To Ease the Dilemma of Help Desk: The Application of Knowledge Management Techniques in Manipulating Help Desk Knowledge

Abstract

Information technology has changed the way organizations function. This resulted in the reliance of help desks to deal with information technology related areas such as hardware, software, and telecommunication. Besides, the adoption of business process reengineering and downsizing has led to the shrinkage of the sizes of help desks. Consequently, the help desks have to cover more information technology products and resolute more technical enquiries with less staff. Thus, the outcome is clear that users have to wait comparably longer before the help desk staff are available to offer assistance. This chapter describes the development of help desk, ranging from help desk structures to support tools. This chapter also discusses the application of knowledge management techniques in the development of a proposed conceptual knowledge management framework and a proposed redistributed knowledge management framework. While the conceptual knowledge management framework proposes a standard methodology to manage help desk knowledge, the proposed redistributed knowledge management framework allows simple and routine enquiries to be rerouted to a user self-help knowledge management system. The proposed system also enables help desk to provide technical knowledge to users 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Regardless of time and geographical restrictions, users can solve their simple problems without help desk intervention simply by accessing the proposed system through portable electronic devices.