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Blog Roundup: Our Most Popular Help Desk Services Blogs

Since we’ve started writing about IT help desk services, we’ve noticed that a few topics in particular seem to strike a chord with our readers. From improving an internal team to knowing when (and how) to outsource IT services, these blogs continue to resonate.

Today, we’re spotlighting five of these topics that we think you’ll find especially useful. And, as a special bonus, we’ve also included a new tool that can help you calculate the costs of outsourcing help desk services. We hope you enjoy today’s roundup!

Table of Contents:

4 Ways to Optimize Your Enterprise Help Desk

Enterprise-level organizations present unique challenges for their internal help desk teams, especially when those organizations grow in scale and in size. That growth often spurs an increase in support requests, which can in turn become difficult to manage by the existing help desk team.

With that in mind, this blog focuses on strategies to keep your help desk running at maximum efficiency while recognizing the real-world challenges that come with supporting enterprise organizations. From an initial focus on your individual team members to big-picture analyses of trends and quantitative metrics, our approach to optimization considers the problem from multiple angles.

Level up your enterprise help desk.

How to Build an IT Help Desk Team

If you’re thinking about building your own internal team, it’s important to be intentional about what you do and have a good plan in place. This blog will walk you through the six steps of building an effective help desk team, including:

  • Step 1: Name Your Challenge(s)
  • Step 2: Imagine a Typical Month
  • Step 3: Train Your Help Desk Team
  • Step 4: Put a QA System in Place
  • Step 5: Monitor Job Satisfaction
  • Step 6: Invest in the Right Tools

In addition to walking you through best practices for building your team, this blog will help you identify other options that may be an even better fit for your business.

Discover how to build a great team.

Interview Questions to Help You Hire for Your IT Help Desk

For many of your customers, your help desk team serves as the face of the entire IT department. That’s why it’s so important to make sure you hire the right people.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. Recognizing talent isn’t always easy, and a candidate who looks good on paper may not be quite the right fit for your needs. That’s why we put together a list of 13 interview questions that can help as you start your search.

But that’s not all — this blog also includes a breakdown of the why behind every question, as well as guidance on the kinds of answers you should be listening for. The topics range from technical questions to questions that test emotional intelligence, work ethic, humility, integrity, and maturity.

Taken together, the guidance offered in this blog makes it a perfect resource to refer back to any time you’re looking for new members to add to your team.

Learn the 13 revealing interview questions.

Price Models for Outsourced IT Service

Building and staffing your own help desk is a serious investment of time, energy, and money. Before you commit, it’s worth weighing that cost against the price of outsourcing round-the-clock help desk services.

Different companies use different pricing models, all of which can affect your final expense. In this blog, we’ll walk through the five most common outsourcing pricing models, including:

  1. Pay Per Ticket
  2. Pay Per Call
  3. Pay Per Minute
  4. Pay Per Agent
  5. Pay Per User

There are pros and cons to each of these models, and it’s important to understand what they are before you decide who to hire. This blog will also help you understand what internal metrics you should use to identify your own needs.

Start here before you go shopping around.

7 Ways Your IT Help Desk Can Adjust to Rapid Business Growth

When your business starts booming, will your new help desk be able to keep up? Or are you going to find yourself short on support, only to face these same headaches all over again?

It’s a fair question, and the truth is, not all help desks are equally able to keep up with rapid business growth. Fortunately, we’ve identified the seven key best practices successful help desks follow, including:

  • Creating mini implementation plans
  • Communicating with each line of business
  • Collaborating with application owners
  • Identifying what they can (and can’t) do
  • Templating their training
  • Using data to drive decisions
  • Learning from other companies

In this blog, we’ll take a deeper dive into what each of these practices look like in action and how they can pay off for your company.

Get ready to grow.

How Much Is Your Help Desk Cost Per Ticket

If you manage an internal help desk services team, you know how difficult it can be to navigate staffing levels, training, potential turnover, and other common challenges. Outsourcing those services instead can be a great way to hit the ground running and for less money.

How much is your internal help desk cost per ticket? To get an idea of your cost per ticket, check out our help desk cost calculator!

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