Improving Customer Support Activities at the Help Desk

This presentation discusses the importance of values and principles when conducting customer support activities at the help desk. It emphasizes the need for accuracy, tolerance, and devotion in order to improve the quality of interaction during these activities and enhance customer satisfaction. The presentation also highlights the implications of effective and efficient management of a help desk.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT
STUDENT’S NAME

Introduction
• “The customer is always right” has been the motto of business since
the inception of the concept.
• The consumer decides the performance of a business upon purchase of goods
or services from them.
• A good and thriving business takes in the opinions and demands of their
consumers, transform them into a product or service and present it to the
customers. This process is also cyclic in that even after releasing the product
to the market, businesses still monitor the performance of the said product or
service and listen further to customers on ways to improve them.

• It thus becomes important to improve the customer support activities.
• This is because of several complaints tabled by the customers concerning
customer support issues at the help desk.
• Customer support cannot be compromised as customer satisfaction is the way
the company makes sure to gain and retain customers.
• The purpose of this session is thus to cultivate the importance of particular values
and principles when conducting customer support activities at the help desk.
These are skills and principles that will help improve the quality of interaction
during these activities to enhance customer satisfaction.

• The help desk is the center of most interactions between
business staff and customers. Help desks serve to offer
any assistance to all incoming and even outgoing
customers.
• Such assistance may include:
• Retrieval of information.
• Assistance with directions.
• Reception

The relationship between the help desk assistant and the
incoming customers thus becomes of utmost importance to
the business.
As such, various implications arise towards the effective
and efficient management of a help desk. These include:
• Accuracy
• Tolerance
• Devotion
These are attributes that are important in a help desk
scenario that this session seeks to train and instill.

• Communication is the conveyance of meaning. If a message is inaccurate, the
resulting action informed by the message becomes detrimental to the
customers’ efforts.
• At the help desk, a customer needs to have confidence that all information
supplied to them is accurate and correct.
• Help desk personnel would thus be required to confirm most queries before
providing any answers to staff.
• Misdirecting or misleading customers wastes their time and diminishes their
respect for the business and other personnel working there.
Accuracy

Tolerance
• At the airport, hundreds of people from many different races
and cultures converge before travelling and here, they
interact with ESA staff. It becomes important for ESA
personnel to exercise tolerance and respect to each and
every one of these clients (Lozano & Escrich, 2017).
• A help desk assistant needs to be impartial while serving all
customers and afford each one of them adequate
information to proceed (Samovar, Porter, McDaniel & Roy,
2017).

Tolerance cont`d.
• While, understandably, many people may present their cases
in anger and discontent, it is the duty of the help desk
assistant to quell their anxiety by providing the needed
assistance.

Responsiveness and devotion
• Working at a help desk needs constant attention not only to the flow
of human traffic into the premises but also to the changing dynamics
of the office. Achieving such attention levels requires great devotion
to the task in order to see it through to completion.
• Tasks assigned to help desk assistants will be required in their
complete and accurate form while daily customer support duties are
met effectively.

Conclusion
• Customer support defines the relationship between a business and
the customers which reflects on the success of the business.
• Maintaining a seamless contact with the customers is the key to
survival of the business and the help desk assistants play the biggest
role towards defining this relationship (Kumar & Reinartz, 2018).

References
• Czegel, B. (2015). Help desk practitioner's handbook. John Wiley &
Sons.
• Marcella, R., & Middleton, I. (1996). The role of the help desk in the
strategic management of information systems. OCLC Systems &
Services: International digital library perspectives, 12(4), 4-19.
• Mehrabian, A. (2017). Nonverbal communication. Routledge.
• Mortensen, K. & Hazel, S. (2014) Moving into Interaction - Social
Practices for Initiating
Encounters at a Help Desk. Journal of Pragmatics. 62, 46-67.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.11.009