Visual|Help Desk

by Datawatch

Visual Help Desk (Visual|HD) leverages the IBM Lotus Domino platform to provide a 100% web-based Help Desk and Call Center solution. Cost effective and easy to deploy, Visual|HD delivers exceptional value by helping you quickly:

1. Reduce internal IT support costs
    
2. Increase the level of service and productivity of technical staff and the employees they support

Making your Help Desk more efficient
Visual|HD reduces the number of overall calls to your Help Desk by first reducing the number of incidents submitted to the Help Desk, and second, by reducing the number of phone calls per incident once a problem has been submitted. This, in turn, frees up your technicians to more quickly resolve complicated issues.

Helping end users help themselves
The number of incidents reported are lowered by providing end users easy self help tools and providing managers the ability to quickly update end users on important information, such as a Mail Server being down.

Visual|HD reduces the number of calls per incident by enabling end users to quickly and easily enter information themselves. Even better, Visual|HD allows end users to check the status of work in progress as well as see the resolutions to their past issues. This ability alone significantly reduces the number of calls into the Help Desk.

Visual|HD enables end users to quickly and easily enter information themselves.

Helping technicians become more efficient
Visual|HD will reduce your Help Desk costs by making it easier for your technicians to become more productive.

Visual|HD displays a unique Home Page for each technician. This home page organizes all of work that is currently assigned to that technician including new requests that he/she can pick up, and service bulletins. Depending on your business process, these requests can be auto assigned to technicians or groups or can be dispatched manually.

It is critical for the Help Desk to resolve as many calls on the first contact with the customer and to accurately track every call that comes into the help desk. Visual|HD's quick calls and call templates empower technicians to increase their first call resolution rate and to capture data on common calls that are often skipped due to time constraints.

Of course, not all calls can be resolved on first contact as tier 1 technicians will not have the breadth of knowledge to handle every incident. Visual|HD is designed to efficiently guide the technician to first try to resolve the issue by leveraging an integrated knowledge base. Once the call is categorized, the Tier 1 technician will be linked to relevant knowledge base items to help resolve the call.

If a technician cannot resolve the issue, Visual|HD will guide them through the process of escalating the ticket. Before the ticket can be properly escalated, the tier 1 technician can be prompted to answer required questions that the Tier 2 technician will need to begin working on the ticket, eliminating duplication of effort.

Multiple Task Management Made Easy
Often time a single request will require multiple technicians to be responsible for inter-related actions. Visual|HD allows for common requests such as rolling out new hires, terminating employees or re-locating employees to be completely automated and integrated.

Tasks can be assigned in a serial or sequential manner and assigned to specific technicians based on the type of task, employee type, location or department of the end-user.

Visual|HD allows for common requests such as rolling out new hires to be completely automated and integrated across multiple technicians.

Good Reporting Makes for a Better Help Desk
Powerful reporting tools integrated into Visual|HD make it easy for Help Desk Managers to identify problem areas, measure performance of technicians, measure performance against SLAs & track customer satisfaction.

Reporting tools offered in Visual|HD include the following:

1. Visual|HD Today is ideal for managers to get a quick snap shot of how the help desk in doing in real time - you can identify technicians that may be falling behind, or systems that may be failing and act immediately
    
2. Detail Reports measure call volumes and performance for any given time period and for ticket variables such as dept, location, end user, asset type, root cause, etc. - these reports are ideal for measuring improved performance in critical areas
    
3. Graphical reports allow managers to quickly create pie charts, bar graphs for all the same variables as the detail reports - these graphs can be exported and included in presentations to senior management
    
4. Auto-Customer Satisfaction Survey Reports - these surveys are easily configurable to measure key statistics and the results are rolled up into turnkey reports for measuring trends
   

The Visual|HD Today Reporting tool lets managers to get a quick snap shot of how the help desk in doing in real time.

Visual|HD Features

Visual|HD is made up of the several functional areas. All are available through a web browser or Lotus Notes Client:

Visual|HD Incident Tracking

• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Look up caller and asset repair history
• Multiple Forms Support
• Configurable SLAs and escalations
• Three or four level problem categorization
• Automatic indexing with existing Kbase documents based on problem categorization
• Automatic or Manual ticket routing
• Quick Call and Call Template features allowing for common call types
• SIMC feature allows for tracking of multiple calls for a single issue
• Flexible notification options configure automatic e-mails
• Auto Ticket generation from any e-mail
• Full incident work and edit history
• Tier 1 Technician Call Coaching
• User-definable custom fields
  

Employee Directory Database

• Identify callers by Name, Extension or unique Employee ID #
• Link employees to assets
• Flag VIPs
• Group End Users or Technicians
• Establish roles
• Automatic Synchronization with Domino Directory or other such as LDAP
  

Asset Management

• Create Custom asset types
• Complete Asset Llife Cycle Management
• Incident history by asset
• Manage leased assets
• Manage roll out and decommissioning of assets
• Track repair history and status
• Link assets to employees
• Link to IT asset Discovery tools, LAN Desk, Tally Systems, SMS
• Link to Bar Coder asset tools
  

Management Console

• Problem Management
• Leverage Turnkey Graphing to identify key problem areas
• By Category
• By Location
• By Department
• Asset Type
• Service Level Performance Management
• Generate Detailed reports of ability to reach SLAs
• Email reports to Business Line and Senior Management
• Dashboard of Real Time Statistics
• Today's Calls
• Closed Rate
• Closed on First Contact Rate
  

Build Internal Knowledgebase

• Self-building knowledge base from closed incidents
• Knowledge generation and approval capabilities
• Three level knowledge categorization
• Define reader audience
• Fully Customizable
• Full-text indexed
• Support for rich objects (video, sound, graphics, etc.)
  

Technicians Leverage Knowledgebase

• Leverage known problem resolutions
• Guide Tier 1 Technicians with knowledge scripts
• Resolve more incidents at Tier 1
  

End-user Self Help

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Service Bulletins
• Software Downloads
• Check Status