Hello,
This is a another additional post following up my training experience with my new help desk job. I wanted to touch on my experience to help those who are looking to gain a clearer picture of what to expect before going into similar roles. Please keep in mind that due to strict NDA agreements, I cannot disclose certain information in this overview.
Shadowing
For my first three days of the second week, I was able to sit in on live calls, while taking notes and following along with the flow of everything. I was partnered with an employee who had about 4 or 5 years of experience. With that, I was confident in asking as many questions as I could to build confidence the best way I knew how. The first obstacle I had with these calls was trying to understand where to access information when the pace increased, or when a customer began to sound frantic of frustrated. I noticed my approach from Monday, to Wednesday, eventually got more and more tight in terms of my understanding of the best way to organize my tabs. It was essentially an eye-opener to me how important it was to keep notes organized. That was in some way more challenging than locating the actual information. The other thing about organization is that, once you start to become disorganized, you take longer on creating tickets, and therefore you might have a situation where you have to have less time to compose yourself between calls as you’re still wrapping up tickets.
Reverse-Shadowing
After those three days, it was time for me to take calls. Usually there would be a trainer and multiple new hires, so that one new hire wouldn’t spend all day taking calls. However, I happened to get the group where I was the only new hire, with one trainer. Therefore, that was my first day taking calls, and I was taking them for the whole 8 hours. In some way though, I am very glad it worked out to be this way, since I had the time to fine-tune and get myself in a flow on the phone. I had the trainer by my side to send me messages and guide me in the right direction for calls where I wasn’t necessarily sure how to answer a particular question. I also discovered ways to stall the call and give myself additional time, such as asking additional verification questions, or things I already knew the answer to. Small strategies like this were clear to me in buying enough time to create a ticket, but also to give the customer a sense of confidence like their question was going somewhere. You can’t keep a customer on hold forever though, so it was a fine balance between stalling and probing questions while you begin to switchtask your way to victory.
Expecting The Unexpected
On the last day of reverse shadowing, I had been partnered with four other new hires, and 1 trainer. This was a nice change from the previous day, as I was able to see a bit of perspective in how the new hires handled the calls, as well as some other fresh perspective from the more experienced person. I took my first call on that morning, and during what was going to be a brief two minute hold time, my computer mouse battery died on me, thus I was unable to bring the customer off of hold. This was an eye-opener to be to be prepared for the things that you could never control or ever anticipate. I rushed to grab a backup computer mouse and plug it in, and I was able to close that phone call. Even though I was very frantic about the call afterward, it taught me how important it is to keep composure during times where panic can set in. I grabbed a fresh battery and continued on.
Lessons Learned
Things will happen on the job, especially in helpdesk, that are unexpected and uncontrollable. You will have weird calls, and you will have to parse information from people who thought they meant one thing, when in fact they meant another. You thought it was going to be a simple password reset? Maybe it’s actually a little more harder than that. If you set an expectation for the call to be easy, you might be disappointed if it turns to be more challenging. If you expect it to go anywhere, you will be prepared. If you had a situation where things made you panic, you cannot bring that into your next call. That tone comes across over the phone and it will be obvious that you’re frustrated. You have to shake away the past negative experiences. Don’t carry those experiences forward. Each call is a new call. Each call is a new person. Each person is simply calling for help because they believe you can help them. You need to remember that your job is to help them the best way you can.