The
Business Challenge
Anyone
who has ever experienced an unexpected down time quickly realizes
that Information Technology (IT) computer support services is
a critical business function essential to keep business running
smoothly. However, viewed as cost centers, IT organizations are
also often the first to succumb to budgets woes that place support
services at risk. Providing support is complex and expensive.
The costs are mainly attributed to high personnel involvement,
as they often require several exchanges between a caller and the
support team from receipt of problem to resolution. Provision
of these services are further complicated by those meetings being
sporadic.
From
a help desk support perspective, staffing resources are consumed
to record the initial request from the caller, forward the request
to the appropriate technical representative who may in turn contact
the caller to get more information about the issue. A ten-minute
conversation ensues only to take the details of the call. The
support continues behind the scenes in investigating the problem,
speaking with third party vendors, and playing phone tag on occasion.
Multiply the time spent on a typical support request by the average
number of calls each month, and an expense amount surfaces that
targets itself as a candidate for cost efficiency improvement.
How
to keep operational costs low and deliver a consistent level of
quality support are challenges faced by IT organizations in virtually
any industry. Cost cutting exercises and expansion initiatives
without increasing staffing levels further places quality and
timeliness of support services at risk. A company's IT support
strategy must enable it to provide consistent quality support
in the face of change.
NYF Response
To
mitigate the risks that dependencies on staffing levels bring,
the use of help desks is recommended to help deliver consistent
and quality support. Help desks are beneficial when the average
number of support requests reach levels that cannot be cost-effectively
handled by staff alone. Support services entail a sequence of
events that takes place over time. Help desks help to record and
track progress so that additional resources are not expended in
becoming familiar with the customer's request all over again.
Furthermore, the nature of support often presents repeated problems
where automatic forwarding of these requests to individuals with
specialized knowledge will help promote better efficiencies. A
web self-service option will further reduce call volumes, enable
customers to self-diagnose, or access status of their support
request progress.
Technology
from NYF Systems can help to implement such capabilities. NYF
Systems' Aegis Help Desk provide a help desk and tracking mechanism
to link customer information, support requests, resolutions to
common problems, and status of progress to help your customer
support team make decisions and diagnosis that are consistent
and accurate. Aegis Help Desk workflow capabilities will help
detail the steps involved in the business process, enabling the
customer representative to explain to the caller the next steps,
or record additional information.
The
Aegis Help Desk client web access facility enables customers to
log on to the system using a browser such as Internet Explorer,
to initiate support requests and to periodically check progress
with around-the-clock convenience. This web self-service can deal
effectively with common procedures that represent a large part
of a support issues reported with little customer instruction.
Furthermore, web front-end technology from Aegis Help Desk enables
your support team to be distributed - whether to work from a company
location, home, or airport - and does not require a client version
to be installed on their computers.
The
usage information captured by Aegis Help Desk systems can help
you track responsiveness, cost of providing the support, and timeliness
of response as feedback for continuous improvement initiatives.
Aegis
Help Desk includes an asset management facility. The asset management
component keeps all your asset data in one place and allows you
to track asset allocations, components that made up an asset,
asset service history and support calls for each asset.
The
information captured by Aegis help desk systems can help IT departments
with tracking and costing of service usage that will contribute
to greater improvement in services provided. Aegis Help Desk is
highly configurable - additional information such as customer
attributes can easily be tailored to your specific business needs
as required without development effort beyond defining the new
attributes in a few simple steps. Or simply use the setups we
provide to immediately see the value of your investment.
To
learn more about Aegis Help Desk, click here.
For testimonials of customers who have used Aegis as part of their
support strategy, click here.
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