Do You Know What Type Of 24/7 Helpdesk Support You're Signing Up To?

Do You Know What Type Of 24/7 Helpdesk Support You're Signing Up To?
By V. Sood

When you make a call to an IT support helpdesk, what do you expect to receive in return?

Obviously it's a no-brainer that you will want your call to be answered rather than ending up speaking to a recording device. However, once you pass that fundamental point, you may be surprised to know that there is a wide variety of interpretations as to what 24/7 helpdesk support really means.

Passive call logging

It's not unusual to hear of companies that are extremely disappointed to find that their 24-hours a day helpdesk support consists of little more than someone taking messages they intend to pass on to somebody else.

This is sometimes referred to as 'passive call logging.'

Whilst it serves the purpose of making sure that your problem is recorded and perhaps tracked, if you are expecting to talk to someone who understands the technology and your problem when you make your first call, then this sort of service is going to be disappointing.

This is particularly commonplace as a helpdesk service methodology when the helpdesk provider is doing what is called 'following the sun'. In other words, the base location of helpdesk support moves from one country to another across the globe following daylight. This avoids the provider needing to pay local helpdesk staff out-of-hours higher salaries but the downside is that it isn't usually economically possible to thoroughly train people in multiple locations around the planet.

So, the result may be a very rudimentary service that essentially involves taking a message and passing it on to a qualified technician to respond to you in due course. If that doesn't sound too bad, remember that if you want a fast resolution to your problem, then having instantaneous helpdesk contact might be useless if a technician isn't going to respond to you until it happens to be daylight wherever he or she is, perhaps the following day.

Scripted procedural help desks

Passive call logging is becoming rarer because some years ago, some clever folk decided that they could predict the nature of all incoming calls for support and write appropriately scripted Q&A dialogues for their helpdesk personnel to use to resolve the problem.

It's true that many problems have been seen many times previously by IT services support providers and therefore having a script that helpdesk staff can use to talk through a problem and provide a solution can be very useful.

However, this approach is severely limited by the nature of statistics.

It may well be that perhaps 70% of problems reported to the helpdesk will have been seen before and scripts covering them can be prepared. Unfortunately, if you happen to be one of the 30% whose problem simply doesn't fit the scripts then you are back to the problem of just how long it is going to take to get someone to call you back who really does understand the technology concerned.

The main motivation for providers using this methodology is that they believe it can be used to skimp on specific helpdesk support staff training.

Professional help desk services

Companies offering 24/7 helpdesk support through trained and technically-competent helpdesk personnel are likely to be those that offer you the most reassuring service and the fastest time to resolution overall.

Of course, it may mean that their prices are higher than helpdesk services offered under the above two other categories.

If you have a crisis over a weekend or out of normal working hours though, you may want to talk to someone immediately who knows what they're talking about rather than someone who is just taking messages. So, think about this and be clear up front what type of 24/7 helpdesk support service you are buying.

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