23 Common Help Desk Problems and Solutions for Fast, Smooth Support

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Imagine this: a member of your IT support team receives a help desk ticket from a user who can't access a business-critical application. Time is of the essence. Every second that goes by without a resolution impacts productivity and business operations. As your team works to resolve the issue, you notice that this is the third ticket blogged about this issue in the past month. Instead of building on past solutions to fix this ticket quickly, the team is starting from scratch again. Common help desk problems like these can slow down your help desk operations and impact user satisfaction. This article will help you identify these common help desk problems and solutions to get your help desk operations back on track.

AI customer support from ChatBee is a valuable tool for achieving goals. With AI, you can streamline your help desk operations to resolve issues quickly, minimize downtime, provide 24/7 Customer Support, and enhance user satisfaction across the organization.

What Is a Help Desk and Its Importance

A help desk is a centralized system that efficiently handles customer and internal support requests. The primary goal of a help desk is to improve customer satisfaction by streamlining problem resolution and reducing response times. A help desk is critical for maintaining effective communication:

Ensuring customer loyalty

Supporting organizational productivity

An IT help desk supports internal employees, helping them address and fix IT-related issues.

In recent years, AI-driven help desk solutions have introduced tools that streamline IT service and support operations, including:

Automated responses

Chatbot support

Advanced data analytics

While AI help desks can assist in managing routine inquiries and improve response times, they complement rather than replace traditional human service teams.

Help Desk vs. Service Desk: What’s the Difference?

You may receive various responses if you ask IT professionals about the difference between a help desk and a service desk. Some may say there’s no difference; others may offer conflicting definitions.

The truth is that help and service desks are different, though they share some characteristics. Understanding the difference between a help desk and a service desk is essential because it affects their:

Approach

Responsibilities

Value to organizations

A help desk focuses on providing real-time support and user assistance on technical issues. It’s a point of contact for end-users (mostly customer end-users, but also internal employee end-users for larger organizations) to submit support queries and requests for additional IT-related assistance.

A service desk offers comprehensive support beyond technical issue resolution by:

Collecting customer feature requests and suggestions

Answering FAQs

Drafting knowledge bases

Providing contextual answers to new questions

A service desk is responsible for helping your organization provide end-user support on IT products and services to avoid service disruptions, as well as service-related questions and requests such as:

How do I do the X process?

How to add X new service?

Help Desk Characteristics

A help desk has a more limited scope of responsibilities around helping companies handle immediate customer support tickets. Help desk tickets can include:

Inquiries regarding billing

Software bugs

Questions on how to use a feature or interface

These tickets are time-sensitive because they usually involve customers who require this real-time assistance before they can continue using a product or service as intended. Therefore, help desks have more than enough on their plate just fielding these incoming requests reactively.

Here are additional characteristics of a help desk:

Approach: Resolves customer issues reactively through support ticket management; critical for fast-paced industries like IT and healthcare.

Scope: Primarily handles immediate, time-sensitive support requests, like:

Software bugs
Billing inquiries
How-to-use questions

Types of Requests: Focuses on incident management—resolving specific customer issues that prevent normal operations.

ITIL Framework: Utilizes the ITIL framework for incident management, helping teams detect, classify, and resolve issues systematically.

End-User Experience: Enhances user experience satisfaction through quick, reliable issue and ticket resolution.

Skills & Training: Help desk agents are trained in technical knowledge of products or services to handle immediate customer issues.

Collaboration & Integration: Collaborates with other teams on an ad-hoc basis, driven by the immediate need to resolve customer tickets.

Service Desk Characteristics

A service desk has a broad scope of responsibilities, managing the entire service lifecycle, including:

Building strategies for service requirements

Defining Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Creating service documentation

Navigating service transitions

Implementing an IT framework to maintain the quality of service operations continuously

Service desks are also an essential point of accountability for giving companies visibility into the causes of recurring issues.

Here are additional characteristics of a service desk:

Approach: Proactively identifies and prevents issues using data-driven strategies to improve service reliability and deflect service tickets.

Scope: Manages the entire service lifecycle, from defining service requirements and creating documentation to continuously monitoring service quality.

Types of Requests: Handles a broader range of service-centric responsibilities, including:

Incident
Problem
Change management
Knowledge management

ITIL Framework: Adopts a broader ITIL framework for IT service management, ensuring seamless customer relationships beyond resolving incidents.

End-User Experience: This focus is on creating a consistent, high-quality experience where users can resolve issues independently or by tackling the root cause of issues.

Skills & Training: Service desk agents require a more comprehensive skill set, including:

Technical IT management
Process management
Customer service

Collaboration & Integration: Coordinates closely with IT, engineers, and executives, serving as a central point of accountability for service reliability and performance.

AI Customer Experience

Omni Channel Customer Support

Help Desk Ticket Workflow

How to Scale Customer Support

What is a Support Ticket

What is a Help Desk

Help Desk Software Requirements

Helpdesk Best Practices

23 Most Common Help Desk Tickets and Solutions

1. Password Predicaments: The Help Desk's Most Common Problem

Password problems like lockouts and resets are easily the most common help desk tickets. One survey found that they accounted for 51% of all help desk tickets. If you have been working in IT long enough, you probably come across several requests regarding:

Password resets

Locked accounts

Logging issues in general

One user commented in this Reddit post that 75% of tickets received only in the first four days of the job were password resets. And it makes sense; users freeze when they can’t get into their accounts. So, to avoid typing the exact instructions over and over again, make sure to create a canned response on InvGate Service Management that asks the user to check the basics:

That they are typing the right user and password

That they’re using capitals when they should (and that Caps Lock is not enabled when it shouldn’t)

That the keyboard is set in the right language

If that doesn’t work, you can proceed with other steps, such as validating whether the account is unlocked, resting the multi-factor authentication (MFA), or manually resetting the passwords.

2. The Blue Screen of Death

Encountering the blue screen of death is the worst fear of any Windows user. It results in a loss of productivity and potentially the need to invest in new hardware. The blue screen signifies that the system has crashed and often makes the user fear that the computer is irreparably broken. They have no choice but to contact the help desk for assistance immediately.

But it’s not usually as bad as you think. You can still save a computer experiencing the blue screen of death.

Understanding the Blue Screen and Potential Solutions

The problem is usually related to the hardware or one of the drivers and can often be fixed by restarting the system. It’s important to remember that the blue screen of death usually includes information about the nature of the issue. Making sense of the screen’s text can often tell you whether a restart will be sufficient or if you need professional help to save your computer.

3. Can’t Connect a USB Device

It’s common for a help desk issue to involve a computer that won’t recognize a USB drive. Maybe the user has a vital file saved on their device and wants to import it onto their computer but is encountering issues.

There are many reasons why the computer will fail to recognize the device, including a problem with the USB port in question. Ask the user to check whether a different port recognizes the device.

Isolating the Issue: Is it the USB or the Computer?

You can also ask them whether the USB drive works on another machine. If it does, it’s probably an issue with the computer rather than the USB. If it’s a problem with the device itself, then the help desk can assist with investigating possible reasons and devising potential fixes.

4. The System is Running Slowly

Sometimes, users contact the help desk because their computer takes too long to execute tasks. A slow-running computer is frustrating and severely hampers productivity. This could be happening for several reasons, the most likely of which is that the user is running too many programs at once, which is making the computer slow down.

Optimizing Performance

The solution is to close down some of these programs to cause your computer to speed up. Another possible reason is that the laptop scans or updates in the background without the user’s knowledge. This plays a big factor in slowing down your computer. If possible, try rescheduling the updates outside work hours when they won’t impact the computer’s performance.

Consider using an uninstaller app to eliminate redundant files and reduce digital clutter on your device.

5. I Can’t Print My Work

One of the most common reasons users contact the help desk is printer problems. There’s nothing more frustrating than being about to go into a big meeting and being unable to print the agenda. A troublesome printer seems impenetrable, and users have no idea how to fix it. The solution could be as simple as turning the printer off.

It’s advisable to ask users to check this first. If the printer is on, there may be problems with the configuration, which will be harder to fix. If the problem is a configuration issue, someone from the help desk might need to go down and change the settings.

Common Hardware Issues and Solutions

Alternatively, the solution could be that the printer paper tray is jammed, the printer has run out of paper, or the printer has run out of ink or toner. These are problems that the user could fix themselves, or they could ask the Operations Manager to do it for them.

6. I Deleted an Essential File!

Sometimes, users accidentally delete important files from their computers, which is enough to make anyone tear their hair out. They worry they can’t return all that work is lost. But it’s not the end of the world.

Recovering Deleted Files: A Step-by-Step Guide

Often, these files can be recovered from the recycle bin or the trash, but other times, the bin may have been emptied, and it’s a little more challenging to get them back. First, check whether the user’s file is in the recycle bin. Secondly, get the user to search for the file on the system using the file name. If it’s located anywhere on your device,, then you should be able to find it.

Meanwhile, stop using your system for any other task to reduce the risk of your data being overwritten. If the file isn’t anywhere on the system, you may be able to recover it from the server backup for the user.

7. I Forgot to Save My Work!

Working for hours on a document and closing it but forgetting to save your changes is one reason users might be sent into a panic spiral and quickly contact the help desk. If the user has been using Microsoft 365, it should be easy to recover the work. The Autorecover feature saves work automatically, which should be enabled by default.

Recovering Unsaved Work

Microsoft Office will periodically save a version of your work in the background every ten minutes, so all you need to do is reopen the application I was using and access the file on the left-hand sidebar. If you can’t find a saved version of my work, you can search your computer for a temporary version of your file.

8. Slow Internet Connection

There are many reasons why users' Wi-Fi connection might be slow, the first of which might be their distance from the router. Another reason could be that the user has many browser windows open simultaneously, which will slow down their internet connection. Fixing these problems is relatively easy.

Troubleshooting Slow Internet

First, you could move closer to the router. Second, you could close down some of your windows and see if the internet speeds up. A slow internet connection is more of a problem if there is an issue with your internet service provider. You should check to see whether anyone else is experiencing problems. If it’s a service issue, the help desk may be able to contact the company about connectivity.

9. The Computer Just Shut Down!

Another reason users contact the help desk is having their computer shut down on them, which can be alarming and cause loss of work. If your computer shuts down unexpectedly, the most likely cause is the hardware overheating. When the device gets too hot, it shuts down to prevent further damage to the machine.

Preventing Overheating and Virus Infections

Make sure you are using your computer on a cool, flat, dust-free surface. If overheating isn’t the reason, the computer may be afflicted with a virus. The user should contact the help desk immediately to get help minimizing the risk and preventing cyber attacks in the future.

10. Losing Access to the Wireless Network

It’s frustrating when the wireless network at your office boots you out for no apparent reason. Internet connectivity is essential for many jobs today, and being unable to connect majorly disrupts productivity. The router is overloaded if a user has trouble connecting to the network.

Troubleshooting Lost Wireless Connection

In many cases, the same issues that lead to slow internet can result in losing wireless signal entirely. To check whether this is an issue with a specific device, a user could be asked to try connecting with a different device to troubleshoot the problem. The help desk could contact the broadband provider for assistance if it's not device-specific.

Sometimes or more often, users cannot share screens on Windows when using different collaboration channels such as:

Teams

Slack

The same problem persists on Mac too. Several reasons may include:

An outdated version of a screen-sharing application

A screen gets frozen

Sometimes old memories in the browser

Solutions

Get an updated version of the screen-sharing app and ensure you have enough bandwidth to accommodate the app. Also, ensure the recipient follows the same criteria frozen screens may be the problem of too many applications running or the lower bandwidth of your internet service.

Close as many applications or tabs as possible. Clear caches from your browsers or end browser processes.

For Windows, follow this step: Control + Delete + Alt

For Mac, follow this step: Quit + Function.

12. System Sound is Not Audible

Your PC sound must be constantly working, especially during a remote meeting. If your Windows encounters a sound problem, check the following solutions.

Solutions

Ensure the volume of a program is not on mute or silent. Sometimes, it is muted individually. Turn the sound on by right-clicking the tab and ‘unmute tab.’ Check your audio output device. Sometimes, Windows moves to a different output device if you have more than one output device. Click on the ‘Volume’ icon in the taskbar. Choose the output device you want to use for the audio.

13. Downloads Not Allowed on Enterprise-Owned Devices

A typical scenario of enterprises setting up admin control on their devices to ensure data security may pose challenges for remote employees accessing third-party applications on laptops or other devices. This may require admin permission, which may take days to access these applications.

Solutions

For example, if you use Microsoft 365, follow these steps:

Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center

Select Settings Select Org settings.

Opt for Services page Select User Consent to apps

Other restrictions may apply to third-party apps on enterprise devices. Ensure you have a workflow that allows instant collaboration with the admin and enables third-party access without delay.

14. Updates Required for Essential Apps

Your engineering team uses various apps. A lack of access to such apps, including Adobe or Asana, can become a common help desk alert. The problem is that employees do not have administrative rights to update these apps.

Solutions

Create notification alerts for IT administrators to update these apps ahead of time. By creating workflows for apps, you can send notifications, get the right person to address the issue, and reduce the help desk call time.

15. User Has Lost Access to the Shared Drive

There are many reasons why this could happen, but it generally involves the IT help desk mapping the network connection so the user's shared drive access is reinstated.

Solution

Ping the server to see if the user can connect to it. Then, you will have to help them remap their network drives so they can reaccess them.

16. Browser Not Loading Pages

When a browser fails to load pages, the issue may be related to browser cache problems or network issues. An overloaded or corrupted cache can prevent pages from loading correctly, while network problems can disrupt connectivity.

Solution

To address these common help desk problems and solutions, clear the browser’s cache and cookies to remove outdated or corrupted data. Restart the browser to refresh its operation. Check your network connection to ensure that it is stable and functioning correctly. These steps can resolve issues with browser page loading.

17. Issues with Peripherals

Requests related to peripheral devices (i.e. keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, docking station, webcam, charger, USB device, microphone, or others) often have simple solutions. Most of the time, it’s enough with unplugging and replugging:

Checking the connection is clean

Adding a USB hub

If none of these work, you can always replace the device.

18. User Management

There’s always a request about someone who can’t get into their accounts – and it isn't related to the password or the software – it’s probably about their user. So, the basic steps for this category are:

Resetting profiles

Resetting passwords

Changing security profiles

Troubleshooting Access Issues

Depending on the issue, you can also try fixing already approved permissions. If the permissions need to be changed or accepted, you can add an approver to the requests on InvGate Service Management (without any extra licensing cost) to keep the workflow going. Check if the user is connected to the VPN or if other requirements are needed to access what they’re reaching for.

19. Too Many Vendors Providing Support

A disparate network of vendors and avenues for escalations adds complexity and delay. A single source for IT help desk service with a breadth of expertise is the most effective way to:

Streamline processes

Speed up solutions

Lower costs

Further, a centralized source for your help desk allows all your data, trends, and reporting to be more easily accessed and analyzed. A technically oriented help desk can help you focus on the right data points to ensure your help desk is effective, including:

Average calls per store

Resolution time

Abandon rate

The more vendors and points of escalation you have, the harder it is to access that data, improve the help desk's results, and enhance your store associates’ experience.

20. Repetitive Calls and Resolutions

Many merchants report their help desks spend the bulk of their time resolving repetitive Level 1 issues, such as:

Password issues

Card reader errors

A common outcome of multiple scattershot help desks is a lack of visibility into service call patterns. As a result, no one recognizes that a solution has already been found for the issue, so new technicians recreate the same work.

Centralized Data for Smarter Problem Solving

Consolidating to a single help desk means centralizing your data collection, discovering if you have stores with exceptionally high numbers or reports, devices failing more than the others, and so on. You can also:

Track resolutions to ensure that a remedy works consistently

Automate solutions where you can

Provide training to resolve all Level 1 technicians

By constantly analyzing data and improving processes, you reduce calls, increase productivity and uptime, and solve your most common Level 1 incidents.

21. Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity issues are things that aren’t always easy to get to the source of the problem. Thus, you need a trained agent specialized in this kind of problem. It'd be ideal if they are writing knowledge-based articles with some basic troubleshooting for other agents to solve these tickets and for users to help them prevent phishing and other vulnerabilities.

22. Disjointed Knowledge and Systems Spread Across Different Platforms

Problem

The root cause of many help desk problems is having disjointed systems spread across different platforms. This is where integration comes in. Poorly integrated systems lead to inefficiencies and a lack of productivity, hurting everyone.

Solution

To avoid this, make your help desk a centralized system for storing and sharing information. That’s where the true beauty emerges. Add all customer and organizational information to your help desk knowledge base. Then, integrate your help desk with all of your other platforms for better work.

With your company’s data in one place, you can easily identify trends and problems. And you’ll smooth over communication. With a well-integrated platform, you can offer faster, streamlined support.

23. Procedures That Are Too Rigid Or Inflexible

Problem

Good customer service requires some flexibility. Your service team should have the freedom and knowledge to help customers. If too many tickets bog them down, they can’t support complex problems. When your platform is too rigid or inflexible, your team doesn’t have the power to solve customer problems effectively. It is crucial to find the balance between security and giving your team what they need to succeed.

Solution

Build some flexibility into your help desk platform. Empower agents to solve customer problems. They shouldn’t have to spend their whole day working through strict systems. They shouldn’t be constantly distracted by low-level support tickets. With an automated help desk like Capacity, help your agents eliminate 90% or more of Tier 0 and Tier 1 support questions.

Create room for them to handle the more complex stuff. Workflow capabilities guide help desk employees to help from managers and other team members.

Help Desk Benefits

Customer Experience Automation

SaaS Help Desk

Ticket Escalation

Self Service Customer Support

Service Desk Automation Ideas

Help Desk Benefits

Best Help Desk Software for Small Business

Generative Ai for Customer Support

Best Incident Management Software

Best Open Source Ticketing System

Why Do Businesses Need Help Desk Software?

Restructuring the IT service desk is the key to improving your organization's efficiency. With the right software, you can organize the help desks into multiple tiers. Tier zero can be a self-service portal.

The self-service portal allows customers to solve their problems as much as possible. This portal can provide customers with easy access to:

Relevant information

Possible solutions

Service catalogs

These resources empower customers to find answers and resolve issues independently. Technicians with the right expertise and skills can be included in tiers one, two, or three.

Help desk software for small businesses helps you analyze the level of incident tickets and manage them accordingly. It also allows IT teams to set up a channel for inter-level communication and escalations.

Categorizing Requests by Priority

A widely used feature for this process is ticket management. It helps you categorize tickets and set priorities. Using such tools, you can quickly assign them to suitable agents and keep track of the activity for a better understanding. Most service desks focus on the higher priority tasks and forget the trivial ones, which leads to:

Delays in response

Higher turnaround time

Breaches of the Service Level Agreement

Nevertheless, help desk software for small businesses helps you use support bots for quicker responses and set up tickets with a due date under the status of SLA.

Connecting Quickly with Interactive Voice Response

An effective help desk software for small businesses should offer telephony to associate calls with tickets and allow users to connect with your organization without staying on hold. Interactive voice responses (IVRs) help link the caller to the right person, avoiding the need to wait for a response. This ultimately results in customer satisfaction while improving your response time.

The telephony feature should also offer a call recording and voicemail option to ensure that you can replay the message and that customers can leave a voicemail message in the ticketing system.

Using Automated Responses for Efficiency

Every help desk software for small businesses that offers automated responses is an achievement. It automatically responds to customers with canned and relevant responses to avoid customer dissatisfaction. It not only saves you from manually calling them back with an update but also ensures that the customers do not feel taken for granted.

Automation ensures that your customers are well-fed with answers to all their queries immediately. Help desk software for small business also allows you to create flows to address the negative feedback and work on it by automatically de-escalating the issues raised.

Creating a Knowledge Base

Based on all the common IT help desk problems, you can create your knowledge base articles and integrate them with your ITSM platform. With the flexibility to enable self-serve functionality, it is easier for IT users to ask a specific question and get an appropriate link to launch a real-time resolution process.

Tips: Compile help desk problem tips or add more in a knowledge article and give access to them through a clickable link. The most flexible way to integrate ITSM chatbot with your collaboration tool and allow your users to get help instantly.

Update Knowledge Base: Not all IT help desk problems are equal. If a request is unique, it is significant that you update the knowledge history. The best thing about a modern IT help desk is that the machine learning model learns across the cases and keeps updating its database. As a result, a user can easily resonate with the problem and find a solution without launching an agent handover.

Conducting End-User Surveys

To better evaluate the help desk's performance IT managers should assess critical success factors like:

Processes

Technicians

Technology

To ensure effective service, consider evaluating:

Technicians: Measure responsiveness and ticket resolution speed

Processes: Assess ease of ticket submission, technician, and support delivery.

Technology: Evaluate the ease of communication tools.

Gather feedback with:

Individual Ticket Surveys: Sent to users upon ticket closure.

Annual or Semi-Annual Surveys: For broader, high-level feedback.

Empowering End Users with Self-Service

Users often encounter simple and repetitive issues that they can resolve themselves, relieving some of the burden on the IT help desk team. To help end users solve their problems, create a self-service portal that provides information and solutions and a service catalog where they can easily view and choose the services they need.

A self-service portal can make organization-wide announcements and keep users informed about issues, planned maintenance, etc.

Managing Routine Tasks Better

IT help desks often perform periodic tasks like changing a printer's toner or performing system checks. These tasks can be managed in two ways: Scheduling: A ticket for routine tasks is created at a set time and assigned to a technician.

Automating: Routine and simple tasks like password reset requests can be automated so technicians can address higher-priority tickets.

Generating Reports with Targeted Key Performance Indicators

To gauge help desk performance, more than one tell-all report will be needed for all stakeholders. Generate targeted reports and, for starters, measure the following:

First Contact Resolution: The percentage of tickets resolved upon first interaction with a user. SLA violations: The percentage of tickets in which the response or a resolution violated the SLA.

Backlog Tickets: The percentage of new tickets remaining unresolved.

Mean Resolution Time: The time taken on average to resolve a ticket.

User Satisfaction: The percentage of users happy with the support provided.

Presenting those metrics as scorecards is an effective way to monitor help desk performance at a higher level and can be particularly useful for strategists and decision-makers.

Increasing Collaboration and Communication

On certain occasions, technicians communicate extensively with the requester. They may spend considerable time switching between applications and typing out emails.

This overhead can be eliminated using a help desk tool that sends and receives emails from within the request. Canned text for routine responses and resolutions will reduce the need to type emails manually.

Freshdesk vs Zendesk

Salesforce Alternatives

Email Ticketing System

Freshdesk Alternatives

Help Scout vs Zendesk

Tidio Alternatives

Talkdesk Competitors

Help Desk Knowledge Base Examples

Use ChatBees’ AI Customer Support Software to 10x Customer Support Operations

A common help desk problem is slow resolution times. When customers submit tickets, they want a quick response, not to wait for days or weeks. If your help desk takes too long to resolve issues, it can lead to frustrated customers and hurt your business’s reputation.

With ChatBees' AI customer support, you can improve the speed and efficiency of your help desk operations, enhancing customer satisfaction and overall experience.