Fine Tuning Your Organization

As companies become more dependent upon customer commitment, the pressure is on managers to develop and establish new service methods that offer measurable value. New customer service strategies, reinforced with appropriate staffing levels, are required to meet increased expectations for service delivery.

Important areas of concentration in any help desk environment are centered around team development, process change and solution architecture.

• Team Development
• Process Change
• Solution Architecture

Team Development

Despite ongoing advances in technology, people determine how much and how fast a company can change its business processes. In order to maximize the impact of individual and team efforts, leaders must continually measure and improve process performance. Aligning measures and reward programs with team accomplishments is critical to sustaining effective change over time.

In many organizations, the credibility factor - the gap between what employees want from their leaders and what they believe they are getting - has grown to large proportions. This is bound to hurt performance, regardless of the cause.

On the other hand, organizations that take specific steps to minimize, and ultimately, eliminate this gap, will realize important benefits. When people perceive their leaders to have high credibility, they are significantly more likely to:

• Project team confidence
• See their personal values in line with those of the company
• Develop ownership and commitment to the team

The key to narrowing the gap lies in fostering a healthy working atmosphere, characterized by:

• A well-defined purpose embodied in the help desk mission, vision, goals & measures, and sense of urgency
• A clear strategic direction for the help desk team and the solution architecture
• Strong relationships - interpersonal, interteam, and interactive
• Specific roles and responsibilities defined by function, by process, by customer, or by a combination of all
• Leadership that promotes professional development
• Communication through multiple channels
• A reward system that encourages responsiveness, ownership, risk taking, and autonomy

Process Change

Process change does not take place in a vacuum. It is only one element of a bigger picture, involving the company's strategic direction.

The impact of change extends beyond the impact of technology. Although the change in technology is very important, the timing and impact on the customer are just as important. The help desk, being the single point of contact (SPOC), is often in the best position to gauge these factors.

In spite of this, many companies make the mistake of trying to implement process change without involving the help desk organization. When help desk staff are not partners in the change process, they may be caught off guard with customer inquiries. The last thing you want is for your customers to discover that a lack of communication exists within your company.

Processes are designed around successful business methods. Some of the fundamental help desk processes include: call handling, request management, problem resolution management, service level management, call monitoring, change management, asset deployment / management, metric reporting, contingency planning and customer surveying.

Solution Architecture

nanoDesk technologies approaches solution integration by using a combination of methodologies and nanoDesk published KnowledgePrints. Trends indicate that the dynamics today are nothing more than "just doing business" which influences strategic objectives and generates change rapidly. Research is the only available resource that provides for future planning today.