In the current economy, IT managers must find creative approaches to improve IT services with reduced funding and fewer resources. In an effort to assist IT managers, The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success identifies critical areas of weakness within the support environment and provides practical, step-by-step improvement strategies. Developed originally as a workshop, this book contains audits in all critical areas of the support organization including: Help Desk Foundation, People, Process, Tools and Customer Relationship Management. Each audit rates the maturity of the support organization: Advanced, Mature, Emergent or Immature. This do-it-yourself audit and improvement process provides the framework and guidance to enhance the support organization's ability to ensure customer success. Focus is placed upon cross-functional improvement teams, senior management buy-in, and the development of critical success factors and measurements. Each audit has five steps: assess, compare, plan, implement and assess. The assessment process begins with an audit of each functional area of a support organization and compares your responses to best practices to provide an organizational maturity rating. If a need for improvement is identified, the planning stage provides detailed information on how to launch an improvement project. This is followed by implementation and the measurement of the established success criteria. The book was written by Julie Mohr, a well-known industry speaker on the topic of support service improvement. Her workshops at the Help Desk Institute and Support Services conferences are full of enthusiasm and always well-attended. Ms. Mohr has 14 years of IT experience with 8 years of progressive management responsibility. Ms. Mohr is a managing consultant for Alternative Resources Corporation and is responsible for developing client-specific deliverables for IT service improvement strategy. She is a graduate of The Ohio State University with a degree in
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Excellent topic really targets what Help Desk management needs to know. --Dorth Kirsch, SSCE 2002, May 2002
About the Author
For over 14 years, Julie L. Mohr has been passionate about service and support management. She is a Principal Research Analyst and Author at BlueprintAudits.com. Her broad range of experiences include teaching ITSM and COBIT courses worldwide, working as Director of Professional Services and as a Managing Consultant. She has worked as a technical advisor to the Department of Education, a support manager at the National Institutes of Health and as a support analyst at NASA. Julie is a certified Helpdesk Director and certified ITIL® Service Manager. Julie provides imaginative insight and dynamic leadership to transform service and support organizations into best practice, customer-focused environments. She has helped organizations to implement Knowledge Management, ITSM, IT Governance, organization enhancements, process re-engineering and service level management. Julie is an active contributor to the future development of the industry through speaking engagements at conferences worldwide and publishing over 150 articles on best practices. Julie is the author of The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success, The Help Desk Toolkit: Companion CD and The Help Desk Dictionary, and maintains an informative industry website for practitioners at www.blueprintaudits.com. She is also a member of IEEE Computer Society, ISACA, HDI, itSMF, ICMI and the Association of Support Professionals.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential resource for help desk managers (and consultants),
By Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA) - See all my reviews (COMMUNITY FORUM 04) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success (Spiral-bound)
If you manage help desk or service desk operations this book is an essential tool for achieving the best possible level of efficiency and customer satisfaction. I recommend also getting the companion CD titled, "The Help Desk Audit Toolkit" (ISBN 0974080810), which contains the forms and other artifacts used in this book.The author approaches help desk process improvement through an audit process that examines key process areas (or lack thereof), and leads you through the audit to determine at which level of maturity your current operation is at - and what is required to get you to the optimum level based on your budget and organization. The audit process itself is a straightforward five-step process that consists of: The areas covered are thorough and address all of the key aspects of help desk operations. These areas are divided into blocks and specific areas, which are: The cycle in each block's specific area is to gather information, determine where on the maturity scale you are (immature, emergent, mature or advanced), and devise an improvement strategy. The aggregate of results from each block is used to determine your overall maturity rating. If you are implementing ITIL, trying to improve your help desk operational efficiency, or just want to benchmark your operation against best practices, this book is the primary resource to which you should turn. Also, BLOCK 5 is applicable to call centers of companies that are implementing ISO 9001:2000 because of that standard's emphasis on measuring customer satisfaction. Finally, if ITIL is important, the key areas and approach align nicely to service desk operational areas.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent roadmap. I use it in all assessments,
By Phyllis E. Marcus (Milford, Michigan) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success (Spiral-bound)
As an Information Technology consultant I have executed many Help Desk assessments. I found this book by surfing the web: blueprintaudits.com. After reading the book, I have now incorporated the workbook in every assessment I do. I find that it is, by far, the most comprehensive audit technique. Not only does it provide weighted audit questions, but also it provides a roadmap for continuous improvement. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in assessing their Help Desk and improving customer service.Phyllis Marcus
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Resource for Helpdesk Professionals of Any Level!,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success (Spiral-bound)
As a customer service manager for a major federal agency I found this book to be an excellent resource to assist in the managing of day-to-day operations as well as plotting the path to implementing improvements throughout my organization. Clear, concise and directly to the point, the author is clearly in command of the relevant topics. It would cost an organization $10s of thousands of dollars if it was to retain a consultant with the depth of background and experience possessed by Ms. Mohr. I could not recommend this book more highly to helpdesk managers, customer service managers, and anyone interested in improving their ability to provide great service to their internal or external customers.
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