How is the IT reception in Mail.Ru Group

In any company, employees daily turn to system administrators asking them to solve various issues and problems. Forgotten passwords, non-printing printers, flooded laptops, accidentally deleted important documents, “please, give us a flash drive for an hour” - which isn’t what the sysadmins use. And the larger the company, the larger the IT department itself, the more often employees have difficulty knowing who to turn to with this or that question. In our company, we solved this problem by creating a kind of IT reception designed for “initial consultation” of our colleagues who asked for help.

The idea of ​​creating a reception room appeared a long time ago when we moved to a new building. If earlier, we were mostly visited by just neighbors on the floor, here, over time, more and more employees began to apply. They came to our floor, and then simply did not know what to do. They began to wander around the hall, trying to figure out who to turn to with their question. After all, everyone is working hard, busy with their business, and no one is ready to once again distract themselves and ask: “Hello. How can I help you?".

Of course, in the end, someone offered his help, but those who came from the very beginning had a misunderstanding of what to do and where to go. We decided that people need help. First put pointers. We had a big monitor on which it was written “Change password - there” and an arrow, but this did not work either. People just did not look at the signs, they came and just started wandering around the department. Then we decided that we needed a person who would solve simple and fast tasks, and it would be more difficult with tasks to direct, show, tell where and to whom to turn.
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At first there was a thought to plant for this girl. But for a tech support employee, such properties as the ability and the desire to grab a 20-pound server, drag it to the fourth floor and put it in a rack are important. Of course, we would be glad to have girls in our team, but in such conditions they will have a hard time - therefore we have a tough Spartan men's team. And when the idea of ​​the girl disappeared, we decided that we would just be on duty at the waiting room. Pondering the format and making out the workplace, we have long chosen which furniture is better to deliver. We stopped at what made a large table in a semicircle. There was also an idea to put a classic reception there - but then they realized that the most on duty because of this stand might not be visible, so we decided that a more open format would suit us. Above the table you can see a small three-dimensional composition "How to help?". It was also made by our guys.

Since we are IT professionals, we try to somehow automate the solution of the most frequent and simple questions that people come to us with. For example, put the terminal for self-resetting the password. Now he sends the password via SMS, and after some improvements he will print the password on a small check. We will also think what other operations can be hung on this terminal. But for now, at the duty desk, we have two computers with which any employee can come in and change their password. This is the most common short task, especially on Mondays.

We track the number of calls and visitors to plan the load and adjust the duty schedule. On Monday morning, the load is many times larger than on the other days of the week, and most often this is due to forgotten passwords.

Also on the IT reception postponed the issuance of various simple technology. Now people come for the mouse, keyboard, headphones and other similar trifles at the IT reception, for which they had to look for a specific employee before. The main duty of the duty officer (or the secretary of the administrators, as we say the company) is to meet people who come and ask them the question: “How can we help?”. If there are no visitors, then he solves tasks that do not require leaving the workplace - the same password changes, assistance to regional employees, etc. We have quite a few small offices in different cities in which there is no support service. They need to connect remotely and help something, and the duty officer can do it.

With the introduction of this post, the structured work of the department has improved. Employees are less distracted from current affairs, there is always a dedicated person for this. Soon the whole company will know that you can come and get help as quickly as possible. Accordingly, it relieves other channels of receiving information, people write less in a personal, less call. Although we have a duty on the phone, but often two, three, four lines ring. It distracts from current activities. And so it is easier for some people to quickly run in than to call or write. We have always followed the idea that we solve problems regardless of how we learned about them. Therefore, we can call, write, set tasks, and now we can come - we will always help.

In the classical approach to the distribution of roles in ITIL, when there is a first, second and third line of support, this problem is solved by the forces of the first line. The first line is the employees who accept the request. Most often, in large companies, this is outsourced to a call-center, as we have incoming calls to the office. Sit girls in an outsourcing company and take calls. All they know is that you can switch to someone according to the phone book. In many companies, helpdesk follows the same path, when employees want to report a problem, they most often fall on a person who can only listen, write down and make a request in the system. Most often, technical support staff begin to classify: “You are the first line, you change the cartridges, you reset passwords. You’re not capable of anything else, and don’t even try. You are the second line, you can put the program and fix something simple. And you are the third line, you solve complex tasks - sit, think. " This limits the ability of a person to realize himself, is driven into a frame, and he begins to think "I change cartridges, and I will change cartridges all my life." There is no motivation, a person does not want to do anything, his eyes go out.

We use a different approach that is more in line with the spirit of the company. There are no divisions on the line, absolutely everyone answers calls, almost all of them are periodically present at the IT reception, and at the same time everyone solves complex problems. Recently, such a practice has arisen where people themselves take on tasks from an unassigned pool. If earlier we distributed them centrally, now the colleagues themselves take on tasks that they like. This also stimulates people further, they understand that they can develop through the solution of more complex problems at the moment when they themselves want it. And if someone is not ready now, then he can take the task easier.