Help Desk Technician

Technical help desk support services is confined to the technical related support for software, IT, telecommunication, logistic, medical, electronics, electrical, home appliances and many more consumable products. Once the customer purchased the product from the dealers, they have to provide the help desk services for the sold product till the condition satisfied. Technical services are provided for genuine customer under certain terms and conditions. The help providers are basically technically qualified and deputed for customer orientation. Behalf of the direct company or service Provider Company the technicians have to work for customers.

Career in this profession is bright for talented people. There are plenty of opportunities come from different companies everyday. IT and software companies have major quantity of opportunities come up because of computerized modern society. The software and IT applications have been dominated each every sector. The technician has to support for computer operation, software troubleshooting, installation, network problems, and internet connectivity and so on. Many qualified people realizing the necessity of a technician in the technical environments. They want to convert themselves to technicians. Nowadays technicians are providing support online, telecommuting or help forum to the problem being described. They diagnose the trouble listening on telephone and solve the problem instantly. The call center organizations are doing the similar job in broad view being a third party service provider for a manufacturer. The Help Desk technician help customer from the front lines, middle layer of back office. They answer by tele-calling, email or chatting and obviously on the spot services if required.

Technicians must have good communication as well as technical domain expertise; because they supposed to give support any level of help to the customers. They should be well versed with the documentation, making help instructions, conveying style and process. They have ability to update every time with the technical knowledge. They should love information gathering and sharing of knowledge.

If Help Desk technician is experienced, there are lots of job openings are required. They have an ability to troubleshoot and resolve related problems, to work both independently and in a team. They should have strong written & communication skills, be available to work off days, be willing to travel customer sites. They should have a minimum exposure to coordinating or implementing of new technology and convergence.

The Help Desk Technician's must understand the end users interface with the product and common issues occurrences in the product. Problem resolution involves diagnosis, and help request tracking tools, as well as require that the individual give in-person, hands-on help at the desktop level.

Responsibilities: Helpdesk technician are responsible for answering incoming support calls, emails, online chatting. They have to provide efficient, strong customer support behalf of the company.

For more articles please visit : www.koreone.com

Help Desk Training

Training, Qualifications, and Advancement in Help Desk support services are as important as other job sectors. Because of wide range of skills required, the education in this service is mandatory for an entry to this job. For an example, the candidate has to work as computer support specialist or systems administrator whatever may be, the genuine education and expertise is must for an efficient support. There is no universally accepted way to prepare for a job as a computer support specialist, but most of the employers prefer to hire persons with some formal college education. A bachelor's degree in computer science or information systems is a prerequisite for some jobs; however, other jobs may require only a computer-related associate's degree. For systems administrators, many employers seek applicants with bachelor's degrees, although not necessarily in a computer-related field.

Before going to make career in a specific field like Help Desk support executive, technical expert, instructor, teacher, trainer education on the particular domain is must. Some essential skills are highly required for effective support or management. There are various tools and methods for help desk professionals. Hence, an extensive training is required for the customer service providing process. Training on work process, technology, communication, relation building and sustain. These are various genuine training organizations and mentoring teams provide training on the help desk profession.

Technical training: Training on Telecom services, voice & data networking technology concepts, call center service, call center math: the top ten calculations to know (online web seminar), call center technology, beginner's guide and online web help, building and improving and performance contact center.

Besides technical session there are general session on how to optimize help desk center, implementing six sigma in the help desk services, strategic planning for executives and technicians, management tactics, help desk center manager certification, managing a help desk improvement project, tools and methods for help desk managers, management skills for new employees in Help desk service are included in training sessions.

For business point of view the training includes topics like business skills for technical professionals, project management, help desk center leadership & business, supervision, coaching, and team leadership, help desk supervisor methods, metrics, and coaching techniques, monitoring & coaching for improved call center performance and motivating center employees.

For certification program, the customer support executives can go through leadership training & certification. Certification programs are based on foundation, service management, and practitioner certification on release and control management, support and restore availability management, capacity management, financial management, security management, service level management etc.

There are different institutions; they cover very worthy topics such as workforce management, managing human resources: tips and techniques to keep Help desk center agents available, workforce recruiting, screening, and hiring. Level of certification training programs are 1. Executive level, 2. Center Managerial level, 3. Help desk professional certification, 4. Customer support team leader training, 5. Quality assurance certification, 6. Domain or expert level certification.

For more articles please visit : www.koreone.com

Reduce helpdesk costs by 20%, is your network VoIP ready ? Eurotek newsletter

Reduce Helpdesk calls by 20% and Improve remote worker support.

The helpdesk engineer's problem...

" These guys working at home are driving me crazy! They call me whenever anything is going slow - or they think is going slow - so I have to gather all their details and run through all the usual diagnostics I often find it's either a blip and no real problem, or that they've installed software that isn't even supposed to be on the PC. I understand they do need help, but I can't be with them all day... "

The home / remote worker's problem...

" I think my PC is running slow, or is it the Internet? I can call Helpdesk and get them to check it out, but it will take at least 20 minutes to do so. Last time they checked it out and said there was nothing wrong, I wish I had some help at hand just when I need it....." and here's the solution... Remote Angel? from NNT Remote Angel? is a unique solution designed to improve remote user experience and in doing so, reduce Helpdesk calls and support costs. Having Remote Angel? on board the remote PC gives the user added comfort when working remotely, enhancing productivity and reducing panic when things don't go to plan

Through the constant monitoring of PC and internet performance by Remote Angel?, a remote worker can immediately get a straight answer to their question - 'Is there a problem?" When a Helpdesk call does need to be logged, Remote Angel? will do this instantly. It will have already done all the time-consuming information-gathering and initial diagnostic checks a Helpdesk engineer will need, saving both the user, and engineer, time, and the company money

Is your network VoIP ready ?

Your network was not originally designed to carry high-quality voice transmissions. To deploy VoIP successfully you need to conduct a VoIP network readiness assessment first.

If you skip this important step your probability of difficult network challenges is greater than fifty percent. Eliminate deployment risk, cost overruns for upgrading networks and dissatisfied users by conducting a VoIP Network Readiness Assessment. Your business will thank you for it.

Continued on page 2.

Is your network VoIP ready ? Continued from page 1.

Your data network was originally designed to support e-mails, file transfers and deliver Web pages, not carry high-quality voice transmissions.

Voice traffic is very time-sensitive and can't be queued like e-mail or Web traffic. Delays up to a half hour for an e-mail or file transfer are generally not a problem, but delays of only a few hundred milliseconds can ruin a VoIP call, producing "choppy" conversations or dropped calls.

Before you know how much a VoIP deployment will cost and how successful it will be, you need to understand if your data network can carry high-quality voice transmissions. The odds are that a network upgrade will be needed to successfully deploy VoIP.

To ensure your VoIP deployment is successful and on budget, you need to find answers to these important questions before deploying VoIP:

* What type of VoIP MOS (Mean Opinion Score) call quality can I expect from my current data network for each business site? * Is network delay, loss or jitter the main problem impacting VoIP call quality, and how do I fix it? * How many concurrent VoIP calls can my network carry without impacting existing data services?

Knowing this information before deploying VoIP will ensure your success, but what is the most accurate and cost-effective method to obtain it?

To ensure your VoIP deployment is successful and on budget, you need to find answers to these important questions before deploying VoIP:

* What type of VoIP MOS (Mean Opinion Score) call quality can I expect from my current data network for each business site? * Is network delay, loss or jitter the main problem impacting VoIP call quality, and how do I fix it? * How many concurrent VoIP calls can my network carry without impacting existing data services?

Knowing this information before deploying VoIP will ensure your success, but what is the most accurate and cost-effective method to obtain it?

The fastest and most cost-effective way to determine your network's VoIP readiness is to conduct a Remote Network Assessment

The assessment quickly diagnoses all your network issues so that by the time you begin your VoIP deployment, you have a converged network that will carry high-quality voice transmissions.

The metrics and findings are used to create a detailed report summarizing the results of the VoIP assessment.

Organisations that skip this important deployment step experience poor call quality, dissatisfied users, cost overruns for upgrades and delayed deployments.

Shouldn't you be taking a serious long term view of your I.T. Security?

According to CERT just under 6000 security vulnerabilities were reported in 2005, the largest ever recorded annual jump. That's 500 new vulnerabilities every month, 115 per week, or 16 each day.

The majority of these vulnerabilities are targeting your business critical applications.

Firewalls can do very little to protect against application layer vulnerabilities.

The Solution: Our Managed Vulnerability Assessment Services.

To stay on top of these vulnerabilities and ensure they're not exploited take our annual managed vulnerability assessment service. Each month, or more frequently, we will run a comprehensive up-to-date set of non-destructive security tests to determine how vulnerable your key Internet facing business assets are.

Our monthly findings are presented in an easy to view HTML report that contains corrective actions, management overviews and executive trends.

Steve has over 20 years experience in I.T. and is currently Managing Director of Eurotek Networking Solutions Ltd.

www.euroteknetworking.com

Automating Your Customer Support

 

My regular readers will know that one of the things I highly recommend doing with any online business is automating as many of your day to day tasks as possible.

From a personal point of view, one of the tasks that takes up a lot of my time is answering emails. It isn't just answering email that eats up the hours - sorting through and deleting spam and junk mail absorbs a lot of time too. In the good old days, I used to get a couple of spam emails a day. Now it is closer to 1000 a day!

In fact, when you look at it, email isn't always the best form of online communication. Not only is there the junk mail issue to contend with but also the fact that email is not 100% reliable. Emails do 'go missing' far more regularly than you might expect. Often this is simply because the recipients email software has decided that a particular email is junk and has transferred it directly to the 'Delete' folder. Other times it may be because the recipients ISP has decided that the email is junk and deleted it BEFORE it has even been seen by the recipient! (Yes this really does happen - imagine if your postman sorted through your mail and made the decision of which letters you want and which ones he should throw away?!)

One way to help avoid the spam problem when dealing with customer support enquiries is to make use of a contact form on your website instead of posting an email address. This will certainly help to cut down on spam but it still means that you have the problem of emails not getting to their destination (and when you have a frustrated customer waiting for assistance this is not ideal).

Therefore, probably the best option on the market presently is a full-blown helpdesk system. Setting up a dedicated helpdesk is a superb way of automating your customer support and speeding up the process of dealing with enquiries and support emails. Not only that but if you use a system that allows customers to create 'tickets', you don't have to rely on email as your customers can login to a special web page and view both their tickets and your replies online.

Another feature of many helpdesk scripts is an 'FAQ' or 'Knowledgebase' section. This is simply a collection of the most frequently asked questions/queries/problems along with answers and solutions. This means that customers can search the knowledgebase and hopefully find the answer to their question without having to contact Support at all.

Some of the more advanced scripts will even scan the customers support ticket prior to submitting it and then list a few possible answers to their questions just in case they didn't read through the knowledgebase before typing the ticket out - very clever stuff.

These scripts are also very powerful in terms of how they can benefit you. Just think how much time you could save if, say, 40% of your customer support emails just stopped coming due to the fact that your customers were now able to find the answers to their questions automatically.

Having an online helpdesk is also of benefit if you travel around a lot or if you are away from the office on vacation etc. Instead of having to take a laptop loaded up with previous emails from customers, you can simply login to your helpdesk admin page and all of your previous correspondence will be online and at your fingertips. It also means that you won't have to spend hours in an Internet cafe deleting a days worth of spam at a time just to get to the important emails since only the important emails will have made it through to the helpdesk in the first place.

As with most things, setting up a customer service helpdesk is one of those tasks that is always better done when you first start your online business. That said, it is fairly easy to integrate such a feature into your existing set up and that is exactly what I have done for all of my websites...

Over the next few months, I will be phasing many of my email addresses out - I simply can't stand the spam any more! With immediate effect, all customer support issues for all of my products and websites will be handled via a central Customer Support Helpdesk.

I am confident that this will improve the overall 'support experience' for both my customers and me :-)

If you are interested in installing a similar helpdesk on your own website/s, there are numerous options when it comes to suitable software. I chose a product called eSupport (link below) and whilst this is a very powerful script, I am hesitant to give it my full recommendation since the installation/set up process was, how can I put this, slightly painful. It doesn't help that there is no manual for the software which means that new users are left to figure out how it works by trial and error or by trawling through hundreds of posts on the company forum. That said, I am advised by the software creator that a manual is in the process of being written and will be available soon. As I say, an excellent and powerful script once installed and configured but definitely not for those lacking patience (and indeed, some computer knowledge). If you opt for this script, my advice would be to get the publishers of the software to install it for you. You can find out more about eSupport at: http://www.kayako.com

Other alternatives (neither of which I have tried myself) include Perldesk ( http://www.perldesk.com ) and Cerberus ( http://www.cerberusweb.com ). One advantage of Cerberus is that there is a free version :-)

Richard Grady has been helping ordinary people earn online since 1998. He writes a free newsletter which is published every two weeks. To subscribe (and claim your free gifts), visit: http://www.thetraderonline.com/newsletter.html