• Required reading for help desk managers By Janice Ward for TechRepublic

  Can’t afford thousands of dollars for a consultant? Hire Julie Mohr's, The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success and The Help Desk Audit Toolkit: CD companion instead. Using a five step audit process to assess various levels of help desk maturity, managers will be able to identify needs and plan and implement solutions relevant to their situation. The book divides the help desk into five basic parts which align nicely with ITIL and other quality improvement programs. The companion CD (sold separately) provides you the forms and tools needed to do the assessment and complete the audit. For each of the various components assessed, plans and suggestions for improving weaknesses are addressed. The Web site, http://www.blueprintaudits.com provides several free tools and will give you a flavor of what to expect in the book.

• Association of Support Professionals

  This self-assessment workbook is the most comprehensive tool we've seen for measuring how a support organization compares against industry best practices. (Publication date: 2003)

• Excellent Resource for Helpdesk Professionals of Any Level!, May 4, 2003 By A Customer

  As a customer service manager for a major federal agency I found this book to be an excellent resource to assist in the managing of day-to-day operations as well as plotting the path to implementing improvements throughout my organization. Clear, concise and directly to the point, the author is clearly in command of the relevant topics. It would cost an organization $10s of thousands of dollars if it was to retain a consultant with the depth of background and experience possessed by Ms. Mohr. I could not recommend this book more highly to helpdesk managers, customer service managers, and anyone interested in improving their ability to provide great service to their internal or external customers.

• Great Tool, February 26, 2006 By Kathy J. Cookman "ManateeKJ" (New Albany, OH USA)

This is a great blueprint. I would recommend it to anyone needing to assess their current Help Desk structure.

• Great Practical Guide for improving your helpdesk, July 11, 2006 By Michael Short

  I am no longer a support manager. However, when I was managing a support department, this book was extremly helpful. It is an excellent source book for consultants as well as managers. It needs some updating related to ITIL.

• Well thought-out audit checklists, but some redundant recommendations, January 23, 2008 By Craig Iskowitz "ezragroup.net" (east brunswick, nj)
  
  

  The introduction for this book says that, "The goal of the help desk audit is to explore your current support environment and compare that environment to best practices within the support industry." I believe that the book achieves its goal in that it provides a basic methodology for analyzing the maturity level of all the components that make up a help desk. As a management consultant, I found the book to be useful and have incorporated some of the points into my own audit process. I would recommend it to any consultants or help desk managers who are tasked to evaluate the readiness of a support environment.

  That being said, there are a few problems that I would like to point out, without discouraging you from purchasing the book.

  The recommendation sections that follow each checklist are often redundant and repetitive. After you read to establish a project team, gather documents, establish success criteria, get management buy-in, etc. for the fourth time, you start to skip pages. The process improvement sections become filler by that point.

  Some parts of the book I found to be plain irrelevant, such as in the section for auditing the customer communication. I don't think that publishing a newsletter, as the corresponding checklist states, is required for a help desk to have good communication with customers. As for the section evaluating the help desk mission statement, I find this to be somewhat Dilbert-esque to me (see The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions).

  The book is also geared more towards very large help desks, so some of the checklist items may not be applicable.

  Overall the book was worth the money, I'm sure after reading it you'll take away some excellent ideas to improve your help desk.

• Excellent roadmap. I use it in all assessments, September 19, 2003 By Phyllis E. Marcus (Milford, Michigan)

  As an Information Technology consultant I have executed many Help Desk assessments. I found this book by surfing the web: blueprintaudits.com. After reading the book, I have now incorporated the workbook in every assessment I do. I find that it is, by far, the most comprehensive audit technique. Not only does it provide weighted audit questions, but also it provides a roadmap for continuous improvement. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in assessing their Help Desk and improving customer service.
  

• Essential resource for help desk managers (and consultants), March 7, 2004 By Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA)
  
  

  If you manage help desk or service desk operations this book is an essential tool for achieving the best possible level of efficiency and customer satisfaction. I recommend also getting the companion CD titled, "The Help Desk Audit Toolkit" (ISBN 0974080810), which contains the forms and other artifacts used in this book.
  

  The author approaches help desk process improvement through an audit process that examines key process areas (or lack thereof), and leads you through the audit to determine at which level of maturity your current operation is at - and what is required to get you to the optimum level based on your budget and organization.

  The audit process itself is a straightforward five-step process that consists of:
  1 - Assess
  2 - Compare
  3 - Plan
  4 - Implement
  5 - Assess (adjust is a better way of looking at this step)

  The areas covered are thorough and address all of the key aspects of help desk operations. These areas are divided into blocks and specific areas, which are:
  BLOCK 1 - Foundation. Mission/Vision, Structure and Products and Services Provided.
  BLOCK 2 - People. Staff, Performance Metrics, Training and Staff Development.
  BLOCK 3 - Process. Call Handling, Problem Management and Problem Escalation.
  BLOCK 4 - Tools. Tools & Technologies, and E-Support and Knowledge Management Enhancements.
  BLOCK 5 - Customer Management. Service Level Management, Customer Satisfaction Measurement, and Customer Communication Process.

  The cycle in each block's specific area is to gather information, determine where on the maturity scale you are (immature, emergent, mature or advanced), and devise an improvement strategy. The aggregate of results from each block is used to determine your overall maturity rating.

  If you are implementing ITIL, trying to improve your help desk operational efficiency, or just want to benchmark your operation against best practices, this book is the primary resource to which you should turn. Also, BLOCK 5 is applicable to call centers of companies that are implementing ISO 9001:2000 because of that standard's emphasis on measuring customer satisfaction. Finally, if ITIL is important, the key areas and approach align nicely to service desk operational areas.

• Time-saver and augments "The Help Desk Audit" book, March 7, 2004
  By Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA)
  
  

  If you've purchased "The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success" (0974080802), or you're an experienced help desk consultant seeking a ready-made set of tools this collection of documents is invaluable.
  First, if you have purchased the book you'll save literally dozens of hours because you will not need to recreate the forms and other tools on this CD ROM. If will cut the time to perform the audit, and will enable you to manage your findings in a systematic manner.

  If you are a consultant who already has an assessment methodology, the forms and documents are still useful and their function should be immediately apparent. More importantly, you'll save many hours by tailoring them to your specific practices instead of designing them from scratch. As a side note, regardless of the methodology or approach you currently employ I strongly recommend you consider the book from which this CD ROM's contents are derived - it is one of the most thorough approaches I've seen.

  Regardless of your objectives, if you work with help desks this CD ROM provides invaluable documents that you can either immediately use, or quickly tailor to meet specific or unique requirements.

• The Help Desk Audit Book and CD, March 1, 2006
  By Steven Harrell "Steve Harrell" (Indianapolis IN)
  
  

  This is an excellent tool for an internal audit of and organization Help Desk performance. All Help Desk Manager should complete this audit annually and measure the progress toward their continues improvement goals.

• Fantastic Book and CD!, October 16, 2007
  By J. Lallier (Liverpool, NY United States)
  
  

  I purchased this companion CD and booklet as I became the Coordinator for a Help Desk that was in disarray. After auditing the Help Desk and using the document templates included, I was able to complete turn around our failing Help Desk into a successful group. I can't tell you enough of how valuable this was for my success! I'd give 8 stars out of 5 if I could!