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Putting the "Help" back into Help Desk

A good help desk technician is skilled at solving computer problems. After all, that is the primary role. In order to be effective, help desk professionals need more than just technical skills; they also need soft skills training such as customer service skills, problem solving, telephone skills, interpersonal skills, and even sales skills.

When a call comes into the Help Desk, the caller obviously has a problem and is looking for answers. It’s not uncommon for callers to be unable to articulate the problem very well. “My computer isn’t working” is a vague and common opening line. A skilled Help Desk technician knows how to drill down to the real root of the problem by asking the right questions. While Help Desk training courses help the technician master the technical skills required, soft skills training teaches the technician how to interact with the caller in an effective manner. Highly skilled technicians have both the technical as well as interpersonal skills necessary to get the job done and help the caller.

For example, what would you do? Which of the following questions would you ask the caller?

• Is your computer turned on?
• Is the computer displaying a blue screen?
• Is the hard drive spinning?
• Do any lights come on when you push the power button?

You can probably think of a dozen or more questions to ask, right? The problem with asking all of these “yes or no” questions is that it is not effective; at least not at this point. When you enroll in an online computer training course covering telephone skills, you’ll learn effective techniques for finding out what’s really going on. In this case, a simple, “Please describe what your computer is doing” prompts the caller to tell you exactly what is wrong with the computer.

The caller might reply by saying, “Every time I turn it on, it gets stuck on the Windows Logo screen.” Imagine if you had kept up with your yes or no questions. How long would it have taken you to get to the question of “Does your computer get stuck on the Windows Logo screen when you turn it on?”

Help Desk technicians fill various roles including first line support, data collection, password resets, and even sales. Among the many skills requires are: computer troubleshooting skills, operating system skills, application skills, communications skills, telephone skills, and sales skills. In addition, Help Desk technicians need to be able to deal with angry callers and put nervous or embarrassed callers at ease. They need to be able to take technical tasks and rephrase them in a way that’s easy for the callers to understand. As you can see, many of the skills required of Help Desk technicians are not technical at all.

By recognizing this and engaging in the right online computer training course, you’ll be in a much better position to put the “Help” back into Help Desk.

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