What a help desk should do for a professional firm

Every firm has a help desk, whether or not it's called one. Sometimes it's a provider. Often it's the partner who "knows computers," or the office manager with a list of passwords. Whoever it is, they decide how much working time your firm loses to technology.

What it's for

A help desk has one job: get people back to work. At a professional firm, where time is what you sell, an hour lost to a locked account or a laptop that won't connect is an hour not billed.

That makes the real cost of poor support invisible. Nobody sends an invoice for the afternoon an associate spent fighting with a scanner.

What good support looks like

One place to ask. Staff shouldn't have to work out who to call. A single address or form means every request is recorded and nothing depends on catching someone in the corridor.

A fast first response. People can wait for a fix if they know someone has it. Silence is what frustrates them.

Fixed remotely where possible. Most problems can be resolved by connecting to the computer, in minutes. See how that works in what RMM is.

Problems recorded. Each request is logged with what was wrong and what fixed it. The third time the same laptop fails, someone notices the pattern.

The cause fixed, not only the symptom. If the same thing breaks every month, a good help desk asks why.

Plain language. Staff should understand what happened and whether they need to do anything differently.

What it should handle

• Passwords and locked accounts.
• Email, calendar and file access.
• Computers that are slow, stuck or won't start.
• Printers, scanners and Wi-Fi.
• Setting up a new starter, and closing accounts for a leaver. See the offboarding checklist.
• "Is this email real?" Every time, without making anyone feel foolish for asking.

That last one matters more than it looks. A help desk that welcomes those questions is part of your security. One that sighs at them teaches staff to stop asking.

How to measure yours

Four questions tell you most of what you need:

1. How long until someone responds?
2. How long until it's fixed?
3. How often does the same problem come back?
4. Do staff actually use it, or do they work around problems and ask each other?

If the honest answer to the fourth is that people have given up asking, the first three don't matter.

Signs it's costing you

• A partner is the IT person. Their time is the most expensive in the building.
• Staff keep their own workarounds: personal email for large files, a private laptop because the firm's is slow.
• Nobody knows what was fixed last month or how.
• Problems are only dealt with when someone complains loudly.
• New starters wait days for a working login.

Remote or on-site?

Most support is remote and should be, because it's faster. Some jobs need a person in the room: new equipment, a network fault, an office move. A good arrangement gives you both, and tells you clearly which is included. We set out how to compare offers in ten questions to ask an IT provider.

Help desk support by ticket, during business hours, is in every plan we offer, with priority response on Secure and on-site visits across Miami-Dade and Broward. See help desk for the details.