BYOD increases productivity and mobility for organisations and job satisfaction for their employees. As a result, BYOD culture has already been adapted by many organisations and many more are on the way there.
That said, BYOD adoption has also removed the restrictions on applications and hardware devices that can be used in the enterprise network, thus causing an impact on help desk technicians. Here is a look at how BYOD can impact your help desk.
Pile-up of internal help desk tickets
New IT issues can arise as a result of BYOD, such as network connectivity, bandwidth hogging, application compatibility and inaccessibility of shared devices and the help desk team is likely to see an increase in ticket count as an upshot.
Make sure that you have enough help desk technicians to handle the increase in the number of tickets. Embracing BYOD without enough help desk technicians can result in productivity issues placing the organisation in trouble.
Increased skill set in support
Up until recently, help desk technicians would have been familiar only with issues about software and devices supported by the organisation. With BYOD, you should expect extra tickets to be raised, which can be in respect to applications or hardware which can be unknown to technicians.
The skillset of a help desk technician has also increased. Technicians will need to deal with unfamiliar operating systems such as MAC, Windows, and Linux, and the compatible applications which can be installed on them.
Learn to say no
BYOD allows for the use of personal devices for business purposes. Because these devices are used officially, it doesn't mean that the technicians should provide support for all applications/hardware issue.
For example, let's consider Skype (used, off the record, by the employee for his official work) has an issue, this should be fixed by the help desk technician.
However, there are times when employees may reach out to the help desk to fix a software issue that they, or someone else, uses at home for personal needs. This is where the line should be drawn.
Use the right help desk tool
Under these circumstances it is important to use the right help desk tool. If you are wondering how a help desk tool can help assist with BYOD scenarios, here are a few considerations:
- BYOD can cause network issues, which can bring down the complete network in no time. Hence the right tool should have the ability to auto assign tickets to concerned technicians, rather than waiting for someone to manually assign it. Auto assign can be based on: time of tickets raised, device associated with the ticket, region where ticket is raised.
- BYOD issues can be new to some technicians, so when a technician finds a solution, they should be able to save the solution as a template. This will help other technicians provide a faster resolution when faced with same or similar issues.
- Once a help desk ticket is raised and assigned, a link to any information will make it easier for the technician to solve the ticket, without wasting time researching the issue. Such an option in a help desk tool will reduce time-to-resolution and make the process more efficient.
- Praveen Manohar is Head Geek at IT management specialist SolarWinds
