The help desk generally has not been a hotbed of innovation and efficiency in the enterprise. It isn't uncommon for large businesses to hold on to outdated, complicated ticket-tracking systems that offer little insight on performance. But that is beginning to change, writes Computerworld's John Brandon, who takes a look at help desk evolutions at Peugeot, De Beers, and the University of Georgia.  

Help desks have the potential to shed insight on an organization's recurring problems, says Jarod Greene, analyst with Gartner. What's more, the help desk goes a long way in shaping an IT group's perceived value. If the help desk looks old and tired, it doesn't reflect well on the entire IT department.

The help desk for the Netherlands unit of French auto manufacturer Peugeot supports 160 users at the headquarters and 179 dealerships around Europe. With 26 staff members, it manages to process approximately 3,750 tickets annually. In 2010, the group was able to resolve nearly 90 percent of support issues in an average of 2.4 days, but help desk manager Richard Nolting wanted to do better.

Peugeot was also looking for greater flexibility in the system and a more personal communication style. Nolting wanted users to be able to write their own personalized ticked, and he wanted technicians to be able to communicate with IT staff via SMS. A system from Kayako Studio was deployed, simplifying the query process and tracking all tickets. New tools allowed agents to enter user profiles when they create tickets and view all emails relating to support.

In the past year, Nolting's team reduced support resolution time from an average of 2.4 days to 1.8 days. The tracking features in the new system played an important role.

"Only well-documented processes can be transformed into structured workflows. So if the data is not captured in ticketing tools, it will be hard to find and re-use should the [same] issues ever arise again," says Gartner's Greene. Tools like Kayako "keep out-of-band conversations from going into the garbage, and let IT operations groups and administrative teams better understand work patterns in support of processes."

For more:
- see John Brandon's article at Computerworld

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