SYNOPSIS

No one would argue that the today's modern help desk staff has an easy job. In addition to operating on reduced budgets and lower staff counts, a typical help desk staff must now support mobile users working from home, customer sites, or on the road. In these situations, an effective, user-centric remote control solution is an absolute must in order to establish and manage user PCs remotely, to diagnose and repair problems, and to teach users how to make the most of their systems and software.

In The Essentials Series: Faster Problem Resolution with Remote Support Capabilities, Ed Tittel takes you through the many issues that plague the modern help desk, and states the case for implementing user-centric remote support. He demonstrates how tools such as built-in interactive chat, file transfer, and sessions that persist across multiple reboots enable help desk staff to be supportive and to identify and resolve problems quickly and accurately. Lastly, Ed offers insight on how built-in monitoring and behind-the-scenes session sharing and observation tools let management accurately assess help desk productivity, help desk staff skills and abilities, and ticket resolution rates.

CHAPTER PREVIEWS

Article 1: Setting the Stage for User-Centric Remote Support

Today's modern help desks must cope with reduced budgets along with increased levels of activity and ever-higher demand for their services and support, especially for mobile users. Old-fashioned methods for troubleshooting rely on telephone calls and help desk staff telling users what to do to diagnose and repair their problems.  A better solution that offers speedy problem resolution, reliable remote control and Web-based access, and file transfer from help desk staff to remote user machines is urgently needed.

Article 2: Simplifying the Troubleshooting Process with User-Centric Remote Control

A proper and workable remote control solution offers rapid entry into real-time support sessions, and lets help desk staff establish and also share control with users for system configuration analysis, use of diagnostic tools, and teaching through demonstration (show users how to conduct certain activities) and observation (watching users to see what's they're doing, or at least trying to accomplish). Furthermore a Web-based services approach is more affordable, and translates capital and software expenses into predictable recurring operation expenses in a "Software as a Service" (SaaS) model. This comes with all kinds of benefits including increased productivity, improved user satisfaction, better problem diagnosis and faster ticket resolution.

Article 3: Understanding How Remote Control and Diagnosis Addresses Typical User Problems

An effective remote control solution greatly reduces the need for a technician to be physically present in front of a computer system to diagnose and solve problems, or to ship affected systems to a depot for troubleshooting and repair. Rich online connections let help desk staff manage interactive sessions even across multiple system reboots, with text chat windows and remote control to facilitate system diagnosis and repair, while also maintaining ongoing communication with end users. Furthermore this kind of remote control solution provides mechanisms for session sharing and handoff, management monitoring and tracking, and permits detailed analysis of help desk behavior and ticket resolution rates.