Best Help Desk Certifications 2019

Technical support and help desk positions remain traditional points of entry into IT for many people nowadays. One way to make yourself stand out as a help desk professional is to validate your knowledge and skills by earning one of these leading help desk certifications.

Although training and credentials for help desk positions are available, many candidates come into these jobs fresh out of college or from other fields without the benefit of formal help desk certifications. Perhaps that's why we're seeing ongoing interest in these certifications, with an increasing tendency for high schools, community colleges and even some four-year institutions to include elements of help desk training in their curricula. Some also embed certificate or certification content and even help desk credentials in their programs outright.

When it comes to help desk positions, a small number of certificate and certification programs focus mainly on the help desk function and the various job roles it supports. A greater number of credentials that style themselves as verifying technical support skills are also available, where many such credentials focus on specific sets of vendor platforms and products.

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Increase IT Service Desk Agent Motivation with Employee Experience Feedback

The many issues with traditional IT service desk metrics

When you consider the many metrics applied to your IT service desk agents, are they predominantly focused on “how many?” and “how fast?” With customer satisfaction the obvious exception.
As I wrote in my previous blog, “…traditional service desk metrics drive the wrong behaviors. That, in particular, agents are currently measured by speed and not the value they create. In practice, they’re measured on ‘how fast they get rid of their customers’.”

So, are volume and speed metrics really the best way to measure your IT support success? And, just as importantly, will the statistics around volumes and speed do much, if anything, to motivate your agents?

What influences a better employee (end-user) experience?

What do you think it takes to deliver a great employee experience? The best processes? The best technology? Or the best people? I imagine that you probably replied (in your head) – the best people. Or you might have been greedy and said all three.

Of course, I could have flipped this, and asked: “What do you think is likely to deliver the worst employee experience?” Subpar processes? Subpar technology? Or subpar people? Hopefully, your answer to this would again be people.

My point is that your people – your IT service desk agents – are incredibly important to the quality of your IT support and the delivered employee experience.

The next obvious question is then: “How are they important?” And the answer is probably not what you think.

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What is an IT Service Desk?

The IT Service Desk is intended to be a primary point of engagement between users and an IT organization. According to ITIL, the service desk is the single point of contact (SPOC) between the service provider (IT) and users for day-to-day activities. A typical service desk manages incidents (service disruptions) and service requests (routine service related tasks) along with handling user communications for things like outages and planned changes to services. A service desk typically has a broad scope and is designed to provide the user with a single place to go for all their IT needs. This results in the service desk playing a pivotal role in facilitating the integration of business processes with the technology ecosystem and broader service management infrastructure.

What is a Service Desk?

• Service Desk vs Help Desk
• Benefits
• Best Practices
• Service Desk Software

Where did IT Service Desks Come From?

The IT helpdesk function was born in the late 1980s as a support capability to fix IT issues. It was a highly technical function focused on the technology rather than the end users. Early IT helpdesks didn’t have the concept of SLAs or time-based targets for resolving issues. It wasn’t until ITIL came onto the scene in the 1990s, capturing IT Service Management best practices, that the concept of the user-centric IT service desk began to emerge. The service desk was seen as an essential part of “managing IT like a service”.

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Do You Need an IT Service Desk Analyst?

What Is a Service Desk Analyst?

The specific job description for a service desk analyst varies a bit among employers, but there are some basics that they all have in common. Service desk analysts work for every type of industry — from healthcare to finance to education. When you hire a service desk analyst, you’re hiring someone to provide hardware and software support for your organization. If your IT asset management program consists of shutting the closet door on this, you could benefit from hiring a service desk analyst.

He or she will have to make sure software licenses are up to date, keep track of your IT inventory, and research and troubleshoot hardware and software problems for users in the rest of your organization. Often, a service desk analyst maintains, manages, and updates your company’s knowledge database. When new hardware comes in, the service desk analyst will install and test it and load the requisite software onto the hardware. He or she will have to triage multiple incoming requests by understanding end-user needs.

Educational requirements for service desk analysts differ. Some companies want someone with a bachelor’s degree while others accept associate’s degrees. Some companies don’t have degree requirements but ask for service desk analysts with specific certifications like A+, Server+, or Network+. One thing universally asked for in service desk analyst job descriptions is strong communication skills, since this person will be dealing with end users via email, phone, live chat, and other channels and may be responsible for writing reports as well.

What Needs Does the Service Desk Analyst Serve?

With a small business, the service desk analyst serves a multitude of needs, and may be generally regarded as the company’s “computer guy” who keeps everyone’s hardware and software working, up to date, and legal.

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