Introduction

Taking care of a user’s needs and solving their problems is called user support service.
This service begins the moment you connect with the User to fulfill their needs and
continues even after the requirements are met. The services might be required before,
during and after the user avails a product or service.
Objectives
At the end of this chapter, the students must be able to:
1. List the priorities of System Support teams.
2. Determine the skills needed for such service;
3. The interaction between the people subjected in the transactions.

Help Desk
Every organization has a helpdesk. It may be physical, such as a walk-up counter, or
virtual, such as by phone or email. Sometimes, the helpdesk function is unofficial, being
the portion of each day spent directly helping customers. Small SA teams, with just one
or two people, frequently have no official helpdesk, but that situation isn’t sustainable.
As the organization grows, small SA teams become big SA teams, and big SA teams
become enterprise organizations. Organizations sometimes don’t realize that they need
to institute a formal helpdesk until it is too late.
What does a Help Desk do?
It provides a medium for contact for users to receive assistance when troubleshooting
and solving problems. They are responsible in attending to the users’ needs in a timely
and professional manner. Help Desk support often works around the system and
computer users within the company. They will also train the users on the basics of the
system and computer functionalities.

Support Staff
Sizing a helpdesk staff is very difficult because it changes from situation to situation.
Universities often have thousands of students per helpdesk attendant. Corporate
helpdesks sometimes have a higher ratio or sometimes a lower ratio. In a commercial
computer science research environment, the ratio is often 40:1, and the first tier SAs
have a similar skill level as second-tier SAs at other helpdesks, to meet the more highly
technical level of questions. E-commerce sites usually have a separate helpdesk for
internal questions and a “customer-facing” helpdesk to help resolve issues reported by
paying customers. Depending on the services being offered, the ratio can be 10,000:1
or 1,000,000:1.
Support Process
Helpdesk staff should have well-defined processes to follow. In a smaller environment,
this is not as important, because the processes are more ad hoc or are undocumented
because they are being used by the people who built them. However, for a large
organization, the processes must be well documented. Very large helpdesks use scripts
as part of their training. Every service sup- ported has an associated flow of dialogue to
follow to support that service. For example, the script for someone calling to request
remote access service captures the appropriate information and tells the operator what
to do, be it enable remote access directly or forward the request to the appropriate
service organization. The script for a request to reset a password would, for security
reasons, require callers to prove who they are, possibly by knowing a unique piece of
personal information, before a new password would be set.

Scope of system support

 What is being supported? Only the PCs or the LAN itself? Are all PCs
supported, no matter which OS is being used, or only certain OSs and certain
revisions? Which applications are being supported? How are unsupported
platforms handled?
 Who will be supported? A particular department, building, division, enterprise,
university? What if a person has offices in multiple buildings, each with its own
helpdesk? Are only people who pay supported? Are only people of a certain
management level and higher (or lower) supported?
 Where are the customers? This question is similar to who if one is supporting,
for example, everyone in a particular building or location. However, where also
includes support of traveling customers, customers visiting third-party sites,
customers performing demos at trade shows, and people working from home.
 When is support provided? Are the hours of operation 8 AM to 6 PM, Monday
through Friday? How are things handled outside of these hours? Do people have
to wait until the helpdesk reopens, or is there a mechanism to reach SAs at
home? If there is no support in the off-hours, what should facilities management
do if environmental alarms sound or if a fire occurs?
 How long should the average request take to complete? Certain categories
of requests should be instant; others will take longer. Establishing these goals
sets expectations for the staff and customers. Customers expect everything to be
immediate if they aren’t told that certain tasks should be expected to take longer.
A tiered structure might list certain things that are to be fast (5 minutes), slow (1
hour), and multiple days (requests for new service creation).