A Day in the Life of a Graduate.
As a service desk analyst for one of our clients, a city based financial institution, we have a chance to experience a big part of their company from the service desk alone.
Coming to CloudStratex as a graduate, knowing we would be working with the client all day was a bit daunting at first, but we have been welcomed with open arms from both sides. From CloudStratex, we have an amazing team of people from a range of backgrounds, always ready to answer any questions you may have; and from the client’s side, we work with a group of highly skilled individuals, who were ready to provide all the training we needed to do our role.
Our role focuses on 2 different aspects, service management and knowledge management. Currently on the service management side, my focus is primarily on the service desk, where I raise tickets from the emails that have arrived in the mailbox. The emails are flagged and categorised as a work order or incident, and it is our job to raise them as such on Remedy. We are able to work with experienced members of the team, who we can turn to should we ever need any clarification on a certain aspect of the process.
When we’re not raising tickets, we look at tickets that have been escalated by the users. These users have often been through the process and have experienced problems in getting their tickets resolved, and request for us to help push the process through to completion. This aspect of the role required no technical knowledge as you are not dealing with the ticket yourself, but communication is key, to be able to talk to both the user and the agent, and to keep them both happy. I think the hardest part of this is to make sure you find the balance where you don’t step on anyone’s toes but also ensure that the ticket is resolved for the customer.
After 6 weeks, we will swap roles. One of us in service management will go to knowledge and vice versa. In knowledge management, we look at creating knowledge articles (KAs) to support ITSM teams. These KAs aim to support the service desk by providing knowledge and information to users, enabling them to resolve easy to fix IT issues, with the expected result of minimising the number of calls to the service desk.
We also help teams, such as the service desk, create more KAs to add to their knowledge bases by reviewing their documented knowledge and converting them to KAs, and developing templates and user guides which teams can use to create their own KAs. In addition to this, we also update and standardise KAs using HTML code to ensure quality and consistency across all IT knowledge bases.
Every few weeks, there are new releases for ServiceNow, where teamwork is vital to ensure its success. Team meetings are also a regular part of the week, to look at the progress made in knowledge management, as well as what can yet be improved. Our roles range from organising meetings, and sending the invites out, to participating and presenting in them.
To create the best knowledge articles and to manage Knowledge Bases effectively, it is key to discuss with the teams managing them to optimise the positive impact they have. Furthermore, we conduct proof of concepts to test knowledge processes using the Visual Task Board interface on ServiceNow.
Whilst the idea of working in a client facing role was one that seemed overwhelming at first, once we started, we were welcomed very quickly and supported from the start. Help was always available, and even if we work for the client most of the day, we are still able to ask for the support of those at CloudStratex and are in constant contact, so you’ll never feel like you have any reason to be scared.