How our Helpdesk Team Leader, Craig Prince, has adapted during the last 16 weeks.

As the Work from Home order came into place from the government, we were already one step ahead: in preparation for this we’d been working from home the week prior. No one could have predicted the change in demand and issue types that came within the following weeks.

Compared to the weeks leading up to the lock down, we saw 166% increase with tickets. This continued for the following 2 months, with most people slowly starting to work from home. We did, however, see a lag of 2 weeks before most companies started to fully prepare the change to remote working.

I have recently had an update to Outlook, which now has the new Insights Icon in the Ribbon Bar. (see below)

We helped our clients to come up with solutions to securely access their company data from home; data that they had previously only ever had access to on site. This created many challenges, as each client had an entirely unique infrastructure, combined with different access requirements from each other.

This required our team to come up with the best solutions, tailored to individual clients. It was dependent on their current infrastructure; number of users, and devices they use at home coupled with workflow. With the dramatic increase of workload, plus a shift in the type of support requests, our team did a fantastic job, helping our clients to transition ‘online’ to work from home.

Our helpdesk, remote support tools and workplace communication are all cloud based. Cloud Journey Solutions meant for us, as well as our customers, the transition and continuation of work was seamless. From the office one day, to our ‘temporary’ home office the next.

Being the helpdesk team leader, I’ve had to adapt the way I now communicate with my team.

In the office I had a direct line of face-to-face communication, I could see and hear where everyone was up to with their tasks. This enabled flexibility, so jobs could be moved from one engineer to another, as well as providing quick assistance for any query or help my team would need.

When we started working from home, it wasn’t easy to know what everyone was working on, or to make sure they were on the right track. As the days passed, we improved our method of communication and created a helpdesk Teams chat. This enabled us to check in with each other more frequently, it also helped me to see what everyone was working on, and if any assistance was needed. Having the teams chat also mean it was clearer to understand why there might be any outstanding jobs, which made it easier to move resources to higher priority tickets.

We were not mentally prepared for everyone to work at home. But with all the business continuity plans, and cloud-based software technology we have invested in over the past few years; it enabled my team, as well as the rest of the company, to seamlessly work from home. It didn’t take much effort to adapt to the ‘new way’. Most importantly, we have created a stronger and a more connected team during a world pandemic.