Many of us are responsible for a help desk that receives, responds to, and resolves user complaints.  Your help desk may consist of one or two employees who answer telephones or an ACD group of 20 analysts who receive customer requests in a variety of ways.  Regardless of your help desk configuration, here are my Five Cs to keep your Customer Satisfied.

Customer Convenience:
When your customers have a problem, how easily can they contact your help desk?  Is it such a hassle that the user would rather put up with a minor problem or try to fix it himself (which usually creates more problems) instead of calling your department?  The most widely-used method of contact is the telephone, which is often routed to the much-maligned voice mail.  To build trust in the help desk, the staff must answer the telephone quickly and respond to voice mail messages immediately.  Email is now almost as prevalent as the telephone for receiving service calls.  Interactive text messaging is also a viable alternative for organizations with the technology.  Put yourself in the user's situation. Find out how difficult it is for you to place a service call. 
    
Communication Skills:
The best way to establish a good working relationship with your customers is to employ a help desk staff with excellent communications skills.  The help desk staff can inspire confidence and trust in your department by simply treating the customer with respect.  No matter how the customer contacts your help desk, if the staff doesn't have great communications skills, both verbal and written, the customer could perceive the staff as rude or incompetent. 

Competent Staff:
A competent staff is a well-trained staff with the right tools (software and hardware).  If the technician or analyst can't fix the problem (even if it's user error), the department's reputation will suffer.  Invest in training.  It will pay off for both you and your customers. 

Current Technology: 
Although I don't advocate purchasing and implementing technology just to have the latest and greatest, I do recommend keeping current with hardware updates, and software revisions, and implementing new solutions if it will assist the help desk in doing its job more efficiently.  There are CRM and CMS applications that can decrease the time required to answer incoming service calls by storing specific user information.  Service call tracking applications help the analyst by showing the history of a user problem and previous work done.  Wireless devices carried by field personnel can expedite delivery of service calls and critical information.  Enterprise software can monitor the entire network and quickly notify staff when trouble is detected.    

Call Resolution:
Your customer will probably not know or care what technology you have installed.  They might overlook staff with less than perfect communications skills.  The most important thing to customers is quick and complete resolution of their problem.  A telephone or computer problem that is not promptly repaired is a constant source of irritation and could keep the customer from doing his or her job and potentially affect project deadlines and organizational effectiveness.  To keep your customer satisfied, fix their problems.  

 
 -Mike