Week 10: Refining Helpdesk Skills

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Week 10: Refining Helpdesk Skills

    Returning to helpdesk duties this week, I noticed significant improvements in how I handle user concerns and technical reporting. I was primarily accompanied by Ma'am Lyca, who guided me through more difficult cases, though I also had opportunities to manage some tickets independently. The experience from previous weeks has helped me develop better diagnostic approaches and communication techniques when addressing support tickets, allowing me to work more efficiently both collaboratively and on my own.

    A key improvement was in accurately identifying and explaining issues to both users and technicians. For instance, when users reported wifi being down, I learned to first verify if it was truly a connectivity issue or just certain websites being inaccessible. Many cases turned out to be blocked sites like Facebook or YouTube due to hospital policies, not actual network failures. Instead of just saying that I'll be coordinating it to the network team, I could now explain clearly why specific sites were restricted and how this differed from a genuine network outage.

    My technical reports to the network and tech team also became more precise. Rather than vague descriptions like "Internet not working," I now include specific details such as which websites were inaccessible, wat model of equipment was broken, error messages received, and whether other network resources remained available. This helped technicians quickly determine if issues were related to filtering policies, DNS problems, or actual connectivity failures.

    The week also reinforced the importance of managing user expectations. When explaining technical limitations like website restrictions, I found that users responded better when given clear, polite explanations rather than just hearing "that's the policy." Simple analogies comparing the hospital network to a controlled work environment helped them understand why certain restrictions existed.

    While the tasks remained similar to earlier helpdesk weeks, the quality of my service improved noticeably. I could resolve more issues independently and provide better information when escalation was needed. This progress showed how accumulated experience, even in routine tasks, leads to more competent troubleshooting and communication skills that will be valuable in my career. 




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