Overview

In the current economy, IT managers must find creative approaches to improve IT services with reduced funding and fewer resources. In an effort to assist IT managers, The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success identifies critical areas of weakness within the support environment and provides practical, step-by-step improvement strategies.

Developed originally as a workshop, this book contains audits in all critical areas of the support organization including: Help Desk Foundation, People, Process, Tools and Customer Relationship Management. Each audit rates the maturity of the support organization: Advanced, Mature, Emergent or Immature.

This do-it-yourself audit and improvement process provides the framework and guidance to enhance the support organization's ability to ensure customer success. Focus is placed upon cross-functional improvement teams, senior management buy-in, and the development of critical success factors and measurements. Each audit has five steps: assess, compare, plan, implement and assess. The assessment process begins with an audit of each functional area of a support organization and compares your responses to best practices to provide an organizational maturity rating. If a need for improvement is identified, the planning stage provides detailed information on how to launch an improvement project. This is followed by implementation and the measurement of the established success criteria.

The book was written by Julie Mohr, a well-known industry speaker on the topic of support service improvement.

Companion CD

In workshops conducted for The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success, the author often heard many requests for the samples in the book in an electronic form. In an effort to help you get started with implementing change in your support environment, all the templates and more tools are assembled into one CD, including:

• Project Plan Template (Project) - An overview of all the elements of a successful enhancement project.

• Business Case Template (Word) - A template to create a business case to demonstrate the overall benefits and costs of an enhancement project.

• Help Desk Audit Overview (PowerPoint) - A PowerPoint presentation used in the workshop.

• Vision Mission Worksheet (Word) - A worksheet to help you create a vision/mission statement.

• Organization Chart (Visio) - An organization chart that you can modify to meet your needs.

• List of Products & Services Provided (Excel) - An outline to help you get started in creating a list of products and services provided.

• Site Audit (Excel) - This is a document that you can send out to your support partners and solicit information about their environment to add to your list of products & services.

• Level-1 Analyst Position Description (Word) - A sample position description for a level-1 analyst.

• Level-2 Analyst Position Description (Word) - A sample position description for a level-2 analyst.

• Help Desk Manager Position Description (Word) - A sample position description for a help desk manager.

• Staffing Model (Excel) - A sample staffing model for determining the number of staff to support your customers based upon basic information about your support environment. Note: This is not a full-staffing model and does not use Erlang-C formulas.

• Performance Measurement Matrix (Excel) - A list of performance measurements for the help desk.

• Skills Assessment (Word) - A form to give to your staff for them to do a self-assessment of their skills.

• Training Plan (Excel) - A plan used to help your team improve their skills.

• New Hire Checklist (Word) - A form used to process new hires to ensure that all steps are completed prior to their first day of employment.

• Vendor RFP (Excel) - A spreadsheet that you can use to help determine your technology needs and to send to vendors to request more information on their products.

• Service Level Agreement Template (Word) - A template you can use to create your own service level agreement.

• Customer Satisfaction Survey (Word) - A form that you can send out to your customers to find out what they think about your services.

• Call Monitoring Sheet (Word) - A form that managers can use to evaluate the phone skills of their team.

• Help Desk Brochure (Word) - A brochure that you can customize to describe the services that your organization provides to your customers.

• Help Desk Newsletter (Word) - A sample newsletter.

• Help Desk Presentation (PowerPoint) - A PowerPoint presentation that you can use to give an overview of your services during a new hire orientation.

Help Desk & Support Center
Call Center Management
Tech Support Resources
Project Management
Contact Center Technology
Online Support
Customer Satisfaction
Knock Your Socks Off Service
Help Desk Institute
Telecom Books
Communication Skills
Call Center Monitoring
Metrics & Benchmarking
CRM
Hiring, Training, & Retention
Outbound Telebusiness
Novelties, Gifts, & Humor
Bargain Books (50% off)

Call Center Courses
Telephony Courses
ITIL & Help Desk Courses

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