Hello All,

I work for a start up company who are about to launch a web-based product to our clients. I've been tasked with defining our client helpdesk services and wondered where I should start. Does anybody have any useful information or perhaps a service description template I could plagerise?

Many thanks,
Alan

Hi Alan,

The frank tone of your request is likeable.

But then What is this help desk all about?

There are many Help Desks and Help desk is a generic term.

Could you list the services - the rest should be easy.

Mahidhar

Mahidhar,

Thanks for your quick response.

In basic terms, our helpdesk is responsible for dealing with clients requests/queries/problems with our online product.

This will typically be in a number of ways such as, providing advice on the datasets we use for our product, the functionality of the product as well as the usual service availability problems.

Regards,
Alan

Alan,

Are you at the Customer Support Call Centre end?

Mahidhar

Mahidhar,

Yes. Although it's a very small operation, we are required to put together a service definition document which describes exactly what we do from start to finish incorporating any external relationships (3rd Party product support). I'm struggling for a starting point as well as understanding how much detail should be included.

Regards,
Alan

Alan,

Not much but it might be a start..

I work for a start up company who are about to launch a web-based product to our clients. I've been tasked with defining our client helpdesk services and wondered where I should start. Does anybody have any useful information or perhaps a service description template I could plagerise?



I'm guessing from the web based aspect you are looking a 2 or 3 channel contact (Phone and E-Mail or Web chat).


One of the things to define is exactly what you support and where to draw the line. From personal experiance as
a forcasting and Telephony analyst I find it interesting that I get calls asking to 'sort out my phone' because
someones pinched their handset over the weekend!


It needs to be made clear that you support YOUR product / Website only and are not responsible for Browser problems,
Dial up issues etc.


One of my first jobs in the industry was setting up a Helpline for a Home shopping CD Rom application. I had to define from scratch all the issues we would deal with. In this case because it used an odd port configuration (15:15 IIRC) it wouldn't work from behind some corporate firewalls and I actually had complaints from customers who couldn't do their shopping from work. Unfortunatly one of the things this application did was dial up itself for pricing updates and I had no end of problems sorting out wierdly configured machines.


Setting up the service in addition to the above you need to address a couple of issues:



1) Can we set up an FAQ / Quick reference guide to common problems for the operators.


2) What are our service levels to the customers going to be (Define something reasonable here don't just set a
high target that you're not sure you can deliver. Keep it reasonable and then tell customers you've set yourselves
higher targets later 'To improve your service to them'.)


3) Base your opening hours around when people are likely to need help not just normal office hours. If this means
opening 12:00-22:00 Mon-Fri and 9:00-17:00 Saturdays so be it.


4) Don't just train the staff by rote. Tech staff like playing (Marianne back me up here). Go on give the staff
the product and let THEM break it. 10:1 says they find faults (and solutions) that your programmers hadn't thought
of.


5) The desk needs one or two PC's on a standalone basis. Not connected to the network and running WIN 98, 2000 and
probably XP home. There must be the ability to dial up connect and I'd suggest having AOL, Opera and Mozilla as
well as IE 5.5 and 6 installed.


I'll post anything else as it occurs to me or if you have any specific problems / issues please ask.

I've been where you are and at the moment it's not alot of fun. It does get better though!

DaveA

Alan!

You've got to thank Dave!

Get going - you've got good support to get started - I'll look in for the progress, and any further help you may need - that is if you need any after a neat brief.

Mahidhar

Dave/Mahidhar,

Thankyou both very much - very useful. I'll get cracking.

Hello Allan,

I recently did this very same exercise for one our clients. They required a very detailed document describing the operation. I have listed below the contents page to give you an idea of layout and maybe some input as to what to include. I hope this proves helpful.

Regards
Chris

1 Introduction
1.1. Summary of content
1.2. Management of future changes to this brief
1.3. Circulation list
2 Background to the operation
2.1. Client company background
2.2. Market environment
2.3. Customer relationship management
2.4. Purpose and drivers underlying the operation
2.5. Business objectives affecting the operation

3 Description of the contact centre operation
3.1. Summary
3.2. Contact handling services and functions
3.3. Administrative services and functions
3.4. Management services and functions

4 Key assumptions
4.1. Contacts and demands
4.2. Customer base
4.3. Contact handling capacity
4.4. Inbound patterns
4.5. Number of agents required
4.6. Seat requirements
4.7. Management and administration time allocation

5 Contact Centre Objectives
5.1. Service level agreements
5.2. Agent Objectives
5.3. Team Leader objectives

6 Capacity plans and rosters
6.1. Organogram
6.2. Summary of shift roster

7 Environment
7.1. Workstation facilities
7.2. Special equipment and facilities
7.3. Special requirements

Nice one Chris,

Just as a general point. If you stick another section in detailing required reporting and how those reports are generated AND keep the details up to date you've got a damn good 'Go to hell' document that ANY team leader ought to be able to pick up and run the contract.

At the same time standardise these across various contracts in an out sourcer and you can use TM's/Seniors from any contract on another for emergency cover.

Stick in Data Sources as well and it's your Disaster recovery bible.

The only other thing you need to do is standardise the format and version control it. That way it's ISO compliant.

That's a very good start for any contract setup. All you need to do now Alan is add the content! :-)

DaveA

Guys,

I can't thank you enough - you've been a great help. Like you say Dave, just need the content and I'm good to go.

Regards,
Alan

Hi Alan,

Doesn't it feel great to receive.

I am glad of my role and if you look at the thread, you'll find it wasn't much, but your question and the subsequent interavtion must have helped a lot many who probably were hesitating to ask.

Without asking you don't receive. If you ask and do not receive it should not matter either.

All the best.

Mahidhar