8 Qualities of Great IT Support Personnel

So far as IT support is concerned, let’s face facts. The IT profession has a reputation for strong technical skills but not for incredible interpersonal acumen.

Knowing how to do the job is a key requirement of on-site IT personnel but it falls short of ensuring great service. There are several distinct traits that mark a great tech. If you’re looking for support team that can meet your long-term needs, here are some of the critically important softer skills you should expect from your provider.

  1. Respect for All

You need a tech who is capable of showing respect for coworkers, management and users. This is especially important in situations where high pressure or tight timelines are drivers. Ensuring that your support personnel can remain respectful helps your staff feel valued, your company maintain its good reputation and is a required quality for support.

  1. Self-Discipline

Self-discipline is an important requirement of any IT professional. On any given day, they receive many and often conflicting requests and having excellent follow up and the discipline to complete tasks on time is critical.

  1. Ability to Prioritize

Support personnel are constantly prioritizing tasks to be most effective and efficient. Prioritizing well requires having a knowledge of the role of people in the company, understanding company goals and having a firm grasp on company priorities. The ability to evaluate all factors and prioritize effectively is a requirement to provide service that adds maximum value.

  1. Commitment to Problem Resolution

You need a support staff that is capable of sticking with a problem until its final and successful resolution. There needs to be commitment to follow every step to offer the best solution to issues even in a situation that is an emergency. Techs need to be tenacious and  willing to work and research until an answer is found.

  1. Detail Oriented

Detail matters in IT support. Resolving an issue is important, but so is ensuring that problems don’t recur in the future. Quality support professionals need to be capable of finding the cause of the issue, resolving it, and then thoroughly documenting it for the future as well as providing sufficient detail to identify and address systemic issues.

  1. Ability to Communicate Effectively

In some cases, the tech support on-site is the person who is in contact with the broadest group of people in and outside of the company. Your IT support should be capable of understanding problems, listening to your users, translating a problem into technical terms, fixing it and explaining the right solution to a user in common and understandable language that goes beyond tech jargon.

  1. Interest in Technology

We believe that every tech support worker should have an interest in technology that goes beyond the job requirements. When your IT support team is excited about technology, they’ll pass that interest along to make others feel the same way.

  1. A drive to Learn

Change is the one constant in the world of information technology and being open to learning is important. It’s also important to understand that keeping up to date is mandatory to provide the best service.

 

Those are eight qualities of on-site support personnel that we’ve learned from experience to be critical to success. If your tech support doesn’t meet those standards, you likely aren’t getting support that is building long-term value in your organization. If you’d like to learn more about how to put these standards to work in your organization, contact us.