8 Replies Latest reply on Nov 7, 2013 12:31 PM by thebryceswrite

    IT Help Desk Collaboration - #swarm

    leigh_pankonien
    leigh_pankonien Aug 6, 2013 12:20 PM

      Screen shot 2013-08-06 at 10.48.44 AM.png

      With a Help Desk Collaboration Group, IT teams are now able to do the following:

      • Search for, ask and answer questions in a single place
      • Convert correct answers into official knowledge documents
      • Announce status of technical issues along with links to troubleshooting strategies so employees/customers can solve their own problems
      • Find information and have your question answered more quickly with everyone contributing
      • Help Desk specialists are able to increase first-call resolution rates and decrease average handle time

       

      Hard hitting quotes:

      "Help-desk calls are the most expensive and time-consuming tool in the IT support arsenal, but costs can be cut dramatically if employees learn to help themselves," says Michele Pelino, a Forrester principal analyst.

      "Our most impactful IT related benefits have been in the communication, training and support of IT services to users as an alternative to typical help desk style requests." Bryce Williams, Social Collaboration Consultant in IT. (comment contributed in earlier IT swarm)

      "For those on front line support, collaboration becomes an opportunity to up their skills and increase their satisfaction levels too. This can also help with morale on the service desk as staff feel better educated and more valued." - Stuart Facey, VP at Bomgar Corporation. Article: The service desk shuffle: Collaboration trumps hot potatoes | The ITSM Review


      Are there any other benefits that your team has experienced with IT Help Desk Collaboration?


      I'm interested in hearing form you:

      Albert della Gatta Aljaz Ceru April Hicks Barry Pierce Bill Klco Bilal Elreda Ben Harral Bobbie Carter Bruce DaviesBobbie CarterBrian Forcumcameron showalterChuck McDanielsDan GillDan LarsenDana LunnDaniel Lowden

      Gia Lyons

      Tim Zonca

        • Re: IT Help Desk Collaboration - #swarm
          Melissa.Rosen
          Melissa.Rosen Champion Aug 12, 2013 7:00 AM (in response to leigh_pankonien)

          I'd be curious to know how others are handling this. We have not formalized a Help Desk group or space on our instance because we have other established channels for that. But, we DO have a Getting Started space where we field newbie questions (which could end up at the help desk if we didn't have a space for this), and Enhancement request and Defect reporting group, which links to a SP site to manage workflow of incoming requests. I've seen a module in use in the JC that appears to allow users to submit a ticket and rank the urgency of a request/issue. I am curious if others are using this at their companies to manage help desk scenarios, and if they feel it is effective for them.

          • Re: IT Help Desk Collaboration - #swarm
            tmaurer
            tmaurer Champion Aug 20, 2013 12:10 PM (in response to leigh_pankonien)

            I don't think our IT teams are ready for this way of doing things. They still are very metrics and app driven, and handling calls in this fashion doesn't fit their existing structures. They are now posting updates and some documentation to our Jive instance, but tickets are still an external system and likely to stay that way.

             

            That said, the team supporting our Jive instance uses Jive spaces and groups to manage the majority of our trouble/help cases. It works very well for us generally, until someone forgets to mark something as answered or to update the thread with the resolution (but that would be problematic regardless).

             

            I'd love to implement something more along the lines of a form, so that the person submitting had to make a few decisions along the way (i.e. how quickly do you need an answer/action), and was prompted for certain information. We do have a way they CAN use a form, but some people miss that very obvious option.

              • Re: IT Help Desk Collaboration - #swarm
                bill.klco Employee Aug 23, 2013 10:12 AM (in response to tmaurer)

                Tracy our experience is nearly identical... Main IT help desk is using traditional 1990's ticketing system - track all the metrics but, never get the route cause of ticket ping-pong and long resolution times. Which is no one working on the issue can see the whole conversation. For our Jive instance users contact us through our "help space", and are amazed at how quickly we respond and resolve issues. I think we will eventually get our main IT help desk to come around but it will take many more conversations to convince them there is another way...

                  • Re: IT Help Desk Collaboration - #swarm
                    tmaurer
                    tmaurer Champion Aug 23, 2013 11:27 AM (in response to bill.klco)

                    I have to admit to being one of the people who almost never uses the IT ticketing system. Part of it has been the interface was crappy. But to be honest, it seems silly for me to have to log into a specific system just to request help, when I only need to do that maybe once a month at the most. I like social because then you are meeting people where they are instead of asking them to come to you.

                  • Re: IT Help Desk Collaboration - #swarm
                    thebryceswrite
                    thebryceswrite Aug 26, 2013 9:14 AM (in response to tmaurer)

                    Tracy, I had that original impression as well. But as we experimented with it, they began to quickly see the value of deflecting so many tickets that weren't getting solved at the Tier 1 level and making it to them for routine problems...to then seeing people in the community answering each other's questions...referring one another to places where the answer had already been provided...and preventing new calls in the first place thanks to search capabilities (the ticket system with resolutions is closed to most)....that they could see it helping reduce the impact on them vs. before it existed.

                     

                    Not to mention the praise they got for improved OCM and service thanks to people having more awareness into common problems happening to everyone vs. things just specific to one individual (another great benefit to reduce call volume and redundant tickets).

                     

                    Our IT team figured out, with some of my help, how to use the Community Manager Reports outputs and some other post/view/reply/time metrics to complement their standard help desk metrics with some new "community help" metrics to tell their overall story.

                     

                    In case some of that data helps make the case . I had the OCM lead tell me last week that he could never imagine supporting another large scale IT implementation without it now....based on the benefits it has provided. And we're doing it for Outlook, Lync, Windows upgrades, SharePoint, Jive, SAP, Mobility/BYOD and many more now.

                      • Re: IT Help Desk Collaboration - #swarm
                        xsingy
                        xsingy Nov 5, 2013 2:57 PM (in response to thebryceswrite)

                        Hi Bryce,

                         

                        nice story! Actually the head of support of my company is looking for some references to discuss how Jive can actually help reduce calls to the Service Desks. Would you mind to participate to a conf call (and your IT guy) one of these mornings? Could you recommend some other people to discuss with?

                          • Re: IT Help Desk Collaboration - #swarm
                            thebryceswrite
                            thebryceswrite Nov 7, 2013 12:31 PM (in response to xsingy)

                            Hi Xavier, sorry for my delayed reply. I've been travelling.

                             

                            I don't think I could book anyone else, but I'd be happy to have a chat if you'd like. I am relatively free between 8am-10am EST next week each morning, Monday through Thursday...if you'd have any availability then.

                             

                            You can DM me if you'd like to further coordinate.

                             

                            Thanks!