Service desk advise

Ben1373

I started service desk 2 months ago and have been doing well so fad. However this is my first IT job and recently I have been feeling overwhelmed. I work for the local government in my area and support over 40k users between 6 of us. I have the lowest queue out of everyone but still feel overwhelmed. How did/do you guys handle your queues? If there was a technical issue that you couldn't solve on the phone would you log it and then call them back? Tried to do that but would then take another phone call and forget all about it. Not too sure what to do.

scaredoftests

Can you talk with your supervisor?

Welly_59

When I worked service desk if icouldnt resolve within 5 minutes during a call then it usually needed a second line team to take a look.

If it's a badly run desk then all that will matter is call stats and you'll find that the tickets build up and are not dealt with.

This just generated more calls then as users chase up their previous requests

UncleB

Ben1373 wrote: »

How did/do you guys handle your queues?
If there was a technical issue that you couldn't solve on the phone would you log it and then call them back?

I've been doing this or managing it for almost 30 years so have a few pointers:
1 - you can only do one thing at a time so keeping a list of tasks and their priorities is essential
2 - communicating your intended time to do / meet / fix something to the customer will save your bacon routinely.
3 - keeping the times from 2 are key to being seen as a good support desk engineer to managers and customers.
4 - to access your to-do list, keep it online, keep it saved regularly and cache a local copy just in case
5 - to manage your to-do list, keep a range of priorities (1 to 5) and sub priorities within these (3.1, 3.2 etc). When a task joins your list then work out where it fits in and gague when you think you can do it, add a bit of spare and communicate to the customer when you think you will get onto the task.
6 - When you complete a task, archive it so you have a strong record of what you have done that day.
7 - When you have competing priorities, consider which will become a bigger issue if delayed and re-prioritise it higher than the others.
8 - When a task is languishing low in your list for too long then push it higher to stop it becoming a problem because it seems unimportant.
9 - Try to leave some blocks of time each day to deal with the "quick wins" and admin tasks.
10 - If you know you will be off or unavailable then avoid taking on tasks you can't comfortably complete in time, and ask your manager who to pass the calls to before you go.
11 - If you are struggling with something, ask your colleagues then manager before going down the rabbit hole to work out what it is. If there is a knowledge base available then use it too - avoid reinventing the wheel whenever possible.
12 - if you do find a new bug, document it and add it to the knowledge base or send to the team in case they see it too. Save them having to reinvent the wheel too.
13 - stop stressing. A little stress is good sometimes but if you find your shoulders are really sore at the end of the day then you are just shortening your life by doing this. Learn stress control techniques and you will find you can handle 6 calls landing in your lap at the same time and you still handle them with grace and efficiency and you won't need to crawl under the table to cry when finished!

As for your specific question of:
If there was a technical issue that you couldn't solve on the phone would you log it and then call them back?
This happens all the time so you can take reasonable steps to resolve it before telling the customer that you need to work on this more and will consult with your colleagues on the best way to resolve the problem. Make sure you ask them for all the details of the fault and the impact of it - record it all in the service desk ticket so they know you understand.
Now you add it to your list, quickly scan the list and take the top item - you have all the details to come back to and you are doing the best thing by dealing with the most urgent & important task next.

Juggling the multiple tasks with are of similar priorities is a bit more of an art as you can sometimes have one time consuming task running on your computer while you do another or sometimes it feels better to kill the quick wins just to keep the queue down. You will find what way works best for you with practice.