ICT Customer Support Officers
Provide support, education and guidance in the deployment and maintenance of computer infrastructure and software, and the diagnosis and resolution of technical problems and issues.
A morning on the help desk
You are a customer support officer on an IT help desk, helping staff with their computers, logins and software. It is 8:45am on a Monday. Eleven tickets have come in over the weekend, the phone has started ringing and one of the callers is the head of the department.
Choose what you would do. Then see what happens. There are often good reasons for each choice.
I cannot get into my email and I have a report due at ten. I am told you are the help desk. I have not got time to explain it, can you just reset my password right now? I will give you the details.
Reset it immediately, since she is senior, in a hurry and says she will give the details
It goes smoothly this time, but you skipped the identity check that applies to everybody. If it had been someone pretending to be her, you would have handed them the keys. Rules apply to the senior people most.
Say you will check her identity first, then reset it and stay on the line
The check takes two minutes and she grumbles, then recognises it protects her account too. She is back into her email well before the deadline, and she remembers the call as quick and fair.
Tell her to log a ticket online, as the process says for every request like this
It follows the rules, but she is already late. The ticket sits in the queue and she rings back angrier. A process should help the person, and a phone call was the right way in.
My computer is really slow and I do not want to be a bother. I keep getting a pop-up saying I need to update something and I clicked on it a few times. It looks official. It might be nothing?
Tell Jarrah it is probably nothing and to restart his computer
The restart seems to help, but the pop-up was a fake. A day later his login is used from somewhere it should not be. A small worry from a new starter can be the first sign of something bigger.
Run the antivirus on his machine, and tell him to let you know if it happens again
The scan finds something, which is good. But you did not ask what he clicked, and you did not tell security. Fixing the computer and reporting the incident are two different jobs.
Thank him for telling you, ask him exactly what he clicked, disconnect his computer from the network and tell the security team
You catch it early. The security team checks his computer and changes his password. Jarrah is relieved that nobody was cross, and he tells his team to report odd messages too.
Our booking screen has frozen again. There are six people waiting. I know you are on a call, but can you just come out here for two seconds? The line is going out the door.
Finish your current call as quickly as you can, then go and look at the frozen screen
It is a fair choice, and the caller is helped. But Pippa waits ten minutes with the queue growing, and she was never told a time. A quick word about when you will be there would have helped.
Give Pippa one thing to try and promise to be there in five minutes
Her first try works enough to serve the next few people, and you arrive to fix it properly. She feels looked after, and your caller was not left hanging.
Drop the call and run to the front counter right away, since the queue is growing
The counter gets fixed, but the person on the phone was left with silence and calls back angry. Both of them needed you, and the one on the phone got the worse deal.
How it went
By lunchtime the queue is down to three tickets, and a few people have said thanks. Help desk work is part technical puzzle and part patience, often with people who are stressed and not at their best. How do you feel about being the calm voice when others are not?
This is a simplified, fictional situation to help you explore. It is not professional instruction or a test of your ability.
Case study: The printer that was not the problem
A fictional case set in the IT help desk of a fictional regional council office, with a queue of tickets and a phone that keeps ringing.
The situation
Zainab worked on the help desk at Wattle Valley Council. One morning, a senior planner rang in a mood to say the printer was broken again, and she needed a document printed for a meeting in forty minutes. Zainab could hear in her voice that she was close to tears. Two other tickets were waiting, both marked urgent.
What they did
Zainab stayed on the phone and asked the planner to describe exactly what she saw on her screen. The printer was working. The document was stuck because the planner's computer had lost its link to the shared drive. Zainab walked her through reconnecting, then remotely checked the file and sent it to a different printer. She then rang the other two callers to say she was on her way.
How it turned out
The document printed with ten minutes to spare. The planner apologised for her tone and thanked Zainab by name in an email to her manager. Zainab wrote a short, plain guide for the shared drive problem and added it to the help page.
What would you do?
- How would you stay calm with a caller who is upset and under pressure?
- Why might the problem someone describes not be the real problem?
- What could you do to stop the same problem from happening to others?