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During a major IT incident, it is very easy for your service desk to receive an overwhelming number of tickets or calls which can slow down the response to the incident itself as well as creating a huge processing task when it comes to actioning and closing them. Is there an easier way?

Arguably the easiest way to help your service desk avoid a torrent of calls and tickets is to ensure that your users are aware of any emerging or planned downtime with the systems that they use.

When it comes to communicating planned downtime, it can be time-consuming and your message is not guaranteed to reach all users, especially if they receive a lot of emails which has contributed to notification fatigue. There is the added problem of people forgetting when planned outages are, meaning that they could still contact the service desk to query the outage, even though it was planned.

In the event of a critical incident where lots of people experience an outage at the same time, it is easy to imagine your service desk becoming overwhelmed. Your employees will likely panic and reach out to try and have their problem resolved without realising that it is an incident affecting lots of people.

As the incident progresses, users may then create follow-ups to check the status of the downtime, especially if they are not receiving information about what is going on and any expected times for resolution.

Then, as mentioned above, there is the task of going through and closing all of the tickets raised during the incident, which for a large organisation can amount to hundreds of hours in lost productivity.

It is clear, therefore, that there are two clear ways you can prevent your service desk from being overwhelmed.

By publishing in advance any planned maintenance or downtime in a way that is accessible to your employees and allowing them to copy the information into their calendars for future reference, you are empowering them with the information to ensure that they can remain informed and productive, without raising a support ticket.

During a critical incident, ensuring that information about the incident is delivered in a timely and accessible way to all affected users can prevent the initial surge of support tickets and when paired with good ongoing communication around updates can help to stem the flow of support tickets requesting an update on the situation.

Do you need help protecting your service desk from overwhelm? <<Schedule a demo>> today to see how Klaxon can help you.