Effective Help Desk Specialist Skills

All of todays help desk support skills, in one easy-to-understand book

The perfect beginners guide: No help desk or support experience necessary

Covers both soft personal skills and hard technical skills

Explains the changing role of help desk professionals in the modern support center

Today, everyone depends on technologyand practically everyone needs help to use it well. Organizations deliver that assistance through help desks. This guide brings together all the knowledge you need to succeed in any help desk or technical support role, prepare for promotion, and succeed with the support-related parts of other IT jobs. Leading technology instructor Darril Gibson tours the modern help desk, explains what modern support professionals really do, and fully covers both of the skill sets youll need: technical and personal. In clear and simple language, he discusses everything from troubleshooting specific problems to working with difficult users. Youll even learn how to manage a help desk, so it works better and delivers more value.

Coverage includes:

How the modern help desk has evolved

Understanding your users needs, goals, and attitudes

Walking through the typical help desk call

Communicating well: listening actively and asking better questions

Improving interactions and handling difficult situations

Developing positive attitudes, and owning the problem

Managing your time and stress

Supporting computers, networks, smartphones, and tablets

Finding the technical product knowledge you need

Protecting the security of your users, information, and devices

Defining, diagnosing, and solving problems, step by step

Writing it up: from incident reports to documentation

Working in teams to meet the goals of the business

Using ITIL to improve the services you provide

Calculating help desk costs, benefits, value, and performance

Taking control of your support career

Powerful features make it easier to learn about help desk careers!

Clear introductions describe the big ideas and show how they fit with what youve already learned

Specific chapter objectives tell you exactly what you need to learn

Key Terms lists help you identify important terms and a complete Glossary helps you understand them

Authors Notes and On The Side features help you go deeper into the topic if you want to

Chapter Review tools and activities help you make sure youve learned the material

Exclusive Mind Mapping activities!

Organize important ideas visuallyin your mind, in your words

Learn more, remember more

Understand how different ideas fit together

 ...