Help Desk Solutions

Client “help” desks all too often tend to devolve into bastions of bureaucratic inefficiency. For whatever reason, modern corporations either passively accept or actively embrace chaos at their help desks. This seems to me to be a profoundly counterintuitive strategy. After all, if you invest the time and energy to really help clients solve their problems, you'll deliver more products and get more leads.

Oftentimes, corporations will blame poor customer experiences on their human resource managers and their subordinates. Yet this endless “passing of the buck” can’t help but look bad to both clients and investors. Moreover, if your corporate hierarchy refuses to take responsibility for the decisions of its subordinates and to shield those who do no wrong, why should the subordinates bother to support your efforts?

Diagnosing Help Desk Ills

Help desk problems usually fall into one of two categories. One, help desks are understaffed, underfunded, or chaotically organized. Two, help desk managers and their subordinates are having trouble communicating. In many cases, help desk trouble is the result of a combination of these factors. So what can you do to renovate your corporate service center and to improve employee to client and employee to employee communication?

Team management literature suggests that fundamental attitude changes may be needed. However, you'd be surprised at how impactful even a few superficial changes can be in terms of adjusting attitudes and cleaning up your bureaucracy. For instance, changing the ambient temperature and lighting can yield profound effects on employee mood, which in turn can translate into better or worse customer relationship management.