Robert S. Last

This focus book provides a proven methodical approach to selecting the proper tools, technologies, and software necessary to support the everchanging business needs of your service desk. This methodology is flexible, scalable, and can be adapted to meet the needs of:

Organizations of any size. Organizations with 10 employees or 100,000 employees or a service desk with 4 staff members or 400 staff members will be able to take effective advantage of this methodology.

Project budgets of any size. Whether you are selecting a new multi-million dollar ITSM software suite, selecting a new ACD vendor, or just looking to upgrade your existing desktop remote control software, this methodology covers the steps that should be taken to ensure success regardless of your project budget.

Project durations of any length. Though the primary timeline example given in this book is around selecting service desk software, this methodology can be scaled to meet the needs of projects as short as a few weeks to those lasting several years. It has been proven effective in a wide range of project durations.

Bridging the Gap to Your Customer

By: Mitch Bryant

The thing that truly matters the most in the customer satisfaction business is the ongoing continued actions that your organization employs to demonstrate your commitment to customers each day. Will you fail your customers occasionally? YES, but how you perform service recovery and how you provide exceptional service day-in and day-out will make or break that relationship. Instead of fancy “slogans,” how about letting your customers do the bragging for you about your amazing service and support? Let them be a part of your marketing campaign.

This focus book takes you inside the on-going relationship between end-users and customer support, focusing on interactions, consequences, cause and effect, loyalty, service recovery, and more.

Top 10 Leadership Strategies to Build an Exceptional Team

By: Darien Chimoff and Brandon Caudle

Each June, HDI® invites all local chapter officers from across North America to attend an annual summit in Colorado Springs, Colorado. These local chapter officers are technical and customer support analysts, technicians, and managers as well as a host of other technology support practitioners who work in the trenches of Information Technology across the United States and Canada. At the 2008 meeting, two support desk managers with industry award winning teams (Darien Chimoff and Brandon Caudle), compared notes about what each had learned in their years of experience and it was found that they had much in common and employed almost identical leadership strategies.

The Sound of Quality: Best Practices in Call Monitoring

By: Bob Last

This HDI Focus Book discusses ten of the most common best practices used in technical support call monitoring programs. Like any customer support initiative or program, a call monitoring program requires a commitment of both time and resources to be successful. In addition, the best programs and the ones that are most accepted by employees are the programs that are closely tied to training and quality improvement programs.

The Professional Association: Cultivating Leaders and Harnessing the Power of Community

By: Rich Hand

Since the founding of our country, Americans have understood the value of being able to associate and assemble. Our founders understood and believed the concept of forming “associations” as important to the future of our country, so much so, that they wrote it into the United States Constitution.

The First Amendment (Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression) reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”1

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