How does the work at IT Help Desk Support look like? True Story

IT Help Desk Support Specialist — what the job really looks like & why no software house can do without it.

Transparent Data
Blog Transparent Data ENG
9 min readFeb 12, 2021

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Responsibility for accepting, analyzing and solving problems and dispelling customer doubts is the overriding task of every Help Desk Specialist - the one working for technological companies and the one working for those non-technological. For businesses from this first category, i.e. our Data Software House Transparent Data, Help Desk is a key department of the organization, because when it comes to API products and data platforms, it is not only the moment of sale that counts. Fast and professional after-sales care is equally important. Once implemented business software solutions are expected to function for years, and this means the need to have a suitable person in the company, which the customer can contact at any time and say that he has encountered a problem. (Here is more about API product life cycle and how it works).

As Donald Porter once aptly put:

Customers don’t expect you to be perfect.

They expect you to fix things when they go wrong.

How does it look in practice? What is a typical IT Help Desk Specialist day like and how should he (or shouldn't) handle a request? Our IT Helpdesk and the first shield at the front, Bartosz Gibowski, tells you.

IT Help Desk Support Specialist - who is he really?

Job description

It happens that work in Help Desk has various names - depending on the technology company: IT Help Desk Specialist or IT Support Specialist, and sometimes, much more broadly, a Customer Support Specialist or Customer Success Specialist. Whichever name you use, the point is the same: providing help and information to the company's current customers.

It is interesting that the very name of this job — “helpdesk” — already says a lot about this position. Without imagination, one might even think that it is not about a person but about an object: “a desk that helps”. However, a desk is something lifeless, something that does not react, and the overriding goal of every Help Desk employee is exactly the opposite: quick reaction, analysis of the situation, appropriate redirection of the problem or its solution, and at the same time maintaining positive relations with customers. There is no place for passivity or answering after a few days.

If you work in the IT industry, various customer reports are sent to the helpdesk - bug reports, problems with logging in, doubts whether something works as it should or not, as well as requests for new functionalities in the already existing system. For this reason, working as an IT Help Desk Specialist is a responsible and complex job. In addition to knowledge of the offered solutions and agile movement in the sphere of processes and projects, soft skills related to customer service are very important.

What does IT Help Desk Specialist? Tasks and challenges step by step

It starts with customer reporting ...

…and it is one of the most important steps in solving a problem. When the client creates a ticket, the task of the IT Help Desk employee becomes analysis, reproduction, verification and the best explanation of the error to the programmer who will be responsible for its resolution. The better the problem is described, the better the chance to deal with it quickly.

In such a case, screenshots, task or order numbers and any other data that may be helpful in solving the case turn out to be very valuable. The bug report that IT Help Desk Specialist creates in JIRA or other task management software must be clear and precise so that the developer does not have to ask for anything extra. The only person who is obliged to ask, is usually the Help Desk employee - if he or she is not able to clearly forward the reports, it becomes necessary to make an additional phone call to the client and clarify the error.

In other words:

Only the correct definition of the problem

can solve it.

Importantly, and what many people miss, at the stage of accepting the bug report, a lot also depends on the applicant (customer) himself. In order for the IT Help Desk Specialist to correctly classify the error and correctly pass it on, he must first receive a reliable and clear "input" from the client. Unfortunately, it happens that when a specialist calls a client, the client does not understand why and is even surprised that more detailed information is expected from him.

(Occasional) Customer response to a call from the Helpdesk:

Why should I describe something and send it additionally?

How is it possible that you hear about an error from me? You don't monitor the solution yourself?

How could you not have anticipated this would happen? (...)

STOP!

It is natural and extremely human that the customer is frustrated at the moment and focuses more on reacting to this frustration than on eliminating its cause. But if you are a customer and you are wondering why you should be involved in solving the reported problem, the answer is: because it will help in the effective elimination of the bug.

Software houses, these are not booths with chips. Finding the cause of an error in the system or database follows different rules:

  • Firstly, there are some data we can't monitor (e.g. sensitive data). The GDPR does not allow us to do so.
  • Secondly, many solutions can and should be monitored, and it happens. Nevertheless, the great art of monitoring events is their appropriate selection. Contrary to appearances, you should not monitor as many activities as possible. You should monitor the key ones. Verifying millions of monitored data in order to find the source of the failure would be extremely time-consuming and would only make work difficult. A specific description of the problem by the client significantly shortens this path.
  • Thirdly, analyzing the data in relation to the reported case (well documented and described) can often give us much more than assuming on the basis of experience that we know exactly what happened. The use of heuristics is of course useful in the work of IT Help Desk, but the indispensable role of every person in this department is to verify in advance whether a given error really "falls into the pattern". It may turn out (and sometimes it turns out) that it is not our software that failed.

Why IT Helpdesk needs to think, not just use shortcuts - a quick example from the life of Transparent Data

Bug report: The client writes that API is not working because it did not send back data about the company he just wanted to check.

IT Help Desk Specialist misbehavior (based on heuristics): API does not work, I create a task for the developer to review the entire script. Let him look for the source of the problem.

IT Help Desk Specialist correct behavior (clarification of the circumstances of the error): I call the client and ask about 1) which API it is (because the client has National Court Register API, Central Registration and Information on Business API, Financial Reports API, and UBO API so it I need to know which one is not working), 2) the company registry number that he submitted an inquiry to the API.

Why is it worth asking the client about the situation in which the error occurred?

  • Reason No. 1: The customer may have asked the wrong API (for clarification: companies registered in one business register cannot be found in the other one because they do not share the data)
  • Reason No. 2: the entered company number may a) not exist (be false or contain errors, e.g. has 1 digit too little), b) exist, but not be stored by any registration source (e.g. the General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways of Poland has a company number but does not appear in the National Court Register or any other Polish business register).

It cannot be denied that IT software solutions have often hundreds of lines of code, thousands of conditions, loops and classes, and millions of variables that are constantly processed somewhere on the back-end, hidden behind the graphical user interface. When working with such complex solutions, you cannot predict absolutely everything. In return, you can react efficiently and effectively. Well-described and documented bug reports help greatly in this process.

A lot of problems can be solved by IT Help Desk Specialist ad hoc, sometimes without even involving the development team. It all comes down to the so-called "incidents", i.e. bug reports that do not disturb the continuity of work on the client's side, but only temporarily hinder certain activities and can be quickly repaired. It is a process related to the handling of similar and repetitive bug reports that must be handled according to a specific standard so that a repeated problem is repeatedly solved.

Despite this…

… Not everything is as simple as it seems

Not every problem reported by the customer can be fixed immediately. Sometimes the right solution requires not so much an ad hoc action as a more comprehensive proposal. Sometimes the problem is not an "incident" but the lack of proper functionality in the system.

Then, the customer has to wait for the solution, whether he wants to or not. An apparently simple, small change can have a significant impact on the entire project. In communication with the client, words such as "estimation", "scope" and "valuation" appear then.

In such moments, IT Help Desk Specialist works closely with Project Manager. The problem reported by the client is verified in terms of the previously agreed scope of work and current development resources. The customer is surprised both by the deadlines ("Why should I wait a few or several days for the problem to be solved?") and the number of work performed on seemingly simple solutions. Why?

An example:

With regard to the market in which Transparent Data operates (RegTech — providing company data), a good example is the modification of data search engine which allows to verify only Polish companies. Suppose that the client suddenly wants to be able to verify also companies from the Czech Republic via the same data platform. On the surface, it would seem that the thing needed, is to connect an additional data source (ARES System) which is "ready", because we have it in our data solutions offer.

Nevertheless, we are dealing here with a situation where, for some specific reasons, only the Polish company identification number can be entered in the data search field of the system. What are these reasons? Well, among others verification of the checksum of numbers to be sure that the company identification number is correct. Therefore, it is not enough to simply “unlock the search field” (this would expose us to the so-called SQL Injection and the risk of errors in the database).

What needs to be done in this case is to additionally establish the validation and checksum for the foreign registry separately.

Sometimes, an apparently simple change creates a significant risk related to application security and requires both industry knowledge (related to public registers and the specificity of working with data), as well as IT skills and experience. Sometimes in such cases there are communication problems with the client.

This is a good time to remind you that ...

... Business is done with people, not companies

The first rule related to the work of the IT Help Desk is:

Always put yourself in the shoes of the customer

Working at IT Help Desk focuses not only on solving the problem, but also on showing great empathy. You have to understand the issues of the client's busy schedule or that a given bug is blocking someone's daily work. Cooperation works properly when the client also correctly understands our role - the role of a person who tries to help.

It happens, for example, that after submitting the bug, there is no further involvement on the part of the client. A bug has been reported but there is no way to ask for details. Contact broke off. When you try to talk, you end up focusing on the emotional ("Doesn't work!") layer, not the factual one.

The attitude on the other side is extremely helpful:

  • providing a complete set of data that I mentioned at the beginning,
  • willingness to arrange a teleconference and prepare for it, if required,
  • determining the scope of current works,
  • setting a date for solving the problem,
  • sticking to the set range without further priority rotation.

If your client does not understand this, it means that you need to work on your joint communication and relationships. He has the right not to be familiar with the specifics of working in IT, but he will certainly show understanding when he sees that you and the company you work for care about him.

About the Author:

Bartosz Gibowski | IT Helpdesk at Transparent Data

For over 5 years associated with the FinTech and RegTech industries. A fan of solving problems comprehensively and without too much emotion. Privately, an enthusiast of retro games.

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