Performing Service Desk Orientation

Oct 18, 2016

Don’t Skip this Last Step Onboarding Your New Customers

When you get ready to onboard a new customer, it can be exciting and your team may want to just jump right to get started. Before your customer goes live, make sure you dedicate time to educating them about how they can best use the Service Desk with an orientation with your team. This will benefit both your customer, and your team.

A project plan and timeline should be generated before any onboardings and series of technical tasks begin. The standard project plan identifies tasks that are critical to a successful onboarding. Some of those key elements are:

• Collecting information about the subscriber and their network
• Installing UTM capabilities
• Implementing data protection service
• Configuring hosted email and migrating existing information

Invest a large amount of time and energy completing these tasks. Even if all the technical work is completed perfectly and the timeline is achieved, the onboarding project can still be unsuccessful.

One step, if overlooked, can lead to a poor service experience and frustrated customers. That step is delivering a Service Desk orientation. Conducting a high-quality Service Desk orientation will help you achieve three goals:

1. Reduces the fear of change. Most people don’t like change, and some people actually fear it. This fear of change can lead to resistance, unacceptance and lead to a failed project.
2. Set proper expectations. If you don’t help set expectations, people will set their own. If they’ve never used a Service Desk, they will base their expectations on what they believe, or perceive it should be. Most of the time those expectations will be different from reality!
3. Build your relationship with your customer. This is an opportunity to spend time with your customers and educate them on how you can best help them. Use this to build your relationship with your customer as their trusted technology advisor.

During your Service Desk Orientation, use something like a customized Subscriber Welcome Packet. Some of the items you should incorporate in your Welcome Packet include:

• How to contact the Service Desk
• What information is needed when calling
• Hours of operation
• Response expectations
• After hours options

Scheduling and delivering a Service Desk orientation demonstrates to your customers that you care and are efficient. It’s the step you don’t want to skip! This is the perfect way to make a technical offering personal.

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