Why we use a helpdesk

I’m in a reflective mood, with us hurtling towards the end of 2019. It’s got me thinking about where we are now, where we were and where we’re going. That’s quite an expansive thought to have, which poses many, many questions. Something for another time perhaps.

One thing that’s central to the way we work, is our helpdesk system. We’d be truly lost without it. I look back at our time prior to implementing the helpdesk and think “How the hell did we manage?”. The days of using Outlook to manage customers, writing handovers at the end of each day and desks swapped in post-it notes. It makes me smile and cringe at the same time.

Our helpdesk itself has evolved over the years we’ve been using it. It started out to simply manage our support tasks, giving us central management and visibility of everything that’s going on and to easily delegate work out. This remains true today, support is everything to us. Other areas we’ve “customised” it into as well are to manage our sales inquiries, to work on our own internal research and development tasks and to manage projects.

It’s the lifeblood of our business. I think it’s the one system we simply couldn’t function without. Chaos would ensue. 

Whilst no system is perfect, I know our system is one of the better ones I’ve come across. I’ve seen everything from inhouse produced intranet systems to other systems from really well known software vendors. Our system keeps the customer at the front, also giving us the reporting and management we need to check our response times, see what our team is working on and how long it’s taken them to complete. These metrics and key performance indicators allow us to spot areas we need to work on ourselves and allows us to pivot the business quickly around customer requests.

Like any system, our helpdesk is constantly evolving. There isn’t a week that goes by where we’ve not tweaked something, add something in or removed no longer used parts of the system. The key is customer experience, simplicity, and efficiency.

It’s perhaps a given that an IT Support business is using a helpdesk, but I can see business cases for it in all kinds of other businesses. Whilst it is a helpdesk, it can be what you want it to me, that’s why I can see its use to manage team email, project management and managing tasks between different departments.

For 2020, perhaps think to yourself “is there another way of doing this” and consider what other solutions are out there, to make you more productive and happier.

Gavin Moorhouse is the owner of Lucid Computer Solutions Ltd, an IT Support and Computer Services business based in Worcestershire. They just love a helpdesk! Feel free to reach out to Gavin about your helpdesk requirements.