Help Desk Manager Job Descriptions, Average Salary, Interview Questions

Help desk managers supervise technical help desk support teams, track performance, and ensure a high level of customer service. They also hire, train, and support help desk representatives. Help desk managers need excellent leadership skills, strong interpersonal skills, and must be adept at handling conflict. If you have experience providing excellent technical support to internal and external customers, as well as training, supporting, and leading a help desk team, you could be the perfect fit for the position at [Your Company Name]. 

Typical duties and responsibilities

• Take initial telephone or email inquiries and troubleshoot and manage standard hardware, software or network problems
• Perform remote troubleshooting through diagnostic techniques and pertinent questions
• Determine the best solution based on the issue and details provided by customers
• Direct unresolved issues to the next level of support personnel
• Pass on any feedback or suggestions by customers to the appropriate internal team

Education and experience

This position requires an associate or bachelor’s degree in IT, computer science, or a relevant field. Certifications like COMPTIA A+ Certification or Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) are strongly preferred.

Required skills and qualifications

• Strong problem-solving skills
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Ability to work in a team environment

Preferred qualifications

• 2 + years of team management experience
• Hands-on experience with help desk and remote control software
• Experience leading complex technology project and dynamic project teams
• Bachelor’s degree in business administration, computer science, or related field 
• Ability to effectively manage and mentor employees
• Customer-service oriented with a problem-solving attitude
• Strong technical background with excellent analytical and troubleshooting skills

We are looking for an experienced help desk manager to oversee our desktop support team in providing exemplary technical support to our clients. You will be responsible for training, supporting, and leading your team with a detailed-oriented approach. You will also be required to manage ticket escalations and ensure they are resolved timely with the proper client communications. Finally, you will be responsible for the billing reports of the Help Desk associates to be billed to the clients based on time entered and task performed.

To be successful as a help desk manager you should have excellent interpersonal and conflict management skills. Ultimately, a top-notch help desk manager should be able to ensure that our clients receive professional and efficient technical support.

Essential responsibilities

• Building processes and creating efficiency for all Help Desk processes
• Building and implementing training programs for Tier 1 troubleshooting
• Oversee and support a team of help desk professionals, ensuring timely and efficient problem resolution
• Maintain and update onboarding documentation and processes for new hires
• Mentoring your team, providing training, and conducting performance evaluations
• Monitoring team performance and developing feedback reports for management
• Communicating with clients and providing in-person and phone support, if required
• Troubleshooting and resolving technical issues
• Managing escalations and ensuring any issues are resolved in a timely manner
• Making recommendations to improve operational efficiency
• Invoice review, approval, submission, and escalations based on employee time submissions

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, or a related field
• At least two years of experience as a Help Desk Manager or in a technical support role
• Strong technical background
• Ability and experience in building out and implementing process and process control
• Excellent analytical and troubleshooting skills
• Ability to work under pressure
• Excellent leadership and people management skills
• Strong customer service skills

This position is responsible for the coordination, implementation, and management of overall Help Desk functions, including related supervisory responsibilities for managing support staff. In addition to oversight of Service Desk operation, the selected candidate is responsible for mentoring and training staff, meeting deadlines, working with other departmental/service area managers, and identifying opportunities to create and communicate processes that improve user experience and measure performance.

Duties

• Proactively identifies mediums for ensuring that daily, weekly, and monthly statistics, status reports, and other reporting requests are maintained and available as requested
• Identifies trends from reporting to determine solutions to trends or problem areas that may need to be addressed
• Maintain a high level of Service Desk customer focus by prioritizing issues and communicating appropriately with external and internal customers
• Work with existing reporting and analytics tools to monitor Service Desk performance, identify and address areas of potential performance issues, and monitor key performance indicators
• Develop cross-team and cross-departmental expertise necessary to effectively respond to issues
• Perform periodic review and evaluation of all employees, managing necessary performance issues, and training requirements, as necessary for the development of individual resources as a team
• Ensure customer service excellence by monitoring tickets and reviewing customer feedback
• Develop and document process and procedural enhancements and assist other departments as needed for continuous process and service improvement
• Ensure the Service Desk maintains a high level of responsiveness, communication, professionalism, and overall staff knowledge
• Manage, monitor, and report on the services and service levels required to support and deliver an exceptional Service Desk environment
• Maintain current knowledge on new and updates to existing products, as well as third-party OS and devices
• Ensure the Service Desk staff is appropriately staffed, skilled, and trained to deliver excellent technical support and customer
• Establish working schedules, manage time off to ensure appropriate coverage for operating workloads and task allocations in accordance with contractual requirements
• Work with Program Manager to ensure Service Desk maintain compliance with Service Level Objectives (SLOs) in accordance contractual standards
• Contribute to the change management process; represent the interests of the customer when assessing risk and impact

Skills and experience

• 4+ years managing help desk and other IT staff
• Demonstrated skills to develop, lead, and motivate a team of Help Desk professionals to deliver excellent technical support with outstanding service, satisfaction, and timeliness

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher. Can be substituted for Associate’s degree with 2+ years of relevant experience or 4 years relevant experience.
• Must have a Top-Secret Clearance.
• Must meet DoD 8140.01 (IAM-1) requirements.

Position responsibilities

• Manage daily Help Desk operations including governance of outsourced vendor providing Tier I support. Responsible for guidance, assistance, coordination, and follow-up on client inquiries, escalations, problem reports, and the identification and resolution of reported problems in the clinical system and related supporting applications and infrastructure
• Initiate, manage and participate in Helpdesk and end users support projects, including automation implementation and online self-service catalog development
• Participate in Helpdesk contract negotiations; review and edit amendments working with the MCIT contract management team
• Drive proactive service measures — reducing status calls by implementing practices to manage end users expectations and redirect to online catalog status; drive password resets to online tool. Perform data analytics on call data and initiate, implement, and drive helpdesk optimization efforts
• Monitor client requests to identify systematic trends and develop action plan to address. Create, review, evaluate, and prepare periodic performance reports
• Manage contractual SLAs. Run month-end reports to derive monthly contacts. Manage Helpdesk financials, invoices, and service level tracking
• Create and maintain dashboard reports, as needed. Trend data and suggest proactive measures and service improvements based on analytics
• Serve as central point of contact for support-related service, end-user escalations and inquiries

Minimum qualifications

To qualify you must have a BA/BS degree with 5 or more years of experience

Skills and qualifications

• Previous experience with vendor governance, management, and contractual operations
• Experience managing multiple projects and initiatives
• Ability to manage financial Helpdesk administration, including managing a multi-million dollar budget, invoices, and contractual service level requirements/penalties
• Extensive customer support experience
• Knowledge and management of support venues, including self-service, chat, bots, etc.
• Extensive knowledge of IT operation
• Technical, hardware, and innovation skills. Able to think outside the box and come up with solutions to complex problems.
• Ability to independently develop and implement support strategies
• Strong leadership, consultative and communication skills, analytical ability, decisiveness, judgment, and the ability to work effectively with end users, IT, staff, and manage vendors

Education and experience

• Bachelor degree in Computer Science or a related discipline
• Minimum of 5 years previous experience managing a technical or clinical Helpdesk
• Health care experience is a plus; understanding of the requirements of an integrated academic medical center
• Industry vendor knowledge and established relationships
• Effective speaker, collaborative worker and good writing skills
• Able to translate complex technical information and implications in business-oriented language

Preferred qualifications

Prior supervisory experience is preferred but not required