At Last someone has realised that support staff are important too :)...

Many an executive can quote the cost of downtime associated with the failure of a central system that is critical to the business. In fact, service levels around availability at this level are often used as a key indicator of the IT department’s performance.Something that executives have probably not considered, however, is the downtime experienced at an individual user level as they run into problems with the everyday use of IT – everything from PC crashes, through login problems, to monitors going on the blink and keyboards locking up because they’ve had a cup of coffee spilt into them.

Whatever the problem, whatever the cause, for a user whose job is dependent on IT, the time between such problems occurring and them being fixed is downtime, that can collectively add up to a significant productivity hit to the business, not to mention a lot of frustration among users themselves.The guys that step in to take care of this problem are the technicians responsible for IT support.

In larger organisations, these are usually dedicated to the support role, but in smaller environments, they are typically juggling support with other duties.Either way, it’s a heroic job, continuously having to deal with the Mrs Angry, Mr Frustrated, Master Know-it-All and Mssrs Dumb and Stupid. OK, they deal with nice well balanced users too, but people in general are much more prone to strange and volatile behaviour when interacting with helpdesks.But how well do we support those on the front line in their efforts to get users back up and running in the face of such frequently encountered adversity?

Supporting the helpdesk heroes | The Register