Knowledge management-centric help desk: specification and performance evaluation

The technology help desk function has grown in importance as information technology has proliferated throughout the organization. The primary objective of the help desk is to resolve problems related to IT in the organization. As such, the agents in the help desk must be very knowledgeable of the information systems, applications, and technologies supported. Most efforts at improving help desk performance have been to make the current system more efficient through application of information technologies. In this paper we propose a new approach, called a knowledge management-centric help desk. The proposed knowledge management system draws upon diverse knowledge sources in the organization including databases, files, experts, knowledge bases, and group chats. The knowledge management system is designed to be incorporated into the daily operation of the help desk in order to ensure high utilization and maintenance of the knowledge stores. The benefits of the knowledge management-centric help desk are evaluated using a simulation study with actual data from a help desk. The experimental results indicate the knowledge management-centric approach would significantly reduce the time to resolve problems and improve the throughput of the help desk.