The McCully Thanksgiving left overs packed up.
With Thanksgiving this past week, I was reminded that there is really no one way to get something done. Let me start with an easy Thanksgiving example:
My contribution to Thanksgiving dinner was on the cleanup crew—I’m sure many of you were basting the turkey, preparing your famous sides or desserts, but for some of us, our biggest dinner contribution is cleaning up after dinner is done.
After dinner at this year’s feast, I was helping my mom clean up. When I started to look for Tupperware or Saran Wrap—any of the standard food storage elements, I realized none were to be found. My first instinct was to go to the store—with Black Friday now falling on Thanksgiving Day, I was confident that I could make a run to the store to find some food storage things (even if it meant waiting in a ridiculously long line with a bunch of present hoarding fanatics (no offense to any of you eager holiday shoppers, but my holiday lists are all completed online).
Being a Pro in the kitchen, my mom pulled out some sandwich bags with twist ties and aluminum foil and assured me would be able to make it work with what we had. We ended up packing small take a way packs for everyone that had come for dinner- a piece of breast meat, a scoop of stuffing, a role and some sweet potato surprise—all fit nicely into a makeshift aluminum tray (more liquid things were bagged and tied off to prevent spills). My mom—an experienced home cook of well over 45 years had a handy solution that I (preferring take out or possibly grilling burgers) would never have put together.
Great story (at least I think so), but how does this relate to your IT Support?
Being resourceful in IT is critical. Just like my mom’s makeshift takeaway Thanksgiving trays, tech guys that really know what they’re doing are quite resourceful with your resources.
And when I refer to resourceful IT, I don’t mean McGiver-like. While McGiver tricks may fix short term problems, consistency and predictability wins the race. When I talk about resourceful IT support, I mean technicians that know how to solve complex problems by breaking them up into smaller pieces.
Good IT support structures actually will enable good technicians to make the right decision. They will have documentation and resolution paths for most issues and escalation paths for handing difficult tickets to the right person. A good engineer should be able to find how to solve most problems as soon as they see the symptoms.
The resourceful support are the folks that take the time to collect and document issues AND document how an issue was resolved. A resourceful IT department also makes sure to identify user behaviors, user preferences and needs so that they can further support your team in the future without creating additional problems.
My mom has a very good working knowledge of the kitchen, what tools are in it and what can help in unexpected situations (as in the case of missing Tupperware). Your IT support should have at their fingertips working knowledge—through documentation and standardized processes—to resolve unexpected issues that pop up for your users. When something is new to him or her, your IT support staff should know where to go for help after briefly trying common fixes to most problems (yes, this may including turning the computer on and off). But at the heart of all your users’ issues is whether your technical team has a process in place to help them be successful. A process that enables them to keep issues to a minimum and when issues occur, a process that guides them to a quick resolution plan.
My question to you is: Is your IT support team resourceful?
Or are they mavericks—trying to resolve an issue on their own, not relying on documentation we already know works in fixing the issue, or not seeking help when they should be handing the issue to a very experienced tier III engineer? Are your users waiting for their tickets to be closed with little to no understanding of what is going on?
If you can relate to any of the above problems or have no idea whether your support is really working for you, contact us TODAY to schedule a FREE network assessment, where we document all of your current issues and give you a resolution plan (that either we or your current support can use to improve your systems).
