Hello all,
This post is a continuation of the adventure into my first helpdesk 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.
The First Day Nerves
The first day without training wheels was quite daunting. I was not sure what to expect with my first call, but the second I got the call — all the nerves disappeared, because I was ultimately just focused on getting through and helping that customer the best way I knew how. I was quite surprised with how I was able to move through these calls, even regardless if I had no idea what the best answer to provide was. I utilized some techniques to stall the call and ultimately lend the customer a sense of progression in the matter, while continuously maintaining a positive tone. The endurance to keep your tone clean is so important because if you start to reveal any frustration, they will also mirror that. I wanted to avoid some of these customers from exploding, which could definitely have happened if my tone ever came across the wrong way. Some of these customers, if it weren’t for my clear and calm demeanor, I would probably have had a different story to tell.
Getting The Rhythm
The first day, I managed to handle 21 total customers. This gave me an average baseline of what to expect on a daily basis. I got a mixture of hour-long calls, and three to five minute password reset calls. I honestly would enjoy getting a password reset call because I started to gamify it, as to see how quickly I could get that person set up with a new password and off the phone. Having completed one in three minutes, with the total call time being about five minutes, I was so satisfied, and so was the customer. It was these kind of calls that allowed me to remember what I was doing this for. I did have some customers also mention, especially during those longer ones, that they would give me glowing remarks regarding the overall customer experience I provided them. Those were special moments for me to receive feedback such as this, as it told me they recognized that I was trying my best to help them.
Sharing Information With Colleagues
Another really amazing opportunity presented itself when I was working a specific ticket and I had been copying information from a table. One of the supervisors training me, was guiding me through grabbing only the most specific information for a certain ticket type. I was able to recognize that I copied too much information in a table, however, when I was explaining the way I copied the information, I mentioned how in the Firefox web browser, it is possible to hold down the ‘CTRL’ key while dragging over cells, allowing you to highlight the cell you want to copy information from. This makes it easier to grab information from individual cells, on only cells you’d like to have the information from, and not necessarily all the information that would clutter the ticket. The amazing part of all this is that, the supervisor shortly followed up saying he had not known about the firefox table thing, and wishes he had known about it for YEARS, as it would have saved him so much time. He said quote,
“I AM SO MAD I JUST NOW FIND OUT ABOUT THAT CTRL + DRAG TRICK!!!! OMG I could have beeing doing that for years. LOL. Thank you! I shall try to repay the favor some time.”
This was a pivotal moment for me in realizing how, I could directly impact this organization, even if just by small favors such as this. I was blown away by the positive impression I would be able to establish with the supervisor.
Lessons Learned
In just about all of these things with the back to back calls – it is important to remember that you need to keep calm and stay focused on your tone and how you can help the customer. You don’t know what to expect and you can’t control how they talk, but you can control how they perceive your help, which will ultimately play a factor in how much patience they have for the situation. You might also just get super unlucky and get someone who’s been mad about calling 50 times. If that happens, you just maintain the same strategies. Never ever believe the idea that you cannot teach someone something new, even if they have been doing something for a while. I have come to the realization that information can be shared, regardless if you are sharing that information with someone who has 10 years of experience, or a couple days. Everyone can learn something, and while there’s a phenomenon such as the “curse of knowledge” that makes things difficult to actually feel like they are valuable since you already know it, you can see that if you get out of that comfort zone to really just share it anyway, it might just conclude in something very positive and encouraging.