Does every company need to follow suit? Probably not but there are lessons to be learned, and one of them is that people care how they are dealt with.
According to Jonathan Long, head of operations for Pure Telecoms, it is for this reason that it is unlikely that the traditional helpdesk will ever be entirely supplanted by mediums like Twitter. The human element is just too important.
Human element
“From our point of view, while the initial contact with a helpdesk might come through the likes of social media, when you are actually in the depths of interacting with that customer and the issue they have, what you need is an actual conversation,” he said.
“The requirement for human interaction is still very much a live issue especially when you are trying to fix a problem, do an upgrade or change something. For a start, the reason the customer is phoning in is because they don’t know how to do it in the first place. If you are trying to establish an understanding with someone who doesn’t know how to do something then I think it’s really important that they know they’re dealing with a human being.”
We believe in the transparency of social media. Customers want to know what to expect from us. We now offer them real-time insight into our response time, Martijn van der Zee, KLM
Long believes that this human contact is an integral part of the public image of Pure Telecom to the point that he has resisted the possibility of automating certain support functions, despite it being possible to do so. For him, the quality of engagement with the customer is key.
“You might use social media or automated systems to put a certain amount of menu options in front of them, but only of the ‘pick a category that best describes your query’ variety. That kind of thing is fine, but really nobody’s query is exactly the same as the next person’s,” he said.
“When it comes down to the specifics, we can all think of experiences where we had a query exactly because it was out of the ordinary. In that situation you need a certain amount of interaction to be able to establish what the need is and to know if, as the helpdesk person, you can impart your knowledge.”
It is a measure of how mature the use of social media is as part of official communications channels that even large international companies and major brands are doing it. Where it used to be the mark of the smaller company to be able to stay intimately in touch with each customer, now even airlines and mega-brands are doing it.
Best practices
“Streamlined, automated practices including social media for helpdesk services delivery constitute today’s best practices. That’s a fact,” said John Breslin, IBM Ireland technical support services leader.
“Today’s enterprise IT helpdesk capabilities are wide-ranging and go far beyond just answering a phone to tell someone how to do something. Now we can push out new software to endpoints, give employees a self-service portal for managing passwords and supply the IT-function with standardised processes for improving system performance.”
To deliver these capabilities, organisations need an effective and affordable model that meets both IT and business needs, and in Breslin’s opinion that means it needs to be fully integrated into the way the company handles all its customer and internal communications.
“What’s more, to get the most value from helpdesk solutions — and enable non- technical users to easily request services — organisations need simplified, streamlined, self-service ways to access capabilities, ideally from any device,” he said.
“But while efficient delivery is made possible by technology and while the service a customer receives is often based in technology, arriving at the point where IT services and their delivery meet business needs requires more than technology alone. And achieving best practices is more than a cookbook approach.”
A single overview of the helpdesk function that unites the business needs of the organisation and the technical support needs of the business is required to make sure that each part of the organisation is pulling in the same direction.
“A helpdesk function needs to establish and improve the processes that support IT services, with a constant focus on delivering value and usefulness, not on managing or enhancing technology for its own sake,” said Breslin.
“IT teams need to understand which services they deliver and which customers they are serving. And they need a constant focus on how they can make services better — whether faster, more secure, less expensive or improved in some other way that is important to the customer. Utilising a streamlined managed service approach to the helpdesk function — gets the job done better,” he said.
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