The Complete Help Desk Guide [Paperback]

Mary Lenz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1996

Now there's a book for every help desk and support/call center that needs to answer customer questions and solve technical problems. This book helps you predict call volume, reduce turnover (and costs) and choose the right tools for automating. It's packe

Simply defined, a help desk is were customers and clients turn to for answers to questions and solutions to problems. This book will help you create the world's best help desk for technical support. It covers help desk software, equipment, staffing, Internet help services, and future trends.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mary Lenz is the editor of Call Center Magazine and a leading expert on help desks and support centers. Over the past several years, she has evaluated countless help desk systems and interviewed hundreds of help desk and call center managers. She writes a highly regarded monthly column, Help Desk Watch, for Call Center Magazine.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: CMP; 1 edition (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0936648961
• ISBN-13: 978-0936648965
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,771,207 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #99 in Books > Computers & Technology > Business & Culture > Technical Support

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hardly Complete, May 20, 2001

By 

Robert O'Daniel "Techie Dude" (Odessa, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Help Desk Guide (Paperback)

The title is a bit deceptive - this book serves best as a primer for those who have little or no prior knowledge of help desks. Those familiar with the topic will quickly move through the book and discover that the better half is devoted to synopsii of help desk applications. And while that information is useful, much of it is readily available on the Internet.

For those researching help desks for the sake of a technical writing project or for managers looking for information to improve an existing help desk, this book will likely fall short of the mark.

The writer's style is encouraging and you do sense that she knows much more than the book contains. And the pages that deal with workplace ergonomics were nice, although they didn't seem alltogether pertitent to the main theme.

Not a bad book, but hardly "complete."

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Better choices available, March 20, 2003

By 

Randall S. Pearson (Downingtown, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Help Desk Guide (Paperback)

PROS:
1. Good source for someone looking to buy a call tracking system.
2. Good coverage of telecommuting and internet support.
3. Nice case-studies and quotes.

CONS:
1. Infomercial is my first impression. Hyped is my second.
2. The "mother of all guides" lists only 43 sources.
3. Many critical Help Desk topics are not covered at all.

Mary Lenz is well known to many of us because of her writing and editing for Call Center magazine. I'm sad to report that much of the style of that publication made its way into this book, leaving me with the feeling I was reading an infomercial pretty much from start to finish. There is certainly some good information between the covers, but it's a bit oversold.

Two inconsistencies struck me in this book. First, exaggeration: "Mary is the world's leading expert on Help Desks." Really?! I haven't even heard Bill Rose, Ron Muns or Mikael Blaisdell make such a brazen claim. I would change the title to "Selecting a Call Tracking System" since the book clearly is much less complete than any of several recent help desk books. Even the main element of the book, it's listing of vendors, "the mother of all guides," only contains 43 companies. Microsoft's sourcebook lists over 100 solutions. This left my cynical little mind wondering if the listings had anything to do with advertising dollars. Second, the book has far too many editing errors in it. What an embarrassment given that Lenz is an editor by profession. In short, this all left me with the dissatisfied feeling that Lenz had more to offer. On to the good stuff!

The book offers some of the best material available (inexpensively) on selecting a call tracking system for your support center. This kind of information (RFP's, solution briefs, advice on buying a system) is commonly request on the HDESK-L listserv. While there are many on-line sources for this kind of information, Lenz's book is a nice contribution in this area. It also ensures rapid obsolescence as the market changes.

Lenz's book has a strong section on telecommuting for support staff--an area ignored or weakly covered in other support books. There are also a few paragraphs on internet-based support (definitely a hot topic these days). Finally, there are many nice quotations from industry leaders and (mostly) vendors. While this is a strength of the book, it exacerbates the (possibly incorrect) perception that Lenz is an editor, not an authority in her own right.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too Little Substance too many vendor lists, August 17, 2002

By 

Michael Short - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Help Desk Guide (Paperback)

Looking for a "complete" guide to helpdesks, I was disappointed to read this book and find not a lot of substance. I picked up this book at a call center trade show for a low price. It was not even worth the [dollar amount] that I paid for it.

If you subscribe to Call Center Magazine or some other Call center publication, you will be able to research the various vendors yourself.

Don't spend your money on this book