Our 1300 Helpdesk and how it works
Our main point of contact for our Business I.T. Support is our 1300 584 024 number.
Clients can call the 1300 number and log their helpdesk ticket. We would ask:
Name of person logging the ticket
Contact details
Description of issue (E.g. Workstation slow to access SQL Server)
Details of PC that is affected. With established clients, we have a naming convention, and the machine has the name label affixed to the side of the machine. When the user calls the helpdesk, we ask the machine number, and the caller reports WC001 (for example), then we can see that in our Teamviewer console.
We ask the priority of the ticket. Is it High, Medium or low? If it is an offline server affecting everyone in the office, this would be an urgent issue and we would get to site as soon as possible. For ad-hoc clients, if it is an issue that is urgent, but out of business hours, we explain the emergency rates (see our pricelist).
Once we have all of the information required for the helpdesk ticket, we save the ticket in our helpdesk queue of tickets. These normally sit at about 10-20 tickets in the queue and we work on them throughout the day.
When we commence work on the ticket, we open the ticket in our Helpdesk Software (Zendesk), and start the clock, which is on the screen also. This helps us keep track of the time spent on each ticket. We add notes on the ticket as we go, so we can explain to the user later on what work was done on the ticket. When we complete the job, and the user reports the pc tests ok, we stop the clock and close the ticket ourselves. This collates to a spreadsheet, with the ticket number, and the amount of hours.
For issues that aren’t internet or network connectivity related, like software configuration, we ask is it ok to remote into their machine. For machines that have network connectivity issues or no internet issues, we drive to your business to fix these issues onsite.
We have several commercial Teamviewer licenses which allow for encrypted remote sessions to other pcs and servers with Teamviewer (a remote access program) installed. From within the Teamviewer console, we can see the list of organisations we support, and their machines. We can see alerts for machines that are monitored with IT Brain, which alerts us for errors on machines like hard disk space, CPU utilisation, firewall status, anti-virus status, whether or not they are online etc.
Once we have permission to log onto the machine, we ask the Teamviewer ID and password, which the user supplies, then we have a session open to the remote PC. This means we see what you see on our screen, on a window on one of our screens back at the office. We control your cursor, and can then commence repairing your machine. Once completed, we close our window and end the connection, and you are able to have your machine (and cursor) back. We then stop the clock, and update the ticket notes and any client documentation that needs to be updated also.
Invoicing hours to the client and reference to helpdesk tickets
When we do invoicing (on the 15th and 30th of each month), we collate the hours for each client, and breakdown the labour charges so the client can see what time was spent on each issue:
For example, for invoice #2354 ABC Day-care:
Item Amount Item Description Amount 2 Hours Labour $240.00
Invoice Notes (found at the bottom of each invoice):
Ticket #2567 1.5 hours: Jenny complained Invoice program crashing in RFMS SQL Server, remoted in and restarted SQL server and cleared transaction logs.
Ticket #2575 .5 hours: Tracey required new email account accounts@domain.com.au. Created, tested, and added to her email program on pc WC012, tested OK.So we have the amount of hours you are charged, with the ticket numbers, with a brief description of each ticket (we can only fit a limited amount of words in the invoice notes at the bottom of each invoice). If your accounts department has a query with an invoice, or they require more information, they can call our office, and we can look that ticket up in our helpdesk ticketing software, and give more information. For bigger projects there is often a lot of ticket notes, so what we do is send a pdf printout of the ticket notes, and send them with a pdf of the invoice so you can cross reference the tickets and invoice charges.
What we try to do each time, if there is a ticket or project that goes over 2 hours, or if there will be a labour cost blowout, is to talk to the person at your company that is responsible for expenditure or the Business I.T Support liaison. There we discuss the upcoming project, and its benefits, and then give either an estimate or detailed quote.