End user support resolves IT issues, minimises disruption and boosts technology adoption and productivity. But a poor service has the opposite effect, tarnishes your IT team’s reputation, and can have a detrimental impact on morale across an organisation.
With demand for end user support at an all-time high because of remote and hybrid work environments, ensuring your user community gets the best possible experience from technical support is vital.
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End user support best practices help your productivity too!
Often undervalued, but just as important, is the impact of end user support on the productivity and morale of your IT team. Ensuring you have sufficient capacity and implementing tools and processes to streamline IT support, allows you to focus on areas of IT that deliver strategic value.
Whether an internal team or an external service desk, the best technical support teams follow these end user support best practices.
1. Self-service portal: the first port of call for end users
A self-service portal that allows end users to log and track tickets, helps you prioritise issues and requests and manage tickets effectively. In turn this provides end users with a better user experience and minimises interruptions for team members focusing on non-support activities.
2. Knowledge base content
A key feature of any self-service portal should be a knowledge base with ‘how to’ style content addressing common issues and requests. This can reduce ticket volumes significantly, empowering end users and helping them get a speedy resolution.
3. Multi-channel support
Providing dedicated communication channels such as a support email address, unique phone number, messaging apps, and live chat functionality helps end users reach the right team straightaway. Other members of your IT team, focusing on non-support activities, can work uninterrupted, hidden from view!
4. Hire the right people and train them well
If you are running an internal IT support team, make sure you’ve got the right level of skills and experience to resolve issues quickly without escalation to the wider IT team. Similarly, if using a managed service provider, they should do more than triage tickets. Expect, and demand, the right skills to resolve all 1st line tickets as well as making sure you (or they) can handle escalations to 2nd and 3rd line in a timely way.
5. Always champion the user experience
Service desk analysts, whether supporting internal users or external customers, should deliver a superior customer experience and communicate effectively and personably with the end user. The ability to listen, defuse tense situations and communicate in a meaningful and helpful way, are essential skills for any technical support team.
With the right soft skills, your end user community will be happy to contact IT support, reducing any attempts to bypass your preferred channels and contact you directly.
Implementing these end user support best practices is beneficial to everyone. Happy users equate to a happy IT team and bottomline benefits for the organisation as a whole.
