3 Reasons Why Your IT Help Desk Shouldn’t Let Users Wait On Hold

If you’ve ever had to deal with your IT support desk, I’m sure you’ve had to deal with waiting on hold. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll at least get to listen to some music worth listening to. But if you’re like most users, you just want your issue resolved so you can get back to work—rather than wait for someone to acknowledge you even have a problem.

Here are the biggest 3 reasons why your users need immediate help desk attention and why you should demand near 100% calls answered as they come in:

Call Back Delay— On average, when your users can’t get a hold of someone from the help desk, their issues end up taking 3.5 DAYS to be resolved. Why is that? A missed call on the help desk side starts a slippery slope of missed calls, unreturned emails, help desk workers buried in returned phone calls, and users that are already busy needing to make extra time in their day to resolve their computer problems.

Answered calls change the outcome: real time elimination of computer headaches. Users that are efficiently using their technology (software, printers, etc.). Help desk workers that are actually closing tickets and impacting inter-departmental operations, rather than waiting or constantly tracking users down.

The Waiting Threshold— Scientific research reveals that people start forgetting specific details of a call after 5 minutes on the phone. Often (nearly 40%!) of people on hold tend to be more aggressive, angry or unwilling to listen when it comes to resolving help desk issues. What does this mean? Your help desk is trying to calm irritated users down (something they likely aren’t trained to do), while trying to resolve user computer problems.

Immediately Answered Calls Saves You Trouble—Not to mention, happier users, having a help desk capable of answering the phone within a reasonable amount of time (closer to 20 seconds than 5 minutes), gives users the attention they expect and helps the help desk technician get to the root of your user’s technical issue.

You’re Just a Number— When you try to call and end up having to submitting a ticket because no one is picking up, I’m sure you feel like just another number. 80% of users asked if they felt like they were valued by their IT department or vendor after submitting to an anonymous survey after their ticket had been eventually closed felt that they were treated as if they were just another cog in the machine (replaceable). In comparison 93% of respondents that had received immediate service from a help desk technician felt like they were treated as a valued team member.

Getting Quick Attention Matters—When you are considering whether your users need to feel important, the answer is a resounding YES! More often than not, one inconsistent area for your team will be how they feel after working with your it help desk.

What You Need Is:  adequate staff on hand when your users need help (find a recent description of how to calculate the number of help desk staff needed to help your user issues). And what you should expect as outcomes from your help desk are quite clear:

First Call Finishes— the majority (83%) of calls to the help desk should be closed within the first call (ZogDesk averages closure to 98.3%). That means users with resolved issues getting back to real work.

Efficient Ticket Escalation— In the event a ticket cannot be closed, calls answered should be passed to more experienced technicians to close an issue (sometimes this may be someone senior on your IT staff). Another major hurdle where many help desks fail is having a well-documented process of ticket escalation.

My mom always said that idle hands are the devil’s handy work. If your team is waiting idling for a help desk to fix your issues, who knows what problems might arise. The right help desk makes sure your users can work through issues whenever they come up. Can you afford unhappy and unproductive workers because the help desk can’t pick up the phone? Contact Us TODAY for a help desk health assessment.