How to manage a service desk during a pandemic
- Blog
- Processes
- Service desk
July 29, 2020 |
3 min read
- Blog
- Processes
- Service desk
The service desk practice is a huge part of ITIL® and any organization as it highlights the importance of value in customer service. It sets the precedent for the customer/user experience and reflects heavily on the organization. The practice involves establishing effective and appropriate communication channels between users and the service provider. Usually, there are multiple channels and a need for effective channel integration to provide seamless, convenient user experience.
The service desk is the only part of the organization that most users interact with directly. It is the face of the company, and a good experience with the service desk can ensure a customer’s ongoing loyalty. With most organizations working from home because of the pandemic, it is even more important to maintain that high level of customer/user satisfaction.
Service Desk at AXELOS
Since March, the service desk at AXELOS has become much busier. As people have more time on their hands, it is evident that many are trying to improve their skills, gain new qualifications, and update their CVs. This trend has led to a big increase in the number of queries the AXELOS service desk receives and these queries are usually about topics such as taking exams, using digital badges, managing subscriptions, and verifying qualifications.
To become more efficient, our service desk agents have been improving their processes so they can better cope with the increased workload. This includes working with the IT department to receive updates frequently so that they have time to work on the requests short-term and also seeking temporary secondments from other departments that are less busy, which has been a massive help and kept the service desk afloat.
Working from home has been challenging, especially with training people remotely. The AXELOS service desk team tend to receive similar requests and queries on a daily basis; they use salesforce to tackle this by creating templates. This keeps things efficient and helps to standardize their responses. In this case, automation has been incredibly helpful and has prevented a decrease in the quality of service provision.
Adjusting to working from home
There is a silver lining with every situation. Now is a good time to see what is and isn’t working for your service desk. It will be helpful to see where you can make improvements to processes and technology functionality, maybe by working with the IT department. Start by looking at the tools you have in place and updating them. That way, you won’t waste time.
The best service desks are those that understand the importance of co-creating value even when working remotely, and now is the best time to improve your service desk skills.
The service desk practice details information on how service providers can co-create value with their customers and users. More information on the practice can be found here.