Super Users

Staff retention

It is very important that all IT Managers recognize the importance of the Service Desk and the staff who work on it, and give this special attention. Any significant loss of staff can be disruptive and lead to inconsistency of service – so efforts should be made to make the Service Desk an attractive place to work.

Ways in which this can be done include proper recognition of the role with reward packages recognizing this, team-building exercises, staff rotation onto other activities (project s, second-line support, etc.).

The Service Desk can often be used as a stepping stone into other more technical or supervisory/managerial roles. If this is done, care is needed to ensure that proper succession planning takes place so that the desk does not lose all of its key expertise in any area at one time. Also, good documentation and cross-training can mitigate this risk.

Many organizations find it useful to appoint or designate a number of ‘ Super User s’ throughout the user community, to act as liaison points with IT in general and the Service Desk in particular.

Super Users can be given some additional training and awareness and used as a conduit for communications flow in both directions. They can be asked to filter requests and issues raised by the user community (in some cases even going as far as to have incidents or requests raised by the Super User) – this can help prevent ‘ incident storms’ when a key service or component fails, affecting many users.

They can also be used to cascade information from the Service Desk outwards throughout their local user community, which can be very useful in disseminating service details to all users very quickly.

It is important to note that Super User s should log all calls that they deal with, and not just those that they pass on to IT. This will mean access to, and training on how to use, the Incident logging tools. This will help to measure the activity of the Super User and also to ensure that their position is not abused. In addition, it will ensure that valuable history regarding incidents and service quality are not lost.

It may also be possible for Super Users to be involved in:

• Staff training for user s in their area
• Providing support for minor incidents or simple request fulfilment
• Involvement with new release s and rollout s.

Super Users do not necessarily provide support for the whole of IT. In many cases a Super User will only provide support for a specific application, module or business unit area. As a business user the Super User often has in-depth knowledge of how key business process es run and how services work in practice. This is very useful knowledge to share with the Service Desk, so that it can provide higher-quality services in future.

It should be noted that a firm commitment is needed from potential Super Users, and specifically their management, that they will have the time and interest to perform this role before selection and training commences.

A Super User, while a valuable interface to the business and the Service Desk, must be given proper training, accountability and expectation. Super Users can be vulnerable to misuse if their role, responsibilities and the process governing these are not clearly communicated to the users. It is imperative that a Super User is not seen as a replacement for, or a means to circumvent, the Service Desk.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23