A proactive Help Desk team will have Incident Management Communication Plan in place to follow when an outage to a service occurs. In advance of an outage, it is important to develop a well thought-out Incident Management Communication Plan detailing how people will be initially notified, what information they need, when status updates will be communicated, and what resolution steps occur when a service has been restored. Answer the following questions about the state of your Incident Management Communication Plan.

1. 2/29/2016 IT HelpdeskCommunication Plan - IT-Toolkits.org
http://it-toolkits.org/blog/?p=242 1/5
IT Helpdesk Communication Plan - IT-Toolkits.org
A proactive Help Desk team will have Incident Management Communication Plan in place to follow
when an outage to a service occurs. In advance of an outage, it is important to develop a well
thought-out Incident Management Communication Plan detailing how people will be initially notified,
what information they need, when status updates will be communicated, and what resolution steps
occur when a service has been restored. Answer the following questions about the state of your
Incident Management Communication Plan.
Do you have a defined Incident Management Communication Plan to follow when there is an
outage to a major service? Have people been trained and know how to access the plan?
Are your customers and supported business groups proactively informed of when a service is
down or do they generate a large volume of calls to the Help Desk?
Are your Help Desk staff members immediately informed about the outage and provided support
information such as available workarounds and an estimated time for recovery?
Are members of the technology leadership department immediately aware of service outages or
are they the “last to know”?
Incident Management Communication
Customers of a service, technical service support staff, and service owners rely on the Incident
Management team to obtain the latest status of a service outage and recovery. Incident Management
Communication is typically handled in a coordinated effort via email, text messages, voicemail, web
portal messages, and phone bridges. Incident Management communication reduces call volume to the
Help Desk, allow the business to adjust their work activities, facilitates greater collaboration to resolve
the incident, and keeps the leadership team informed of the status.

2. 2/29/2016 IT HelpdeskCommunication Plan - IT-Toolkits.org
http://it-toolkits.org/blog/?p=242 2/5
Objectives of Incident Management Communication Plan
Have a detailed approved Incident Management Communication plan documented and readily
available for support staff to follow.
Have up to date communication distribution groups defined and communication tools in place to
send incident status messages.
Ensure customers of a service, the leadership team, and technical staff are informed of the start
and end of unscheduled outages.
Ensure that any workarounds are communicated to the proper groups that use the service.
Provide detailed recovery information related to the outage to technical groups.
Provide a post-incident summary to the problem management team related to the service.
Customer Focused Incident Management Communication
The goal of customer Incident Management Communication is to let the customer know a service is
down and some basic information without a lot of technical jargon. Customers just want to know what
service is down, what workarounds are in place, and when will a service be available again. This will
allow the customer to make business decisions to maximize their resources. It may mean that they can
perform internal communication, provide business direction, and let some of the work force take a
break or leave early if applicable.
Customer Focused Incident Management Communication templateCOMMUNICATION
HEADER
Recipient list – Who will receive the communication.
Subject line – Service name and status.
COMMUNICATION BODY
Service name
Incident start time
Status – Available, degraded, or unavailable
High level summary, impact and workarounds – What is not working, who is effected, and any
actions that can mitigate the impact.
Next update – Time when the next status update will be communicated.
For more information – The contact information for the Help Desk.
Technical Incident Management Communication template
The Technical Incident Management Communication template is similar to the customer template but
also provides the following;
A detailed timeline of recovery efforts
The war room bridge information
Specific details related to the recovery of the service.
6 Steps to Start Building an Incident Management Communication Plan
Identify your major services covered by the plan
Identify the customer and technical groups that will receive communication.

3. 2/29/2016 IT HelpdeskCommunication Plan - IT-Toolkits.org
http://it-toolkits.org/blog/?p=242 3/5
Establish the frequency of updates.
Determine the communication tools used to send incident status messages.
Establish and format templates to be used for communication from each communication tool.
Establish a bridge number and access code to be used only for war room bridges.
It’s time to be proactive and take control of your Incident Management communication. Implementing
an Incident Management Communication Plan before an outage occurs will mature your team,
improve the service you provide, and will improve customer satisfaction.
You may also like
The marketing goal is simple – to ensure that all end-users have been fully informed of all available
the help desk services and how these services are to be requested and utilized. Beyond the basics of
communication and information sharing, internal marketing efforts must also seek to generate interest
and enthusiasm for the services that the help desk provides. There are (3) keys to marketing program
development and success:
1. To evaluate help desk value and visibility and to then tailor a marketing program to fill specific
needs.
2. To produce tangible “program” deliverables, used to achieve identified objectives.
3. To focus on improved “visibility” as part of the strategic IT management vision.
Evaluating Help Desk Value and Visibility
The first step in planning and developing an effective marketing program is to evaluate current help
desk value and visibility. To start, you need to ask and answer the following defining questions:
Is current help desk utilization all that it could be and should be?
Do you need to improve the awareness and understanding of help desk policies and procedures?
Do you need to improve the quality of communications between the help desk staff and the end-
users?
Do you need to improve the end-user/help desk staff relationship?
Do you need to improve the level of awareness of all help desk service level obligations?
Do you need to boost morale for help desk staff members?
Do you need to reduce “hidden” support costs due to non-use of help desk services?
Do you need to improve awareness of and compliance with related technology usage and IT

4. 2/29/2016 IT HelpdeskCommunication Plan - IT-Toolkits.org
http://it-toolkits.org/blog/?p=242 4/5
service policies?
The answers to these key questions will establish the scope and purpose of the help desk marketing
effort, establishing prioritized needs and related program objectives. These needs and objectives can
then be translated into actual program deliverables.
Producing Marketing Program Deliverables
A “Help Desk Services Handbook” is the primary program deliverable used to market help desk
services, promoting both acceptance and awareness. This handbook should be an established
organizational mandate, institutionalized by the strategic IT management vision, to be given out to all
employees (to be included as part of any new employee orientation).While specifics will vary
according to individual circumstances, the handbook deliverable should incorporate the following
components:
Charter: Stating the overall mission of the help desk department, including the services provided
and commitment to service quality.
Organizational Information: Stating the organizational structure and staffing of the help desk
department.
Operational Information: Stating the locations, contact information, hours of operation, email
contacts, service ticket access, and related matters.
Procedural Information: Stating all policies and procedures relating to the delivery of requested
help desk services, including all the corresponding obligations of the end-user community.
Service Level Obligations: Stating service response obligations (as per an approved Service
Level Agreement).
In addition to a published handbook, regularly published newsletters are another key marketing
program deliverable, used to reinforce handbook information, provide new information, and promote
help desk services. Newsletters should be produced on a scheduled basis (electronic and/or print
depending on individual needs and budgets), to accomplish the following:
To announce technology related updates and changes.
To announce changes to help desk services, operational parameter, procedures and or policies.
To publish helpful tips and tricks for in place technology.
To announce upcoming events, including training classes, scheduled maintenance, upgrades, new
product rollouts and related matters.
To provide warnings relating to technical problems, bugs, errors and problem conditions.
To publish important data security alerts and advisories.
To announce help desk organizational changes (i.e. promotions, new hires, staff member of the
month).
To publish help desk service statistics (as a means of building help desk credibility) including the
number of calls received, calls successfully closed, and any improvements over time.
To publish service success stories and end-user testimonials (toot your own horn). This can also
include explanations for widely known service problems and plans for avoiding similar problems in

5. 2/29/2016 IT HelpdeskCommunication Plan - IT-Toolkits.org
http://it-toolkits.org/blog/?p=242 5/5
the future.
Marketing for Sustained Visibility
Positive and sustained “visibility” is the key to help desk service awareness (and ultimately
acceptance). Visibility techniques can be used during marketing program launch and execution to
ensure that the end-user community (both key individuals and at-large) are sufficiently engaged in the
help desk service process. Here are a few key tips and techniques:
Service reviews and customer surveys should be conducted on a regular basis to collect feedback
regarding service satisfaction, service priorities, views of in place technology and ideas for
possible service improvements.
Institute procedures to ensure follow-up on all service related encounters. For example, brief “how
did we do surveys” can be sent in response to a closed service ticket.
Help desk management should interact with end-users directly, perhaps by attending departmental
staff meetings to promote help desk services, receive feedback and become more involved in line
of business issues.
Managers should work to build and strengthen relationship between the help desk and other IT
groups, perhaps rotating staff to short help desk assignments so that other network engineers,
design staff, programmers and project managers can see how the “support half lives”. It’s wise to
encourage and build an strong IT “team” to promote visibility and build credibility.
Make sure help desk services are fully aligned with the strategic IT management vision. To
successfully promote help desk services within your end-user community, you must have a solid
grasp on the nature of each and every identified “IT management” priority and the means by which
each is being met. It’s important to maintain open communications and to develop service portfolios
designed to suit business needs, technology requirements and the capabilities of help desk entity.
You may also like