Date Published February 1, 2017 - Last Updated December 6, 2017
For years, the support center (aka, service desk) has been called “the face of IT” because it is where customers and users of information technology interact with the IT department. Your computer breaks, and you call the support center. You need a new place to share files with your sales group, and you call the support center. When employees think about IT, they usually think about the support center.
When employees think about IT, they usually think about the support center.
What Has Changed?
Everything has changed. A few years ago, organizations began allowing—and even expecting—people to provide their own computers, tablets mobile phones, and so on. Often, it’s the manufacturer or provider of the device that’s responsible to resolve hardware and software issues, not your friendly local IT department (meaning the support center). Customers and users are far more familiar with technology, because they use it at home as well as at work. The questions are harder. The expectations are higher. Things happen at a faster pace.
It’s hard to imagine that only a few years ago, a software update meant that you would wait for someone from IT to bring a disk to your computer and install the software for you. Now, updates happen automatically—and frequently—from “the cloud.”
What’s Next?
Organizations—companies, universities, healthcare facilities—are increasingly dependent on the information technology they use. That technology must be stable, efficient, and secure. But there’s something else. Customer experience matters more than ever. Customers and end users do not have time, not for things to work at less than full capacity, and certainly not for things to break, and even more certainly not to wait in a phone queue for seemingly endless minutes until someone picks up.
Now the support center moves from being the fix-it team to being a trusted business advisor, helping business units and employees make good technology choices every day.
How Do You Prepare?
HDI is here for you. The HDI 2017 Conference & Expo is built to deliver the information, techniques, and answers you need to move to the next level of service and support. From the pre-conference workshops to the outstanding sessions to the Expo Hall exhibitors, to the closing keynote, HDI 2017 will deliver what you need to take you and your team to the next level.
Don’t miss it.
Roy Atkinson is HDI's senior writer/analyst, acting as in-house subject matter expert and chief writer for SupportWorld articles and white papers. In addition to being a member of the HDI International Certification Standards Committee and the HDI Desktop Support Advisory Board, Roy is a popular speaker at HDI conferences and is well known to HDI local chapter audiences. His background is in both service desk and desktop support as well as small-business consulting. Roy is highly rated on social media, especially on the topics of IT service management and customer service. He is a cohost of the very popular #custserv (customer service) chat on Twitter, which celebrated its fifth anniversary on December 9, 2014. He holds a master’s certificate in advanced management strategy from Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business, and he is a certified HDI Support Center Manager. Follow him on Twitter @HDI_Analyst and @RoyAtkinson.