Published: itSMF Australia - July 1999

ServiceTalk - The Journal Of itSMF Forum - August 1999

Recruiting For The Help Desk

Seeking Outstanding Help Desk Staff?

Karen Ferris

Should we recruit for customer service skills or technical skills? 

My recommendation is that we recruit for the customer service or soft skills. Seek staff with excellent customer service skills and the ability to learn technical skills. The technical skills are important but in my experience they are attained far easier than customer service skills.

There are some people who, with all the will in the world, will never acquire the skills to become excellent customer service professionals. 

Good customer service skills should be recognised as, if not more, important than technical skills. When this recognition is truly accepted within IT, Help Desk staff are more likely to be paid salaries reflecting the specific skill set that they bring to the organisation. If we have an internal Help Desk, we should take note from the organisations that provide out sourced Help Desk / Call Centre services. These organisations recognise that there is a unique skill set required to provide good customer service, and are therefore prepared to pay top salaries to those who can demonstrate possession of these skills.

So, what skills are we looking for? 

As already mentioned, successful Help Desk staff will have the ability to learn technical skills. The customer service skills required will include excellent communication skills. Remember, communication skills include effective listening as well as the conveying of information.

Help Desk staff should be able to remove negative filters. Barbara Czegel tells us that negative filters are formed from our knowledge, life experiences, attitudes, prejudices, values, feeling about the person we are listening to, and so on.

Negative filters convert what someone is saying to what we believe they are saying. So, rather than hearing “I need help please” we hear “I am a pain because this is the third time I have rung this week”. This does not allow us to get the correct and complete information, which is a crucial role of the Help Desk. Czegel, in “The Help Desk Practitioners Book”, says that negative filters will impair your problem solving ability when you are dealing with a person. 

Help Desk staff need to have empathy with their customers and an understanding of the needs of the business. The Help Desk should treat each call as if it is the first time that customer has rung. Removing the prejudices and history we have with our customers is not an easy task and takes a particular type of person to be able to do this effectively. 

Innovation Is Key

In addition to communication skills and interpersonal skills, Help Desk staff should be innovative. They should be able to work on their own initiative and respond to faults very quickly. They must be able to identify workarounds to faults and their prime objective must be to restore service to the customer as opposed to fix the fault.

I recall a member of staff spending many, many hours through the night, attempting to restore communication links from head office to a depot so that the “goods for despatch” lists could be sent. Meanwhile, the depot had ground to a halt, and a fleet of trucks were lined up outside. On arrival at the office, I dared to suggest that we print the lists locally and fax them to the depot. This was a “radical” solution that had not even been given consideration!!

The Help Desk need to be able to “think outside the square” and find workarounds to enable the customer to keep on working. 

Team working is essential. All members of the Help Desk need to work as a team. It must be a cohesive unit. Communication within the Help Desk is just as important as communication outside the Help Desk.

Help Desk staff need to understand the business that they are supporting and what is important to the customer. They need to understand the impact of failures on the business.

So, how can our recruitment and selection process have the desired results?

It is useful to do an initial interview for Help Desk staff over the telephone. This gives an insight into the telephone skills possessed by the potential candidate. At the end of the day, this is the most common method of communication they will use with the customer.

After a satisfactory telephone interview, invite candidates to attend for a face to face interview. Invite a colleague to sit in on the interview – a second opinion is always useful. A member of the personnel department can also be a useful addition to an interview panel as they will focus on the general nature of the person rather than their ability to work on the Help Desk. 

Role Play As A Selection Tool 

Role play can be an excellent way in which to determine the potential of the candidate. I have used telephone role play where the candidate takes a call from a customer who has very little IT knowledge. The scenario could be a call to say that the screen on the PC is blank. The candidate should be able to do some basic diagnostics with the customer in terms of checking that the PC is switched on, the contrast is turned up, etc. whilst not getting frustrated when the customer appears to be totally incompetent.

I interviewed a number of candidates who had to determine whether the “pretend” customer was connected to the network or not. The customer stated that they could not see files on the network. Most candidates attempted to talk the customer through using file manager to determine if there were any network drives attached. This proved a difficult task due to it being apparently, the first time the customer had ever used a PC! (The person playing the role of customer was being deliberately obstructive). The successful candidate was the one who decided to check whether the customer should be able to see network files before taking the customer down the file manager route. They simply asked the customer whether there were two cables coming out of the back of the PC that went into the wall – mains and network cable.

Ensure that the candidate does not apportion blame. They should avoid phrases such as “Tell me what you did” and use “Could you describe how it happened?” 

Orders should not be given. Phrases such as “I’d like you to” rather than “You have to” should be used. They should try and get the caller working with them by wherever possible using “we”. For example, “What we need now is to….”

Look For Conversation Control Skills

Candidates should be able to maintain control of the call, particularly if the caller is angry, frustrated or nervous. The most effective way is to use open and closed questions as appropriate. Closed questions enable a simple response and the initiative remains with the questioner who can therefore control the direction and pace of the conversation. Open questions will encourage the customer to go into more detail. The initiative to some degree is handed over to the customer but control can be re-established with a closed question. Call closure should ensure that the tone is set for future calls. It is essential that the customer knows that the call is coming to an end and that it is clear as to the actions that will be taken next.

In Summary 

In summary, the candidate you select should have a positive nature and display confidence. They should hear the customer and display empathy, involving the customer in joint problem solving.

Once you have managed to find your outstanding Help Desk staff, all you need to do now is keep them!

But that is a future article........... 

Karen Ferris Copyright © 2002 KMF Advance. All rights reserved.