Helpdesk support: Your colleagues prefer their calendars

Helpdesk support staff have been dubbed the techie equivalent of traffic wardens by their non-IT colleagues.

A report from analyst group Forrester has discovered that users are highly dissatisfied with helpdesk support and the more often they have cause to use the helpdesk, the more likely they are to report being dissatisfied with it.

Despite the image of a stereotypical techie, it seems users have few complaints about the politeness of helpdesk staff. Rather, their dissatisfaction stems from the frequent inability of helpdesk support to resolve their queries in a timely manner and the necessity for repeat visits from the support team in order to resolve a single problem.

Helpdesk support also came last in a list of technologies and services that IT users view as essential to their jobs. In terms of IT that business users cannot live without, desktop technologies including email, calendar and productivity software were rated highly.

According to Forrester, 75 per cent of those surveyed are happy with their email and calendaring software, while 94 per cent rate such desktop IT as the most crucial technologies for their jobs.