What skills do you need to be a help desk technician?

  entry level help desk technician

The (IT support) times they are a changin’, and IT service desks have already reacted not only in how they operate but also in how they recruit and train their staff. The average service desk, if there is such a thing in reality, is now focused on recruiting people with service desk skills like customer service, communication, and problem-solving skills – rather than previous support experience or deep technical knowledge.

It sounds great from a customer service point of view, but is this merely a plateau before another step change in end-user expectations of IT support (and associated industry best practices) change the qualities required of service desk staff again?

The service desk status quo in 2015

At the end of 2015, HDI – a professional association for the technical support industry – released its annual support center practices and salary report. Naming the top ten sought-after skills for hiring and promoting staff as:

1. 1. Customer service
   2. Communication skills
   3. Ability to learn quickly
   4. Troubleshooting/problem-solving skills
   5. Ability to work under pressure
   6. Adaptability
   7. Teamwork skills
   8. Interpersonal skills
   9. Support experience
   10. Integrity

With the provided training also emphasizing the need for customer service skills (please note that this HDI table includes only those organizations that have each position)

Source: HDI, 2015 Support Center Practices & Salary Report

And just to really underline the importance of customer service skills, the top five factors that influence salary increases for service desk people were said to be [Source: HDI, 2015 Support Center Practices & Salary Report]:

1. Customer service skills
2. Quality of work
3. Meeting performance metrics or standards
4. Help desk or support experience
5. Increased job responsibilities

One can’t argue with the importance of customer skills to IT support but the times are still a changin’, with two factors in particular anticipated to change the requirements for service desk staff as we work our way into 2017.

Looking to 2017 and beyond – the growing importance of customer experience

Many service desks are already aware of the growing use of customer experience in the business-to-consumer (B2C) world – with improving customer experience a method of winning and retaining customers. This growing use of customer experience is raising customer expectations of services and service; and employees (who are, after all, consumers) are bringing their new expectations of customer experience into work and measuring the IT department, HR, and any other corporate service provider against them.

These customer-experience-adopting B2C companies will testify that a focus on customer service alone is no longer enough. And thus service desk management and staff (and the wider IT organization) will need to fully understand the constructs of customer experience, what it means in the context of corporate IT service delivery, and what they need to do to at least keep up with the growing expectations of employees.