Powerful Lessons From A Help Desk

Naked Leader Week 1149 – Monday 10 November 2025

Time to read: 70 Seconds

Powerful Lessons From A Help Desk

Some years ago, as IT Director at Allianz I realised the biggest problem we had – it was what we ironically called ‘The Help Desk’.

It wasn’t any of my team’s fault, it was because of overwhelm – every call was apparently a ‘Priority One’ that, coupled with progress chasing, and soon a queue of senior business leaders waiting to complain to me.

Of course, I took full responsibility and ownership, I just didn’t know how to fix it.

One evening, after the calls stopped, all the Help Desk Heroes – as I was now calling them – got together for an Elephants in The Room session:

‘We need more people’

‘Second level support are to blame’

‘If this goes on everyone will be calling in sick’

Etc.

And then one person – Rachel – identified the biggest issue, and in doing so, hit on the solution.

She said simply “No-one trusts us to get back to them with updates.”

That single, blindingly obvious point changed everything, and Rachel suggested:

“Let’s ask every caller how often they would like us to keep them up to date – even if no progress has been made.”

We implemented it the following day – in the first week some callers were responding “Every five minutes” – so that is what we did; to reassure them we were still working on it.

After a week people were asking for updates once a day or even once every few days. Then calls came in that were Priority Two or even Three!

That was when I learned a lesson we still apply with Naked Leader Business Clients today – if you are running a project, or a key outcome delivery, or, gulp, a Help Desk, ask the overall big cheeses how often they would like to be kept up to date – and do what they ask.

Why does this work?

Because as the saying goes – ‘silence is a void that needs to be filled’ and if human beings don’t hear progress on something important, we will often assume nothing is happening, cue the doom loop kicking in again.

So, thank you Rachel and the Help Desk Heroes – such happy memories

With my love and best wishes to you and to those whose lives you touch

David

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