Running a Helpdesk on Minimal staff

[allstarit]

Hello all i just wanted to share my current experience working as a Helpdesk Manager full time and running my own business which i am starting out part time. I have a fulltime job to keep a steady income as an IT Helpdesk Manager for a small IT firm. We have about 40 steady Facility maintenance clients and 10-15 break/fix clients. Some FM clients are 80-100 in size and some 3-5 sized businesses. Overall i say the 40 managed clients bring in about $500k a year roughly.
For these FM clients we have 2 technicians doing the monthly site visits and one of these techs also does special projects and server migrations. He is often pulled away from his monthly visits to do the special projects.
The helpdesk consists of me the Helpdesk Manager and one junior helpdesk tech.
His job is to check the backups and preform snapshots of servers- disk space ram ect (manually...dont get me started on that). He also is responsible for taking all level 1 calls. My job is to take level 1 calls as well as quotes,orders,renewals, level 2 calls, managing the onsite jobs for onsite techs, DNS and Plesk account setup.

Then there is our boss who does client meetings and quotes on bigger jobs.
All the onsite techs and helpdesk (including me) work really hard and often working on around 15-25 tickets each at one time. Lately we have been extremely busy and my work load has increased to about 50-60 tickets at any given time.Our boss keeps saying we need to work harder and close more tickets as we aren't that busy. However in everyone elses mind including clients we feel understaffed and overworked. Often at times on the helpdesk i will have 2-3 calls on the go as well as the level 1 helpdesk guy overloaded on calls and he runs out of time to do his snapshots and backup report.

Do you think 50-60 ticket for 1 technician is too much to take on?

We have tried to tell our boss we don't have time and i have sent countless emails and had meetings to say we need 1-2 more people to cover the amount of clients we handle but he doesnt think we are busy and cant justify hiring another person.

Anyway you get a picture of my full time job and understand how busy it sounds. MY question to ask is does anyone else go through this on a helpdesk and based on this amount of clients abovew what would you think is a good number of helpdesk staff and onsite staff to have in a Managed Service Business.
In my opinion it feels like my boss is greedy and doesnt want to hire more staff as its less profit for him and he has condensed multiple roles into myself and the special projects tech.
However from my part time business i understand the business side and profits need to be bigger than expenses. However from the employee side I feel having 2 X level 1 helpdesks will take a massive burden off my work load as i try to delegate tasks now but problem is there is no one to delegate too. I think having 2 onsite techs as well as level 2 onsite tech would be a great advantage too as it gives you an extra pair of legs on the road to do the odd jobs while the other 2 concentrate on their FM clients.

All the workload on my fulltime job takes its toll on my part time business but i do love doing my part time business and the helpdesk hasnt made me want to quit IT at all as i have learnt alot about small businesses in my full time role.

your thoughts would be appreciated

thanks

peter

 

[tarik]

What I would ask is if you havent taken on any additional contracts, why has the tickets jumped from 25ish to 50ish? What is different? Maybe thats something to look at? Would you class them as simple tickets where the user should be able to work out a problem through google ( eg a word or excel issue) or are they all technical queries?

 

[callthatgirl]

Do you think 50-60 ticket for 1 technician is too much to take on?

Yes. I consider myself a helpdesk professional (7 years in the corporate world before starting CTG) my averages were 525 a month. Helpdesk is a funny thing for some techs, they love it or hate it. I loved it, thrived on the phones, staying busy with tickets and email. Not every tech that I've worked with loves it, he's probably the type that wants to get out of the helpdesk and into the server work. He's doing the right amount of tickets per day, but to be completely honest....I did those 26 tickets per day average and I had plenty of time each day for instant chatting with friends, long lunches, played games and emailing friends too. I played as much as I worked. But I could, I was the top tech and bosses didn't care what else I did.

I probably could have closed many more tickets without any goofing off. But then I would have burned out and you can't have that happen either. I'm not sure if this is helpful, but I recommend getting in a PT guy for mornings or afternoons to learn helpdesk and insure he loves it and doesn't not want to move into server work. then you have a new FT guy in time and this guy can move up. Having a solid helpdesk person for years is the key to a great organization. Just in my opinion.

 

[allstarit]

Thanks. I love helpdesk too its taught me alot and fixing things remotely to save on sending techs out. I just think 2 techs on helpdesk is too low and me doing level 2 work and quotes/renewals and manage onsite techs and answer level 1 calls while the level 1 guy is suposed to get backup report and snapshots done. It creates a bottleneck l

 

[allstarit]

In my 5 years on helpdesk ive seen about 7 different tech on level 1 and they hated it. I really think its a good experience for any tech wanting to start their own business to have done some helpdesk work. Ive done level1 and level2 and now managing so i think its taught me alot about time management and dealing with clients over the phone.

 

[Geek007]

You haven't said what your full time hours are, but if its 9-5, then I guess your own PT business is at weekends and consists of residential customers? If that's true, then I'm not quite sure how you're going to make the complete transition from PT to FT, because that's what many many people have problems with.

I would side with what tarik said. Why has there been a spike in calls? If it was me, I'd definitely check that one out. If you are logging calls, which you should be, you'll be able to find out from there.

I have worked on a helpdesk myself, and I would say that if your fairly logical, have common sense and are able to prioritise incidents, (it can still be stressful and a challenge), then it's enjoyable work. The only thing with me is, I prefer to get out and about rather than be stuck in doors all day.

As long as, when your working for someone else, your boss doesn't lose sight of what's going on on the helpdesk, and also doesn't think he/she is smarter and better than everyone else, and listens properly to his/her staff, then there shouldn't be a problem.

 

[tom11011]

Hello all i just wanted to share my current experience working as a Helpdesk Manager full time and running my own business which i am starting out part time. I have a fulltime job to keep a steady income as an IT Helpdesk Manager for a small IT firm. We have about 40 steady Facility maintenance clients and 10-15 break/fix clients. Some FM clients are 80-100 in size and some 3-5 sized businesses. Overall i say the 40 managed clients bring in about $500k a year roughly.
For these FM clients we have 2 technicians doing the monthly site visits and one of these techs also does special projects and server migrations. He is often pulled away from his monthly visits to do the special projects.
The helpdesk consists of me the Helpdesk Manager and one junior helpdesk tech.
His job is to check the backups and preform snapshots of servers- disk space ram ect (manually...dont get me started on that). He also is responsible for taking all level 1 calls. My job is to take level 1 calls as well as quotes,orders,renewals, level 2 calls, managing the onsite jobs for onsite techs, DNS and Plesk account setup.

Then there is our boss who does client meetings and quotes on bigger jobs.
All the onsite techs and helpdesk (including me) work really hard and often working on around 15-25 tickets each at one time. Lately we have been extremely busy and my work load has increased to about 50-60 tickets at any given time.Our boss keeps saying we need to work harder and close more tickets as we aren't that busy. However in everyone elses mind including clients we feel understaffed and overworked. Often at times on the helpdesk i will have 2-3 calls on the go as well as the level 1 helpdesk guy overloaded on calls and he runs out of time to do his snapshots and backup report.

Do you think 50-60 ticket for 1 technician is too much to take on?

We have tried to tell our boss we don't have time and i have sent countless emails and had meetings to say we need 1-2 more people to cover the amount of clients we handle but he doesnt think we are busy and cant justify hiring another person.

Anyway you get a picture of my full time job and understand how busy it sounds. MY question to ask is does anyone else go through this on a helpdesk and based on this amount of clients abovew what would you think is a good number of helpdesk staff and onsite staff to have in a Managed Service Business.
In my opinion it feels like my boss is greedy and doesnt want to hire more staff as its less profit for him and he has condensed multiple roles into myself and the special projects tech.
However from my part time business i understand the business side and profits need to be bigger than expenses. However from the employee side I feel having 2 X level 1 helpdesks will take a massive burden off my work load as i try to delegate tasks now but problem is there is no one to delegate too. I think having 2 onsite techs as well as level 2 onsite tech would be a great advantage too as it gives you an extra pair of legs on the road to do the odd jobs while the other 2 concentrate on their FM clients.

All the workload on my fulltime job takes its toll on my part time business but i do love doing my part time business and the helpdesk hasnt made me want to quit IT at all as i have learnt alot about small businesses in my full time role.

your thoughts would be appreciated

thanks

peter

My advice to you is this. Ask your boss how he wants tickets prioritized. Should you handle them on a first come first serve basis till completion (if possible) or should you handle them based on severity.

The bottom line is this. All the data that is needed is already in the tickets. It's pure numbers.

If your boss says handle them in the order they are received, then it will become obvious when a ticket that is 20 positions down and only requires a 5 minute fix isn't handled until the next day.

If he says handle the emergency priorities first, then you can explain why there are tickets that were opened 7 days ago that still haven't been closed.

Tickets are one of those black and white issues. You are either spending time on them or you are not. There is no grey area here.

Throw the hot potato back in his hands and ask for clarity on how the tickets should be prioritized.

 

[allstarit]

Good news now have a third person on helpdesk and another planned for late april. Make life a little easier

 

[carrcomp]

Numbers are good.

Just make sure you and your staff aren't burning out.

The last thing you need is to overwork.

 

[callthatgirl]

Excellent, be sure to give the new tech the easy ones to get going lol. I hate it when they threw me on the hard ones at first, I got very frustrated, embarrassed and hated asking for help. I remember one time when I had to learn how to assign a static IP at one of my corporate jobs. 4 different people showed me 4 different ways and each time I got so frustrated that I just said no more and would not do them. There was no documentation of course on how to do it correctly (this was a huge corporation btw that had a zillion-size knowledge base). Then I found my focus, Outlook. No one liked it, so it was a fair trade lol.

 

[aweston]

your thoughts would be appreciated

thanks

peter

It's a good example of why you don't hire a one or two man band to run a help desk for your IT company. It's you and your reputation that suffers.

Your boss likely isn't greedy. I don't think there's many people here that fully grasp business, understand exactly what it takes to run one, or how much money drains out of your account to maintain it. Cash flow coming in is absolutely no indication of what the owner is putting in their pocket.

 

[allstarit]

With new starters i always get them to do little things to atart off like new users, distribution groups. Call back a user to update them.. basically get used to our system, learn the clients names and get a feel of how helpdesk works. Then week 2 start taking a few calls..doesnt have to solve them but log a ticket and scope the job.

I agree nothing worse than being dropped into the deep end without being shown the ropes.
Documentation is one thing i have been working on in my sparetime.

Aweston i agree you simply cant run on skeleton staff and expect to have things run smoothly. I am learning more about the business side of things with my p/t business and your definately right on not seeing the money in background to maintain company- eg VPS servers, webhosting, purchasing stock, online backup server ect.. it all adds up..then if you hire staff you add wages onto that it soon disappears

 

[aweston]

Then imagine having a soft month or two. All of a sudden you're in the hole, working on borrowed money. It's a tough gig, so definitely cut your boss a little slack. Instead maybe take the opportunity to ask him questions that would be key to you running your business successfully. He may be very eager to answer your questions and teach you. Just try to keep them generic so that he doesn't presume you're going to run off and leave him hanging. You'll end up tightening your own noose if you do that.

 

[allstarit]

Good advise thanks

 

[goldmercury]

I loathe the helpdesk, I've been trying to get away from it for years.

At the moment I only have 2.5 days a week on it however that's still too much.

Interesting to hear people experiences of it here. The company I work for at the moment is going through similar surge of tickets and this is having a negative effect on client's perception of our company.

Backups are being missed and one of our clients got the crypto virus a few weeks back. No backup so you can imagine the situation.

Glad to hear your boss is thinking ahead Allstarit.

 

[allstarit]

So few months on and we got upto 3 helpdesk staff but unfortunately the boss ended up having an arguement with the new guy and from then on nothing the new guy did was ever good enough or never got the training he deserved to do the job correctly.

So the new guy was fired and a new young kid who has never worked a day in computers was hired which is fine im happy to train new people but just extra work on top of my work load.

Have tried multiple times to convince my boss to get an RMM program like GFI but he still insists on checking manually from a spreadsheet.

So back to be overworked and frustrated staff with some techs telling me they have had enough.