Support clients in a courteous and

professional manner

Establishing a courteous and professional manner 2

Courteous and professional manner 2

Determining client support needs 4

Gathering information 4
Giving feedback to your client 4

Applying organisational policy 5

Types of policies and guidelines 5
The need for organisational policies and guidelines 5
Cultural differences 6

Maintaining client contact 7

What sort of things do you need feedback on? 7
How to obtain feedback 7
IT help desk database 8

Summary 9

TTLM: Recording Client Support Requirements

Bako, Ethiopia
Establishing a courteous and
professional manner

Most jobs in the IT industry require you to interact regularly with clients.
Some of these interactions include:
 attending to customers’ enquiries and complaints
 determining a client’s needs
 obtaining feedback from a client with regard to an installation,
customisation, or support issue
 providing a client with information
 providing instruction to a client.

When dealing with clients, it is important for you to ensure you establish
and maintain a courteous and professional manner.

Courteous and professional manner

To be courteous means to show good manners and respect for others’
opinions and needs. To be professional means to conduct yourself in a
manner that is mature, responsible and fair.

Reflect
Imagine you are a client and you ask an IT Support person for help. What
behaviour would you expect from the IT Support person if you were to
consider them courteous? What behaviour would you expect from them if
you were to consider them professional?

Courteous behaviour
Behaviour that is considered courteous is:
 being friendly
 showing respect for the other person, and
 assisting the other person.

Being courteous is an important element of being professional.

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Professional behaviour
When dealing with clients in a workplace setting, professionalism is critical.
Behaviour that is considered professional is:
 being courteous
 focusing on the needs of the client
 assisting the client to meet their needs
 following organisational policies and expectations of good conduct
 ensuring the client’s needs have been met.

Another key element to professionalism is doing all of the above within an

appropriate timeframe.

TTLM: Recording Client Support Requirements

Bako, Ethiopia
Determining client support needs

Sometimes it is not easy to decipher exactly what your clients want. How do
you determine a client’s requirements — particularly if the client is not very
clear about it themself?

Reflect
When was the last time you asked for assistance from the IT department?
Did you know what you wanted? Did you know what was causing the
problem you had? How did the IT Support person get the information they
required from you to solve your problem?

Gathering information
It’s important, of course, to collect as much information as possible about:
 what is happening
 when it started happening
 what may have caused it to happen
 how urgent it is.

Giving feedback to your client

You’ve analysed your client’s requirements and decided on a solution. You
then:
 Tell the client whether you (or your organisation) would be able to
meet their requirements.
 Let them know of other options or possibilities of which they had
not been aware.
 Provide the client with any information that will help them
understand what they’re getting into before you go ahead with the
job.

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Applying organisational policy

Every client interaction should be guided by the policies and guidelines of

the organisation. These policies and guidelines are often documented, but
can also be established ways of behaving that form part of the culture of the
organisation.

Types of policies and guidelines

There are policies and guidelines that govern how staff:
 answer the telephone
 document client requests
 provide follow up to clients.

More often than not, you will see how things should be done by observing
other IT staff and seeing how they interact with clients.

Reflect
Think about a situation where you have contacted an organisation for
assistance. It may be as simple as calling a telephone company for a
telephone number. Do the people you deal with follow pre-determined
steps? Do they always follow these steps no matter how many times you
telephone them?

The need for organisational policies

and guidelines
Some reasons for putting organisational policies and guidelines in place are:
 To show staff what the organisation considers professional conduct.
 To standardise the interactions between IT staff and clients.
 To ensure the process of supporting clients runs smoothly. The
policies and guidelines may contain details on how to deal with
unusual and difficult situations.

TTLM: Recording Client Support Requirements

Bako, Ethiopia
 Reflect
Think about how you and your colleagues answer the telephone at work. Is
there a standard way you do this? Were you told when you started work
how to answer the telephones, according to organisational policies?

Most organisations require their staff to answer the telephone with a

greeting, identifying the organisation, the department/section, their name
and offering help with an opening statement. For example:
Good morning. ICT Services. This is Lisa Brown.
How can I help you?

Cultural differences
‘Culture’ refers to the values, beliefs and attitudes shared by a group.

When it comes to communication and interaction, it is important to have

respect for the differences between cultural groups within your organisation.

Reflect
Can you think of any differences in communication style you have noticed
when interacting with someone from a different culture?

The following differences can make effective communication difficult:

 language
 behavioural expectations
 the written word
 values.

By standardising how interactions should occur, organisational policies and

guidelines can help solve problems arising from cultural differences. When
there are clear guidelines, everyone knows what is expected.

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Maintaining client contact

Obtaining client feedback is an important part of maintaining contact with

clients. Feedback is the information that you gather from your clients.

Reflect
Think of the last time you requested help from the IT help desk. In order to
get assistance, what type of feedback did you have to give to the help desk
support person?

What sort of things do you need

feedback on?
Some of the things the IT Support person needs feedback on include:
1 A need — What does the client need? Have I understood the needs of
the client correctly?
2 The solution — How can I meet the client’s needs?
3 The implementation — Has the implemented solution worked?

The IT department will require the three types of feedback if it is to resolve

client problems.

How to obtain feedback

Whether you are trying to find out what people need or trying to obtain
client feedback, you have a number of ways of obtaining your information.
You might decide to phone your clients, visit them face-to-face, send an
email or get them to complete a feedback form over the intranet.

Questions are the main way we obtain feedback. They may be used in a
range of situations, from informal face-to-face encounters to well-structured
formal questionnaires.

TTLM: Recording Client Support Requirements

Bako, Ethiopia
 IT help desk database
A good tool to assist IT staff to maintain client contact is the IT help desk
database. This is a database that records all of the requests coming in from
the organisation to the help desk. The IT support staff take clients’ requests
from the database and obtain feedback from the client directly about the
specifics of the problem.

When the client is visited, the database is updated. Any feedback provided
by the client is recorded on the database. When the problem is rectified, the
database is updated and the request is ‘closed off’.

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Summary

In this reading we have covered how to establish a courteous and

professional manner when interacting with clients; determine what the client
support needs are and give the client feedback; apply organisational policy
and guidelines to support clients and maintain client contact.

TTLM: Recording Client Support Requirements

Bako, Ethiopia