Ice Cube sang it was a good day! What if it was a good day on your Service Desk, too?

By Robert Hall, Support Analyst, Marval

Think about the different aspects of a typical day on your Service Desk. Arriving at work in the morning, you probably have to respond to new requests: maybe some password reset requests, a couple of hardware incidents, unusual service requests from a busy department keen to push the use of a particular piece of software, reports of error messages seen in a key software application, users unable to logon (again!). You probably have some change requests, too, to assemble for the CAB – maybe to action, new Configuration Items to add to the CMDB, maybe a CI Audit to perform, a file restore request from a user who accidentally deleted something. And a few pre-scheduled tasks, very likely: database backups to check for completeness, reviews of recent tickets for ongoing trends, perhaps you will need to search your Knowledge Items for a similar symptom to a reported issue, maybe you are retiring some Services and publishing some new ones. Sounds about right.

And there will be days when the work overload (or a couple of challenging customers, maybe) will make your Service Desk Team feel overwhelmed, stressed and longing for that lunch break. Oops, sorry. No time for breaks today. Lunch at your desk.

For many Support Analysts, this is not the exception. In fact, this can be just a typical day – any day. And I have to be honest with you – your Service Desk needs practical ways and methodical processes to get through their typical days, as much as they need a coffee or lunch break from time to time. They need the right tools to work effectively and productively and keep your customers happy.

The Service Management Technology market is full of solutions advertising how they can help enterprises address their most complex and rare problems. Very clearly, some Service Management Technology marketers are lacking insight in the real-life challenges the Service Desk staff come across every single day. Our challenges are not that rare nor that complex. They usually are very straightforward. We don’t need technology to manage the exceptions that may reach our doorstep sometime in the future. We need good processes and great technology to manage our day-to-day work effectively and with confidence, keeping our customers satisfied, our workload under control and making the best use possible of our available resources and assets. We don’t work in a world of hypothetical crises, but on a Service Desk with actual requests and incidents. And while we need to have processes and tools in place to be able to address some rare major incident, if and when it occurs (no argument to that!), our priority can be the simple tasks that reach our Desk every minute of the day.

So what makes a good day on your Service Desk? Being productive, getting praise from a customer, managing your work overload efficiently. Being part of a satisfied and collaborative team. Having a proven process and Marval MSM in place. Sure, having time for that lunch break, too!