How to help the help-desk pro screaming ‘Help!’

Sometimes it’s the help-desk pro yelling, “Help!”

Shakel Ahmed, now a mentor, cybersecurity career advisor, and founder of insights blog CyberDesserts, remembers a time early in his IT career—some 20 years ago at a software vendor’s help desk—when he wanted to assist a client trying to upgrade their email server. Then, the server crashed.

“I’m trying to look around at people that are on the other calls, colleagues, and trying to get their attention,” Patel said. He recalled thinking: I’m drowning here. I need help.

Never mind the upgrade—Patel now had to get the client’s server back. He did a few laps around the office to see if colleagues had any insights or ideas to try.

“I was questioning myself, and then having [the client] on the other line questioning everything I was doing. It was becoming a huge amount of stress,” he told IT Brew.

In a survey released on Oct. 1 by backup storage provider Object First and commissioned by data company Dynata, 84% of 500 US security and IT workers polled said they felt “uncomfortably stressed at work due to IT security risks.” Sources of frustration included heavy workloads, understaffed teams, and the pressure to maintain uptime and service availability.

IT pros spoke with IT Brew about recommended help desk structures and strategies that could make an overwhelmed tech-support pro feel more supported.

The desk is flat. Some help desk teams have a tiered structure with a clear escalation path:

• Tier 1 handles basic troubleshooting, then sends extra-challenging problems to…
• Tier 2 specialists with deeper technical knowledge, who still throw a tough ticket up to…
• Tier 3 senior development engineers and decisionmakers.

There are other ideas about how to structure the help desk, however. IT services company Ivanti has flattened the model and gone tierless, according to the company’s SVP of Global Solutions and Services Sterling Parker. His team of just under 500 vendor-support (not internal IT) specialists handle issues collaboratively but with no distinct escalation levels.

When a ticket is assigned, a help desk pro takes full ownership from beginning to end, Parker said. A specialized subject matter expert can be called in if needed—like for a code fix. The specialist will advise the frontline team member on next steps, but will not take over communication with the customer, Parker noted; they’re “on the hook for the resolution.” An entry-level IT pro gets to learn on the job, with some backup help if necessary.

“​​It’s great to be able to have that eject button in a tiered structure, to be able to say, “It’s beyond my depth, I do not know the answer,’” Parker said. “[But] I’m not learning. I’m not getting better because I just ejected my opportunity to learn something.”

A tierless structure doesn’t suit every company. Some consider a lack of accountability (given the absence of senior management) in the flat model as a drawback.

Parker acknowledges that a flat-tier support system faces challenges if entry-level team members regularly end up stuck with undesirable tasks, while senior professionals get the easier ones. The imbalance can lead to frustration, he mentioned in a follow-up email.

“It’s ensuring you’re hiring those with the ‘we’ mindset vs. ‘me.’ Building a culture where everyone pitches in, shares tough jobs, and rotates responsibilities helps keep things fair and helps avoid burnout,” Parker wrote.

Swarms and scrums. If organizations aren’t quite ready for tierless structures, there are other ways to bring the team together. Amit Patel, SVP of consulting at Consulting Solutions, has seen a shift from help desk hierarchy to “swarm” support. A digital “virtual war room” setup, for example—even if it’s a Slack channel—can surface tough tickets and bring together additional teams, like security and engineering, to consider a vexing problem.

The swarm model provides faster resolution times, Patel said: “On these tougher tickets, you’re not going through a playbook.” He also noted, however, that virtual conversation platforms get “noisy” and may require clear guidelines on use.

Clear channels. Whatever structure a team chooses, transparency and communication are critical. Every week, Robert Rohrman’s team meets to discuss open tickets—a process that the SVP of infrastructure at CompTIA, a training and certification org, says helps both newcomers and veterans.

“It may not have even been that person’s ticket, but they heard [a colleague discuss] the process—the right way through—before, and they can take that ticket the next time it comes up,” Rohrman told us.

Troubleshooting requires knowledge from peers, in whatever scrum, swarm, or tierless form is best for a given organization. Ahmed recalled a number of lessons from his tough days at the help desk. One major one: Take your time to gain knowledge about a specific problem.

“Don’t be eager to fix the problem without fully understanding what’s happening,” he said.