Oh no! You just found out that your go-to I.T. guy at your Managed Service Provider or Outsourced Help Desk has moved on. He/she knew everything about your quirky system issues and network. Now what?
Surprisingly, many companies don’t really stop to consider continuity of service and employee succession planning when selecting a service provider, and even more surprisingly, not all service providers consider this a key part of their business. What you may not know, but should, is that The Computer Center takes this best practice seriously and considers it essential to providing the superior services you have come to expect from us.
So, if your favorite technician has moved on, what has The Computer Center already done to make sure that Jason or Ben or Michael or Michelle can help me just like Tom did? Our Help Desk Best Practices are as follows:
- Build processes around making sure that no single employee holds the information “keys to the kingdom” in his or her head, and that any technician on our team can access it when needed.
- Document, document, document. We document the following for our clients, and then use this documentation to train all our staff, so that anyone can help resolve your issues:
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- IT infrastructure
- Network / Routers
- Servers
- Workstations
- Printers
- Backup Devices
- Equipment vendor
- User Names and Passwords (especially Administrator roles) – and who has had access to them
- IT related business processes
- Backup strategies
- Processes for documenting IT issues and resolutions
- Maintaining warranties
- Software licensing compliance
- Warranty processes
- IT infrastructure
- Establish standard processes for the following tasks:
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- Service Ticket creation and issue documentation, from initial reporting through resolution and follow-up
- Proactive monitoring and regular reporting on:
- Backups
- Security
- Infrastructure
- Updates, patches, & other issues