- [Presenter] Traditional service desks
hired relatively low-skilled workers
and gave them detailed scripts to follow.
The aim was cost-efficiency.
This is not a bad thing to shoot for,
but not at the expense of user experience.
Modern service desk work to eliminate incidents
and move users to self-service.
Modern IT functions work to drive down technical debt.
What is left is inbound inquiries that require people
that can help solve for what's left,
more complicated issues that require troubleshooting
and people skills.
Here's a list of typical skills needed
by service desk personnel published by Freshservice.
These apply to both traditional and modern service desks.
Modern service desk personnel need all of these skills
and more.
Here we see the additional skills modern service desks
must hire and develop for.
As you can see, a lower-level hire
who follows a script won't do,
and the job entails doing and improving.
Not as a nice to have, but is a core part of the job.
There's some specific virtuous motions
on a modern service desk,
and they'll need to be able to contribute to them.
And there are a lot more channels employed.
They'll need to be adept at these, too.
Modern service desk staff need more than just technical
and soft skills acumen.
They must have a feel for the organization
and personas they serve, what they do,
their mission, their vision, their values,
the current strategic objectives,
and of what apps and devices and channels they use.
A key practical part of demonstrating empathy
is being clued into the rhythms of the organization
and its personas.
Things like the key times of the year for them
or peak periods where certain systems are critical.
Lastly, service desk staff must grasp
what the service desk does.
The roles on the team, how success is measured,
how work is kept on track, services offered.
They should also understand what they don't do.
And who does that?
And what technologies they support?
And with what tools?
They should know the policies and procedures used,
and who owns them, as well as the job parts of standards
of their own individual jobs.
The modern service desk mindset is a hundred percent focused
on making user experiences great,
not just following a script.
Service desk staff must be keenly aware
that users have alternatives, including doing it themselves
and that there's a need to win their business.
The successful service desk person must demonstrate empathy
and emotional intelligence to get 10 situations
back on track, definitely.
It must demonstrate they have taken
and will take the time to understand who the users are
and what their jobs to be done are.
And they must work hard to have the skills needed
when contacted, which requires continual learning
what Carol Dweck calls the growth mindset.
And they must have a service mindset,
which is, in a nutshell,
the attitude of, "I am here to help you
with your request or issue.
I may not know how to do it yet,
but I will stick with you and figure it out
or loop in someone who does."
This is not something people can be trained on,
except perhaps by their parents.
They either have it or don't, and you must hire for it.
And they must be able to collaborate with the user
and other teams towards the same goal: a great experience.
Simply focusing on the internal goals
of the service desk or IT function just won't do.
Modern service desk seek to shape
and develop people to be T-shaped.
That is with a deep specialization,
the vertical line of the T,
and a broad general knowledge,
which is the top of the T.
This self-similarity helps the service desk scale.
It also helps service desk personnel advance.
Service desk staff with only a deep specialization
are at risk because they don't have the capability
to express the value they had
without the broad capabilities of the top of the T.