How Much Manpower Is Behind Your Help Desk?

Fenger asks: "My current manager (who is not a tech guru by any stretch of imagination) is trying to tell us we have enough manpower to support the number of customers we have, even though our manpower has trickled in half and the number of customers has doubled in size. What is your organization's size verses the size of your IT dept (specifically the help desk/support staff)?. What's your recommendation of a good ratio between the number of users and the support staff?" A good question, particularly for smaller businesses looking to support for their products or other firms.

Comments

It depends

[HiQ]

It depends on the quality of your products ;)

Seriously, it depends on a few things:
a) Type of software (if it is software we're talking about)
Do you make a small program, or a business-wide ERP-system. I work in a company that does the latter, and systems like that need an awful lot of support. We support in the form of an helpdesk, implementation consultants and a rotation scheme of developers working on the helpdesk. All in all 5 to 6 people on a total of 20 (of which 11 developers)

b) Quality of support you want to deliver
Support all the way, or do drive-by installations (stop the car, throw CD through window, drive off)

c) Supported process
If it's a business-wide software system, that often means that companies can come to a halt if the software is not working; therefore you need lots of support.

d) Rate of change
Does your software change a lot? If so, more support!
How to make a sig
without having an idea

Manpower Behind Your Helpdesk

[a poor scribbler]

Confucius, he say:
"Gone to lunch" behind helpdesk
Does work of ten staff.

Perspective and suggestion

[ragnar]

First off, I have worked over 3 years at a helpdesk (and thank God I no longer do that). I would like to offer the following:

You need enough support staff so that you can spend half your time answering calls and email and spend the other half on training and documentation. If the staff has no time or energy to do the latter, you will burn out the support staff and dig yourself in a hole. Without a strategy for updating and improving documentation you spend all your time putting out the same fires. It is much quicker to tell someone 10 times a day to read a good article you wrote explaining things than to explain it multiple times.

This is very important because it also means that you allot time for your staff to conduct training of others. Many times users in different departments want to support themselves, but if they don't have a basic understanding of technologies you deploy, all calls will come to the helpdesk. It is a positive thing to enable support throughout the organization, and you can't do this if the staff simply answers calls all day. I can't stress this enough.

On the issue of documentation, it is critical that a helpdesk uses some form of Knowledge Base. There should be an external KB for end users and an internal KB for staff. The latter helps you to train and equip new members of the staff. It also helps formalize the way you communicate.

Now for the suggestion... please don't refer to this as "manpower." This is a very sexist term. A woman supervised the helpdesk I worked. This may be a trivial matter, but it *is* a big turnoff to many.

Help desk problem report form

[ch-chuck]

1. Describe Your problem:
___________________________
2. Now, describe the problem accurately:
___________________________
3. Speculate wildly about the cause of the problem:
___________________________
4. Problem Severity:
A. Minor _
B. Minor _
C. Minor _
D. Trivial _
5. Nature of the problem:
A. Locked up _
B. Frozen _
C. Hung _
D. Shot _
6. Is your computer Plugged in? Yes_ No_
7. Is it turned on? Yes_ No_
8. Have your tried to fix it yourself? Yes_ No_
9. Have you made it worse? Yes_
10. Have you read the manual? Yes_ No_
11. Are you sure you've read the manual? Yes_ No_
12. Are you absolutely sure you've read the manual? No_
13. Do you think you understood it? Yes_ No_
14. If 'Yes' then why can't you fix the problem yourself?
________________________
15. How Tall are you? Are you above this line?
________________________
16. What were you doing with your computer at the time the problem occurred?
________________________
17. If 'nothing' explain why you were logged in.
________________________
18. Are you sure you aren't imagining the problem? Yes_ No_
19. How does this problem make you feel?
________________________
20. Tell me about your childhood.
________________________
21. Do you have any independent witnesses of the problem? Yes_ No_
22. Can't you do something else, instead of bothering me? Yes_

Re:Help desk problem report form

[MrDelSarto]

Just incase anyone hasn't see it (very unlikely)

Guidelines for Working With Tech Support

Author Unknown



Guidelines for users from the Technical Support department.



Don't write anything down. We can play back the error messages from here.

When a tech says he's coming right over, go for coffee. It's nothing to us to remember 4000 screen saver passwords.

When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and Popsicle art. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

When you call the help desk, state what you want, not what's keeping you from getting it. We don't need to know that you can't get into your mail because your computer won't power on at all.

Don't put your phone extension in your emails to the help desk. We need to keep an eye on the address book performance.

When tech support sends you an email with high importance, delete it at once. We're just testing the public groups.

When a tech is eating lunch in his cube, walk right in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.

When a tech is having a smoke outside, ask him a computer question. The only reason why we smoke at all is to ferret out those clients who don't have email or a telephone line.

Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.

When you call a tech's direct line, press 5 to skip the bilingual greeting that says he's out of town for a week, record your message and wait exactly 24 hours before you send an email straight to the director because no one ever returned your call. You're entitled to common courtesy.

When the photocopier doesn't work, call computer support. There's electronics in it.

When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can fix your line from here.

When you have a dozen CGA monitors to get rid of, call computer support. We're collectors.

When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on a tech's chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.

If you hate your mouse, get some other pointing device and discard the manual. We know all the keyboard accelerators.

When a tech tells you that computer monitors don't have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.

When you get a message about insufficient disk space, delete everything in the Windows directory. It's nothing but trouble anyway.

When you get a message about a hard disk controller failure, and then you reboot and it looks okay, don't call tech support. We'd much rather troubleshoot it when it's dead as doornail.

When you have a tech on the phone walking you through changing a setting, read the paper. We don't actually mean for you to do anything; we just love to hear ourselves talk.

When a tech tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in a scathing tone of voice: "And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?" That'll get us going.

If you have a 14-inch monitor that says VGA on it, set the display to true color, 1024 x 768. You'll never again have to worry about people reading confidential files over your shoulder.

When we offer training on the upcoming OS upgrade, don't bother. We'll be there to hold your hand after it's done.

When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the branch. One of them is bound to work.

Don't learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by "my thingy's outta whack".

Don't use online help. Online help is for wimps.

If you're taking night classes in computer science, feel free to go around and update the network drivers for your all your co-workers. We're grateful for the overtime money.

When a tech makes popcorn, help yourself while he's checking out your access rights. And we keep chocolate in the top drawer, too.

When you have a tech fixing your computer at a quarter past noon, eat your lunch in his face. We function better when slightly dizzy.

Don't ever thank us. We're getting paid for this.

If you're a student, feel free to bring in all your friends from uni and have your Daddy complain to our boss when we won't let them use the scanner. We had no friends when we were at uni; that's why we're such a bunch of tight-assed little twerps.

When a tech asks you whether you've installed any new software on this computer, lie. It's nobody's business what you've got on your computer.

When a tech finds the porno pictures in your Recycle Bin, tell her you've never seen those before. We couldn't tell bullshit if it kicked us in the face.

If you have NT, feel free to change the local administrator's password to "blowjob" and promptly forget it. We like installing NT.

If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 45 lbs. of computer sitting on top of them.

If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the mail upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin crumbs and nail clippings in them.

When you receive the new Yanni CD for your birthday, shove it into any slot on the front of your computer. We like getting physical with 5.25 floppy drives.

When you get a message saying "Are you sure?", click on that Yes button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren't sure, you wouldn't be doing it, would you?

When you find a tech on the phone with his bank, sit uninvited on the corner of his desk and stare at him until he hangs up. We don't have any money to speak of anyway.

Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about that computer crap". We don't mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.

When you need to change the toner cartridge, call tech support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a Professional engineer with a master's degree in nuclear physics.

When you can't find someone in the government directory, call tech support. Due to budget restrictions, we double as 013.

When you have a lock to pick on an old file cabinet, call tech support. We love to hack.

When something's the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn't know jack shit about the problem.

When you receive a 30-meg movie file, send it to everyone as a mail attachment. We got lots of disk space on that mail server.

Don't even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks. Somebody else might get a chance to squeeze a memo into the queue.

When your eyes fall on the family pictures on a tech's desk, exclaim in a flabbergasted tone of voice: "YOU have a child?!?" We need to be reminded of how lucky we were to ever have gotten laid.

When a tech gets on the elevator pushing $15,000 worth of computer equipment on a cart, ask in a very loud voice: "Good grief, you take the elevator to go DOWN one floor?!?" That's another one that cracks us up no end.

When the Finance folks are printing a 100-page spreadsheet on the LaserJet, send your black and white print job to the color printer. We get the black toner for free.

When you lose your car keys in Canberra, send an email to the entire department. People in Perth like to keep abreast of what's going on.

When you bump into a tech at the grocery store on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We don't do weekends.

When you see a tech having a beer with a member of the opposite sex on a Friday night, walk right up to them and ask a computer question. We don't do dating; the reason why we have that horny look on our faces is because we're discussing the new Intel processor.

Don't bother to tell us when you move computers around on your own. Computer names are just a cosmetic feature in NT 4.0; they won't be doing anything useful until the next major release.

When you can't access some shared directory on your boss's machine, just tell us that you've lost your X: drive. We know all that shit by heart.

If your son is a student in computer science, have him come in on the weekends and do his projects on your office computer. We'll be there for you when his illegal copy of Visual Basic version 6.0 makes your Access 95 database flip out.

When you bring your own personal home PC for repair at the office, leave the documentation at home. We'll find the jumper settings on the Internet.

We're aware of that problem with computers just sitting there and not doing anything. We're confident that with the next service pack they'll be able to dance the jig.

The correct location to store important files is the Recycle Bin. It's just like a real office, where you keep your tax receipts in the blue can under your desk.

If you miss Windows 3.1, find the line that goes shell=explorer.exe in your SYSTEM.INI file and replace it with shell=progman.exe. It makes troubleshooting infinitely easier when we ask you whether you have a Start button at the bottom of your screen and you truthfully answer us that you don't.

If you curse every morning when you start to type your password and the Virus Shield splash screen pops up in your face, disable the Virus Shield. Again, this is just like real life: if you don't like condoms, just don't use them, that's all.

If you hate PCs, get on the Internet and download one of those desktop enhancements that make your computer look just like a Mac, down to the sad faces replacing verbose error messages. We find it refreshing to troubleshoot the nuances in that sad little face instead of some cold forbidding hexadecimal integer.

When you detect a French accent in a tech's voice, switch to French. We don't mind that your level of fluency is that of a Mildly retarded 4-year-old; you don't make a whole lot of sense in your own mother tongue either.

We don't really believe that you're a bunch of ungrateful twits. It hurts our feelings that you could even think such a thing. We wish to express our deepest gratitude to the hundreds of clueless losers portrayed herein, without whom none of this would have been remotely possible.

Woo! A Helpdesk question!

[HappyHead]

I love helpdesk. I've been doing helpdesk duties as either part, or all of my job(s) for the last 8 years. First at my University, and now out here in the Real World(tm), and I've looked at how some other companies handle their helpdesks as well.

I've found that the size of the helpdesk staff needed isn't just a function of how many people you have in your user base. You also have to consider the dificulty of what the users are going to be doing most of the time, and the mentality of the users themselves.

When I was at the University, they had constantly breaking down, antiquated machines in some Prof's offices, along with a massive number of new users every 4 months, all of whom had to get used to new things like Email, Word Processing, and sharing the printers with everyone else in the 100+ computer lab. This resulted in massive headaches, and a need for a lot of support staff. We had something like 6 to 9 full time staff doing support, as well as at least two or three part time students on duty at any one time, and it still wasn't always enough during the busy times.

Now I work at an ISP, and we give our new users a CD which can do their dialin setup for them, so we spend about 6 hours (total, for everyone) a week doing helpdesk duties, with a userbase of over 1200. Most of the calls involve things like:

• User: I can't log in! It won't take my password!
  Helpdesk: Is your caps lock on?
  User: Oops...
• User: I can't log in! Did your server crash?
  Helpdesk: No, your account was shut down, because you told us you wanted it cut off yesterday. User: Well, I changed my mind!
• User: My computer crashed, and now it won't even dial up to you guys!
  Helpdesk: Have you still got the CD we gave you? Put it in your computer, and run the 'setup.exe' program.

an additional question:

[treble]

how appropriate is it to have a non-technical manager overseeing a technical staff/department? this is a huge issue where i work because a manager will prioritize and assign projects without any true concept of the resources it takes to complete said project. now this is fine if they ask for feedback from those working under them, but we all know that's not always the real-world situation. to me, it's just as much about efficient utilization of the personpower you have as it is about sheer numbers.