IT Technical Support 1

Introduction Technical support personnel offer support for individual and organizations in a variety of ways. This module focuses on help desk and desktop but also includes an awareness of other options, such as remote support, field support and call centre support. In completing this module, you will increase your technical knowledge. You will be expected to develop your research and show that you can select. You will learn how to apply this knowledge to help end user to resolve problems and improve the performance of their IT systems. 2

After completing this module, you should be able to achieve these outcomes: Be able to gather information in order to provide advice and guidance Be able to communicate advice and guidance in appropriate formats Understand how the organizational environment influences technical support. Understand technologies and tools used in technical support. 3

Gathering information to provide advice and guidance: The staff in a call centre are employed to service telephone calls from customers, and to record the details of all such call on a call logging system. 4

What does it mean? A call center is a place where a customer and other telephone calls are handled by an organization, usually with some amount of computer automation. A call logging system is a computerized system which is linked to a database of customers details and keeps a record of any communication with them. 5

Some call centers provide help desk support to IT users. Before the staff in the call centre can provide advice and guidance, they need to identify the problem. This will involve information gathering from a variety of sources. The end user who is having the problem should prove to be a valuable source of information, but help desk staff also need to consider other sources, such as a fault log or diagnostic software, and they may need to consult some technical documentation. 6

What does it mean? A fault log is a record of events that occurred, and may keeps a record of any communication with them. Diagnostic software attempts to diagnose a problem; it idenitifies faults and offers solutions. 7

Information gathering Information can be gathered from a number of sources, such as direct questions to the client, consulting a fault log or using diagnostic and monitoring tools. Each of these requires different skills on your part: communication, research and analysis. Information gathering requires a variety of skills of documenting your findings. 8

There will be constraints on your time band pressure to find a solution quickly, so you will need to identify priorities. Having a clear ideas of what you are looking for and where to look will help you to priorities, so you need a strategy for success. Faults fall into broad categories – such as loss of service or poor performance. Keeping accurate and detailed records forms an essential part of information gathering. 9

Direct questioning What level of service is the user entitled to expect from you? If there is a service level agreement (SLA) you will need to make sure you meet the expectations of the end user in full. An end user has problem and wants you, to the support technician, to fix it. He/She contacts you and starts to tell you what he/she thinks is wrong. During the conversation that follows – either face-to-face on telephone. This may include asking for a user name and password. This personal data may follow you access to information about the end user that you can bring up on your screen. 10

What does it mean? A service level agreement (SLA) set out what level of support is expected – for example, the speed of response for particular types problem. 11

When did this user last contact the help desk? The users attitude may be affected by how often he/she runs into difficulty and how effective the support has been previously. Often, end users are frustrated by problems they are experiencing and may be angry. Having as much background information to hand as possible may help you to cope with anger. What action has been previously? Since help desk (and call centers) are often staffed on a shift basis, it might be rare for an end user to talk to the same support technician two times running. The end user would appreciate not having to start all over again each time he/she rings. It is therefore important that records – such as fault log are kept of each conversation and what action was taken. 12

Once you have established that the end user is entitled to your support services, and have been informed of what has happened to date, you are ready to talk to the end user. However, before you ask, ‘What seems to be the problem?’, there are a number of important facts that you will need to know and record, or confi rm with the end user. As well as the name of the end user (or the person who is reporting the fault), it is essential to record other contact details. 13

If the problem appears to be a hardware fault, you need to know the make and model of the hardware (such as ‘Hewlett-Packard printer, model PSC 1210’ or a ‘SpeedTouch modem, model 330’). This may enable you to access the relevant technical information, for example, on the manufacturer’s website, so that you can talk the end user through a sequence of steps towards identifying the precise fault and resolving the problem. Most problems relate to faults in the hardware and software being used or, often, the way in which they are being operated by the end user. 14

It may also be relevant to know the software platform (such as Windows XP) and/or the software applications (such as Word) that they are running. Part of your training will be to become familiar with how the software works. In fact, you ought to be an expert in using any software that an end user might have installed on their computer. 15

Table 28.1 lists the questions that need to be answered and recorded at some point during the processing of a fault. Table 28.2 shows the data fields that might be needed to record the information so that it can be analyzed. The items in the first three rows of Tables 28.1 and 28.2 are relevant for this unit. 16

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