Does Your IT Help Desk Take and Use User Feedback Seriously?

Is your help desk optimizing their service toward your users’ needs and expectations? Do they seek user feedback?

More than 47% of help desks don’t get user feedback on their computer support issues. That means that if there are problems in your support system, you’re probably not getting them fixed. When I refer to problems, I mean problems that your help desk technicians or managers can’t see, but things your users visibly see as issues preventing them from being productive.

Perhaps it’s understanding when to callback your to discuss or resolve issues or making sure to communicate to a user how their ticket is being handled, especially in instances when a resolution is taking longer than the amount of time a user stays on the line explaining the ticket. Or maybe it’s making sure your team understands a specific business’ environment before asking questions you’re your users expect their technicians to have already known (this problem relates to your technicians not utilizing or having access to proper documentation).

Whatever the feedback may be—positive or negative—your help desk team needs it for them to better service your team.

Why don’t IT help desks tend to use user feedback?

No system in place to take surveys— 37% of help desks don’t even have a mechanism to get feedback from users. That means a help desk doesn’t consistently get feedback to improve. Users are, subsequently, stuck with mediocre IT help desk support and no easy platform to convey feedback for your help desk team.

Users don’t expect a survey—10% of help desks inconsistently ask for user feedback in quarterly surveys instead of seeking direct feedback after EVERY ticket closure. When users only periodically have opportunities to give feedback, they likely might not recognize or expect surveys that critically need their response.

Surveys are too hard to maneuver— Questions on the survey are long or open-ended. Questionnaire is so long that respondents aren’t willing to fill it out completely. Asking one simple question, with a binary response (positive or negative) and an area to explain or include a comment directly relating to a recent help desk experience not only is more likely to get filled out, your help desk is more likely to be able to respond quickly to an issue in improving their service for your users.

So, I Gave Them My Survey Response. Why Hasn’t Anything Changed?

Of IT help desks that use surveys, over half do nothing to respond to user concerns. Low response to user concerns is alarming because it signals that your IT help desk is not optimizing their processes, their people or their resources to ensure an optimal response to users in need of help. Having your help desk track and understand where they are doing well (getting positive responses) and where they need work (left with negative feedback from frustrated users) not only helps direct where your help desk technicians can improve, but it also makes sure your help desk operation team is engaged in improving IT help desk support so your users have fewer, quicker and better experiences when they need help.

Here are a few metrics related to user feedback that your help desk should look at on a regular basis to understand where they need improvement to make for a seamless user experience:

Survey Response Rates— Understanding whether your users are providing feedback is one of the best ways of knowing whether your help desk can realistically use user input to better your user experience as a whole. If only 2% of users respond to the average survey, your help desk should consider changing how they survey users in effort to increases response rates to better understand how they can improve. Higher response rates (>40%) should help identify help desk support needs across departments within your organization and will help direct where to focus service improvement efforts.

Positive/Negative Response Rates— Understanding user responses is important—both negative and positive responses. We recommend evaluating positive response rates by technician and by the help desk overall. In addition, look to see if the same user or department consistently is providing negative responses. Patterns of negative responses often indicate a deeper problem—whether in the help desk process or the broader IT support.

How Can You See if Your Help Desk Is Effectively Gauging Users For Help Desk Effectiveness? Are you confident that your users are getting the most out of your help desk? Do you really want to figure out where your IT help desk falls short? Contact Us TODAY for a free help desk health assessment.