12+ Best Help Desk Interview Questions & Answers

Looking to get prepared for your upcoming help desk interview? Look no further, we’ve compiled the absolute best help desk interview questions and answers to help you prepare and ace your upcoming interview with the support team.

The help desk is becoming one of the most widely used resources inside digital or brick-and-mortar free businesses. For example, businesses like Fidelity can provide their customers with exceptional service because they reduce the number of branches they have and rely heavily on help desks.

Why Help Desks Are Important

you must understand the reason why help desks are important to the business. This will help you mold your conversations with the hiring manager. Primarily, help desks are there to act as the service layer for many businesses. Service layers used to exist with a person standing in front of you, maybe at a retail store, asking if you need assistance. But as the digital age took hold and more businesses started to operate nationally without agents, help desks became crucial.

The help desk is a vital part of the business because it upholds the customer's relationship with the business. A poor experience with a help desk means that a customer might leave, causing retention issues. If you do an outstanding job, though, the customer could stay for a considerable amount of time, increasing revenue and profitability.

What The Interviewer Is Looking For

Candidates who are interviewing for help desk positions need to exude a certain quality of personal behaviors and professionalism that make them a perfect fit for the help desk. Primarily, those qualities would include:

• Great communication skills.
• Ability to be personable and have “people skills”.
• Ability to strategically “think on your feet”.
• Knowledge of computers, IT and technical systems.
• Knowledge of the business or service offering.

4 Behavioral Interview Questions & Answers

Below are some of the questions that you might be asked for the help desk that are behavioral in nature; this means that the interviewer is looking to understand who you are, how you execute, and what level of experience you have.

1. Why is the help desk important?

The help desk is important because it acts as the connector between the brand and the customer. The relationship beyond the product or service. It’s vital because this decides our customer retention in a way. And the retention of our customers is important to our annual revenue and profitability.

2. How do you handle stress?

It’s important to stay calm and empathize with whatever moment is causing you stress—especially when dealing with customers. It would help if you were mindful of putting yourself in their position and keeping that top of mind not to stress yourself.

3. What makes great leadership at the help desk?

Great leadership at the help desk is someone who is going to be able to commit to their work, exude excellence by being friendly, helpful, personable. Someone who is really going to try and connect with the customer, that’s important. That shows leadership.

4. What is a mistake you made, and how would you correct it going forward?

A mistake I made was often not asking the customer at the end of the help desk call if there was something else I could help them with. It was an assumption I made that all of their issues were handled. I have to remember to go through my checklist of finalization questions before hanging up in the future.

3 Situational Interview Questions & Answers

Situational interview questions will be asked when you are interviewing at the help desk. Situational questions give you an example scenario, in this case, talking with a customer. Then answering how you would handle that given scenario.

1. How would you deal with an upset customer?

you must show a lot of patience and empathy for upset customers. Even if they were upset at me, I would be welcoming because I represent the brand, not just myself. If there were something I did incorrectly, I would own that as well. It’s important to take ownership and accountability over the mistakes made and be sure that they’re communicated to the customer. If I can calm them down, I would then proceed with the rest of the support call.

2. If a customer came to you asking for technical help and it was something you didn’t know, what would you do?

If they asked a question related to something technical that I didn’t have any knowledge about, I would do a few things. I would ask the customer to go onto a brief hold to ask someone near my desk if they knew. If they did not know, I would ask the customer if they wouldn’t mind me calling them back in 10 minutes or seeing if I could transfer them to one of our managers who may know more specifically. The latter is the best option if a manager is available.

3. What would you do if a customer wanted to file a complaint against you while in the call?

If a customer felt as though I was not performing my duties correctly, I would welcome that feedback and tell the customer I am sorry for any frustration or confusion that I caused them. I would tell the customer I am truly trying my best and appreciate them being a customer of ours. I would then transfer them to a manager, and hopefully, we could amicably deal with the situation before having to file a complaint.

5 Help Desk Specific Interview Questions & Answers

These interview questions are ones that you might be asked to understand how much experience you have in the help desk department.

1. What is a support ticket?

A support ticket is a request by a customer that is asking for assistance. This can be by phone or email. It is an ID number usually associated with the issue; once resolved, the ticket is archived.

2. What is a happiness rating?

A happiness rating is the rating of the team’s performance overall. It is a cumulative score of all of the customer feedback we’ve received. We should aim for a 98% or higher customer happiness rating.

3. When should you solicit a feedback request?

Feedback should be solicited after each support request is resolved.

4. When does the team meet every week?

The team should meet either at the first of the week or the end of the week to discuss performance. What should be covered is any experiences that should be sent over to the leadership or product and marketing teams.

5. Why are communication skills important at the help desk?

Communication is the most vital skill here. More so than any other department. We need to clearly communicate steps that a customer might need to take to resolve their issues. And do so in a friendly way that helps the customer feel alleviated of their frustrations.