During a time of crisis, rallying your business and staff around a central communication system like a Virtual Help Desk service will help your team stay informed, reassured, and free to ask questions. Even when information is pushed through other channels like email and chat, the Help Desk is where users and customers can access, review, and engage with official communications at any time and from any location. Additionally, virtual help desk software is ideal for connecting globally dispersed IT resources, offering remote support sessions that transcend physical barriers and reduce in-person interaction requirements.

A Virtual Help Desk creates visibility for your leadership and management team to gauge how their employees are feeling and what questions are top of mind. At the same time, creating a transparent, searchable platform in your helpdesk system will deliver cost savings through the reduction of duplicate tickets and issues that consume valuable time and resources of your support team and staff. Moreover, it enables businesses to manage decentralized operations, providing technical and expert technicians the ability to work collectively, addressing specific IT support service requirements efficiently.

Setting up an environment to act as the gateway to communication is only one step of the process. Ensuring you have the right software, system management, and governance in place will help your organization respond swiftly with the best information available. Leveraging technology such as desktop apps and remote access tools can enhance your helpdesk's efficiency and effectiveness.

Steps for structuring your Help Desk community include:

• Establish a virtual environment or digital workplace using the best technology and software to support your helpdesk services.

• Identify ownership within your team or outsourcing partners to manage the helpdesk effectively.

• Build a network of subject matter experts and technical staff to provide comprehensive support services.

• Implement an internal SLA and escalation process to manage tickets and ensure timely assistance.

• Track answered and unanswered questions using your helpdesk system to monitor issues and improve services.

• Create an editorial calendar for proactive communications, leveraging email, chat, and live assistance to engage users.

1. Set up a virtual environment to reach employee

In a crisis, setting up a Virtual Help Desk service will allow employees to ask questions, share information, and receive critical updates. It is important to choose one central system to control the flow of information from the business to employees and customers, and from employees to the company, to ensure accurate information and reduce the risk of missed communication. Utilizing technologies like QR codes and desktop apps can streamline the onboarding process, quickly and efficiently integrating users into the virtual workspace without significant disruption.

To set up a Virtual Help Desk, you will need to have access to a platform that supports official communications, allows users to post and browse tickets, and has a mobile app for remote access on-the-go. If you have an existing intranet like LumApps, a Virtual Help Desk can be set up within minutes to rally your globally dispersed employees and customers around one central location.

2. Identify ownership for your Virtual Help Desk

To ensure smooth operations, you need to assign an owner or a small team of individuals to monitor activity, respond to tickets, and alert the right subject matter expert (SME) to specific issues.

The owner(s) do not have to be subject matter experts but must be able to triage with SMEs to provide answers quickly and efficiently. This is why a responsibility matrix, discussed below in Step 3, helps the owner provide the best online crisis support through effective management of the helpdesk system.

There are situations where finding an owner can be difficult, and some businesses choose to implement a helpdesk without assigning ownership. However, just like you would staff a physical information desk to help direct visitors, answer questions, and provide customized solutions, we strongly recommend that your virtual desk also have a dedicated point of contact or a small team assigned to manage support services.

Moving forward without an owner exposes your company to a number of issues, including misinformation from employees who respond to tickets without authority, and growing an environment of mistrust when a Help Desk has been set up but no one is answering questions.

3. Build a network of experts for the Help Desk

Supporting and responding to issues is complex when there are many types of questions impacting your employees and customers, depending on their geographical location, job function, personal concerns, and work environment.

To build a responsibility matrix, create a list of contacts within the company and types of issues they will be able to answer to help speed up responses and the retrieval of accurate information. Instead of creating a bottleneck with a single owner, the responsibility matrix allows you to tap into the entire network of your business and build out a support team. This strategic mix not only enhances your helpdesk’s capability but aligns support roles with individual expertise to manage diverse issues effectively.

The key for building a responsibility matrix is ensuring that you identify a specific person to be the point of contact for a specific list of issues. If you simply put “HR”, you may have trouble finding someone willing to respond. By identifying a specific person, you can better assign and follow up on unanswered tickets. If your SME doesn’t have the answer, they should know the person within their department who has the solution. Make sure to document who will be responsible for responding to the issue, whether it be the SME or the Help Desk owner answering on behalf of the subject matter expert.

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Some example contacts and types of questions you might find in a responsibility matrix include:

• A contact from HR to answer questions about sick leave and work from home policies using the helpdesk system.

• A contact from Communications for how our organization is responding to customers through the Help Desk.

• A contact from Leadership for how our organization is impacted, accessible via the helpdesk software.

• A contact from Finance to address questions about work-travel cancellations through the Help Desk tickets.

• A contact from each line of business for their respective business-specific questions handled by the helpdesk team.

Throughout the crisis, your responsibility matrix may grow, or contacts may change, but it is important to start with a responsibility matrix to answer issues as quickly and accurately as possible using your helpdesk system.

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4. Implement an internal Service Level Agreement (SLA) and escalation process

 During a crisis, day-to-day life can become hectic and to-do items get pushed further down the list with every new urgent task. Creating deadlines and holding your SMEs accountable for getting tickets answered in your Help Desk will go a long way to fostering trust and openness with your employees and customers. On the other hand, the risk of letting questions from employees sit unanswered for days, weeks, or indefinitely can lead to employees fearing the worst or feeling unheard.

 Another benefit of getting issues answered quickly – whether to let the user know you are looking into it, or you do not have a response at this time – is reducing duplicate tickets. In the long run, your virtual Help Desk owner and SMEs will find themselves spending less time answering issues as users are able to search and find the answers to their questions directly through the Help Desk system. This efficiency boosts your support team's productivity, allowing them to manage a higher volume of requests without being bogged down by repetitive inquiries.

 To create an internal SLA, set a target response time for each ticket (24 hours, 2 business days, etc.). You may even want to set a response time for acknowledging the issue, and a second deadline for providing the answer.

 An escalation process will help build accountability and enforce your internal SLA. Approach stakeholders and managers for each of your subject matter experts to explain the internal SLA process and set expectations. You may end up with a few levels of escalation, all the way to leadership, ensuring that technical issues are addressed promptly.

5. Create a process to track unanswered questions

 Once you have set up your virtual Help Desk, established a response network, and committed to response times, you need to make sure issues don’t get buried or forgotten, which provides a poor experience for your employees and customers.

 There are a number of different ways to track tickets, but the key components to include are when the issue was reported, who is responsible for answering the question, and whether the issue has been resolved.

Here are a few options for tracking questions:

• (Medium effort) In a private community on your intranet for your subject matter experts where you can @mention owners and mark answers as correct within the helpdesk software.

• (High effort) A spreadsheet to assign ownership and track whether the issue has been answered by the support team.

• (Low effort) Filtering answered and unanswered tickets in your Online Help Desk system to see what issues are still pending responses.

 Regardless of which option you choose, it’s important to keep track of all issues and use your responsibility matrix and internal SLA process to make sure all tickets get answered in a timely manner.

6. Be proactive with an editorial calendar

 Your Online Help Desk should be fully integrated and act as an extension of your communications team throughout the crisis. While setting up a virtual Help Desk is the first step towards better support and crisis management, being strategic about communications is what builds value for your employees and customers to get the most out of your platform. Building an editorial calendar will help turn your crisis communications from reactive to proactive, utilizing email, chat, and live assistance to engage users effectively.

Brainstorming topics that you anticipate will be asked can help you prepare and get in front of questions from employees and customers. Communications including “How does this impact me as a user?” “How does this impact my office?” “How does this impact my work travel?” will reassure employees and provide them a place to ask follow-up questions in your Virtual Help Desk system.

Using an Online Help Desk to streamline information, communication, and questions can provide long-term benefits and cost savings to your entire organization. It becomes a valuable knowledge base that not only helps you manage a crisis but also allows a reflective view in the future to see what went well and what could have been better in order to prepare for any crisis moving forward. Going through each step to build, organize, and set up processes to handle communication and questions for your employees and customers during a crisis will go a long way in unifying your organization through any big change. Leveraging advanced features like CRM integration can offer your users a holistic view of past interactions, enabling informed support delivery.

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