Introduction

Welcome to The Help Desk How-To, a blog dedicated to teaching you how to become a better help desk analyst and/or on site technical support. We will be writing approximately an article each a week on a different topic relating to supporting users via the phone or in person, in some sort of technical role. Articles will range from "How to translate geek-speak and back" and "How to get the information you require in the shortest amount of time". This won't be an incredibly technical blog, but more about how to take the technical side of a help desk and make it understandable, for both the helpdesk itself, as well as the users that are requiring its assistance.

My name is Justin Smith, and I've been in some sort of technical support role for the past 8 years. I've done my share of phone work either conducting surveys, and in various technical support positions both first, second and third level. Currently, I'm a senior help desk analyst/help desk supervisor for a small company in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where we support approximately 50 or 60 different small businesses with an average user base of 15-20 per client.

My counterpart, Robert Reid, has essentially the same role as myself (we work for the same company), and he is incredibly gifted in this area as well. He is my first resource when I find myself stuck with an issue. He is very experienced in the helpdesk and one of the very few people I know that I can say without a doubt is better at this than I am.

We'd like to thank you for reading; we hope that you'll get something informative out of our writing and we also hope to get your feedback, both on articles that we write, as well as topics you'd like us to cover. Feel free to e-mail myself (nexxai@gmail.com) or Robert (rfgreid@hotmail.com) with any comments, suggestions or questions, and we'll do everything in our power to respond to those requests as fast as humanly possible.

Hope to see you soon.