subject: Help Desk- Help And Assistance Services [print this page] Help Desk is an essential element of an organization that provides all modes of help and assistance services to the customers and employees. Every organization dreaming of global reach must integrate an efficient help desk to meet the current demand. A help desk troubleshoots the difficulties associated with computer or similar products. Support services are provided by various means like through phone, website or email.
Various functions of help desk are:
It allows customers or employees a single point of contact to have help on different troubleshooting related issues.
Help desk manages its requests through softwares like issue tracking system that tracks user requests through a unique number. This is also known as local bug tracker or LBT.
There are different levels in help desk to handle the problems. If the problem is not solved at first level, then it is transferred to next level that has more tools to handle the problems.
The third level is designed to solve software specific problems like problems related to updates and bugs.
Types of Help desk services are:
There are two types of help desk services provided in a company. It consists of in-house and external help desk. In-house is a help desk service designed to provide support services to the employees, if they require any type of help in the company. And external services are offered to the customers to troubleshoot various technical problems.
Types of teams associated with help desk are:
Desk side team: it is accountable for desktop, laptops, PDAs and peripherals. It is assigned with the second level of job that a first level team is unable to perform. It is accountable for physical works like repairing software or hardware issues and moving workstations to other locations.
Network team: It is accountable for the network software and hardware such as servers, switches, backup systems and firewalls. They are also accountable for network services like email, file and security.
Server team: It is accountable for the majority of the servers inside the company. It consists of Domain Name System Servers, Network Authentication, Network Shares, Network Resources, Email accounts and all server software. It also consists of services like databases, Storage or Content Management Systems, specialized proprietary services, and other industry specific server based applications.
Other teams: Some organizations have telecom team that is accountable of phone infrastructures like PBX, voicemail, VOIP, telephone sets, modems and fax machines.
Some organizations have an application software team that is responsible for developing in-house software and solving bugs if any.
