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It is well known that highly active Help Desk functions can quickly become associated with above average staff turnover. There are of course exceptions to this at better managed organizations, where the support staff understand the service benefits, receive adequate levels of technical and customer handling training, and also receive suitable levels of remuneration.
Help Desk staff are involved with front line customer facing roles and are constantly dealing with problems and incidents that need to be resolved urgently. Customers can quickly become anxious when their services are down or malfunctioning, and can often over react in their dealing with the Help Desk operative. This can result in potentially stressful situations arising, particularly where customer satisfaction is low or where the customer actively demonstrates anger or frustration. In certain circumstances it may be prudent to provide stress management counseling and ensure that staff receive a high level of management support from other more experienced personnel. It is the role of the management of the Help Desk unit not only to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, but also a low level of staff turnover. It is advisable to keep suitable notes available on screen about customers that tend to become quickly agitated, and be aware of situations where particular customers have complained about poor service levels or lack of service availability in the past. If customers have had recent bad experiences that have not been handled to their satisfaction then they could quickly become stressed if they experience further problems. It is also advisable to keep in control of the situation in order to avoid stressful scenarios building up. Taking control of events and listening carefully to the problems being explained will usually make it possible to re-focus the conversation towards a positive outcome. Stress tends to be cumulative. Hence, if you start off feeling stressed then each new difficult situation will build on that level of stress until you boil over and start reacting to further new stressful situations. Regain control of your feelings as early as possible and learn to defuse situations effectively. When you do this your own stress levels will diminish considerably and you can focus on reducing the stress levels of the customer. Training can also help you to learn how to turn negative situations into positive ones. Emphasise to the customer at all times that you really care about the outcome to the problems, and that you recognise the customer’s feelings of frustration whilst suggesting ways to find an acceptable resolution. Managers and supervisors should regularly liaise with their Help Desk operatives to ensure that stressful situations are being properly handled and kept under control. If a particular customer has appeared stressed during the service calls, once the problem has been resolved ensure that a follow up call is always made to the client’s representative to obtain feedback on the way the problem was handled and to take the opportunity to emphasise that achieving customer satisfaction is paramount for your organization. Finally, stress is a fact of life. However, if it is recognized and pro-actively managed, its service impact can be significantly reduced and minimized. |
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