Staffing the service desk

Hire the right people Don’t just look for technical skills - these are easily taught to IT-saavy people with an interest. Look for soft-skills - the people skills. How do they listen, empathize, encourage and support?

For any technical role, look for technology-focused people that have an interest in learning about the changing technology and like to keep up to date with progress and new things. Look for a balance in this. Do they keep up-to-date on their own time? Do they have any tech-hobbies? Do they show evidence that they enjoy working with technology, and have a passion for it in their personal life?

Induction and on-boarding

The on-boarding and induction process is crucial to all new postions, and a service-desk environment has its own unique things to cover. On-board them with training in the service desk system, and operations manual.

• Do you have a standard operating procedure process / document?
• Is a service-management best practice framework being used? Is this part of the induction process?
• Cyber security best practice. The service desk needs to be on-top of cyber security and be aware of the issues, the challenges and the risks. Service desk staff have a unique position to be able to educate, and set the lead in good cyber security practice.

Learn about other service environments from new staff. The servicedesk / helpdesk is typically a fairly transisent place to work. Staff move around and are often on short-term contracts. With all of this movement, there is a good opportunity to learn from new staff - both incoming and outgoing.

Topics for discussion could be:

• Management style
• Telephone manner
• Self-service
• The service management software that has been used / is being used
• Useful helpdesk scripts
• Followup / satisfaction surveys
• Team building exercises
• Team culture
• Operational workflow and process
• On-boarding / off-boarding