Oct. 22, 2023, Post by Curtis
Help Desk employees will usually spend most of their time working on tickets with a minority of the time being spent on projects and setting up new equipment. When they are working on tickets, they will spend about half of that time working on open tickets that they have not closed yet, and the other half taking new tickets, either from call-ins or by getting them from the ticketing queue in their Help Desk ticketing software.
There can be a lot of variation from one Help Desk job to another, so your mileage may vary.
Most tickets are done over the phone. Some are done in person, some through email, and some are even done through the mail (shipping a new piece of hardware out to a user or a satellite office).
New tickets are coming in all the time. New tickets come in either
The users are instructed to submit their tickets using the ticketing system and to only call if it's urgent, but many users will try and skip the ticketing system and just call for every little thing.
Many users will skip the ticketing system and the Help Desk line. They will:
I have to tell these users that they have to put in a ticket and I'll get to them when I'm done with the tickets I am currently working on.
It's tempting to do favors for people and help them when they call, but it's not fair to the people who used the ticketing system as instructed. The fact is that these people are trying to skip ahead in line and they know it. I can't reward this behavior.
Large companies will have a dedicated Help Desk line that several of the Help Desk staff will be signed into for some portion of their shift. Calls will be routed between the available team members round robin style.
Most companies won't have you fielding calls all day as you will need time to work open tickets, work on projects, and get your general office duties done.
Tickets will also be coming in through the ticketing system software. Someone needs to be watching it at all times in case a critical ticket comes through like:
A larger company will rotate who is watching the queue and a smaller company may have one person keeping an eye on it all day.
In a large company, if the tickets start to fill up, the person watching the queue will start assigning the ticket to the other Help Desk staff, and some tickets will get assigned to other IT departments and other departments like HR or Payroll.
When a ticket gets assigned to me, I will often need to work with the user to make progress on the problem. This means I will have to try to schedule some time with the person who put in the ticket.
A large part of my day is spent just trying to get a hold of people. Everyone is busy including me. Finding time when we are both available can be a real trick. To make things worse, sometimes after working with someone, we will need to bring in a third person to help, making things more difficult. The user gets frustrated, and so do I, though I can't show it.
Depending on how your company is set up, some tickets may be worked on in person. If most of the employees of a company work in one location then you will often go to their office to help them instead of working with them over the phone. These jobs are more often referred to as Desktop Support, though there is no consistency when it comes to job titles in IT.
Desktop Support is becoming increasingly rare, especially now that so many people work remotely. But, even if your company's employees are spread out, there will still be occasions when you will need to be onsite to deal with an issue in person.
If the problem is hardware then I prefer to be there so I can physically check all the connections. If it's software-based I prefer to work the problem remotely, that way we can both be on their computer at the same time. I don't have to ask them to let me sit in their seat, and then ask them to sit back in their seat when I need them to do something on the computer.
Depending on what level Help Desk you in are will determine what kind of tickets you will be doing.
There are 4 tiers of Help Desk, tiers 0 through 3. A level 0 is not really Help Desk though. It is an entry to the Help Desk and requires almost no skill. Most Help Desk departments don't even have a tier 0.
Most companies are pretty loose about who gets what ticket. They try to encourage all levels of Help Desk employees to take harder tickets if they feel comfortable taking that ticket. They know that is how people learn and they want you to learn as fast as possible.
In my experience, people take whatever comes their way and if they get stuck, they will first seek help before handing the ticket off to someone else. The exceptions to this will be:
About 1/2 to 3/4 of the tickets are somewhat common problems that I've seen before. That leaves a large number of tickets that I haven't seen before. It is amazing the number of new problems that a company encounters. Every day I see problems that I don't know the answers to. What's more amazing is that they all get solved, maybe not the way I would like or as quickly as I would like, but they all get solved.
I make sure to check my email every 15 to 30 minutes. There can be something critical that comes through my email and if I don't know about it, it can be a problem.
2 examples:
There are always lots of computers to get configured and sent out to the users. It is very common that if a computer is acting up and you can't fix it in a short period of time, it will be sent back to the Help Desk to be re-imaged and reconfigured with the software needed for the specific user that will be receiving this computer.
This is typically done by the Help Desk. Often there is a dedicated staff member who does computer builds and break-fix, but even if there is, they will need help from time to time.
There are also other types of hardware that need to be configured and sent out. Printers, scanners, phones, badges, etc.
There are always side projects that get thrown to the Help Desk. I love doing projects as it gets me away from working on the phones. I've spent a large amount of my time at the Help Desk doing projects. I've made it a point to become the go-to project guy.
I achieved this by :
Common projects done by the Help Desk:
Help Desk is a job that can, for the most part, be done remotely. There is a large amount of remote Help Desk jobs out there and the trend is moving in that direction.
But there will always be a need for some Help Desk staff to come into the office. Things that must be done in person:
Help Desk is not a high-paying job and it is hard stressful work. The pay for tier 1 is usually around $20-$25 per hour, but where the job is located can change that a lot.
More experienced Help Desk employees can make a pretty good living if they work for a good company, over $100k per year.
Job satisfaction is generally quite low. The workload is high, and the users that we work with are usually frustrated and are not understanding if you can't solve their problem quickly. They think that Help Desk staff are IT experts, not realizing that Help Desk is an entry-level IT job and that if they were an expert, they wouldn't be working at Help Desk.
Most people struggle to move past the Help Desk and feel like they are stuck there.
There are some people though, who truly love working at the Help Desk. They like solving problems and helping people. For them, this is a great job.
I for one loved and hated my time at the Help Desk. I was appreciative that I was getting a foot in the door to the IT Department without a college degree, but the work was thankless and stressful. In the end, it was a valuable learning experience, not just about technology and problem solving, but how to stay calm under pressure. Now that I work in Network Support, I'm glad I learned that before I got here. Help Desk is an awesome journey, once you get the hang of it.