Part 6: Perfect IT Helpdesk – Maintaining your Helpdesk

Perhaps you were a customer of a Helpdesk. Perhaps you were a Helpdesk person, assisting your customers every day. Perhaps you were a Helpdesk Manager/Supervisor. Perhaps you were a Partner responsible for IT. You may wonder how to maintain and keep your valuable Helpdesk team happy so they do not consider another place to work.

It has been increasingly difficult to find good solid stable and friendly Helpdesk staff. Therefore it is even more important to do whatever possible to keep your existing Helpdesk representatives happy, satisfied and fulfilled. Here are some ways to achieve that.

• Make sure that your Helpdesk staff remuneration is within the regular pay range in your region and that they are happy with their monthly paychecks.
• Appreciate their good work, praise them as often as you can, and if you need to correct them, try to do it in a constructive way.
• Keep offering them professional development and the right training for them, both internal and external, so they feel they are growing within their specialty.
• Make sure your Helpdesk people have a good, regularly updated Knowledge Base to support them in their daily work.
• Provide modern service tools, including a solid remote help and management system.
• Create and maintain a model of positive teamwork and helping each other and not competing against each other.
• Regularly meet with your team, listen to what they say.
• Constantly improve your Helpdesk operation and elicit and implement good suggestions from the team members.
• Involve them as much as you can, including some decision making process, so they feel included and responsible.
• Make sure to offer project work to all Helpdesk members so they can do something else other than servicing your clients.
• Help them choose and grow within their specialties in connection with the additional project work they do.
• Provide a good comfortable working place for your team, preferably not an open space.
• Make sure to implement a fair work life balance for your team, understand and respect their personal life and needs, like a sudden request for a day off.