Handling incidents is the most common activity for a support engineer. Nearly every request coming from a customer is first logged as an incident. The incident is central to the service desk process. Some companies choose to differentiate between incidents and service requests. A service request is designed to deliver new standard services, or to remove access to standard services. For example, if a user requests a new software program on a machine managed by the IT department and the IT department is already supporting this software for other users, this can be logged as a service request. However, there is no need to differentiate between incidents and service requests. It is quite possible to handle a service request in the more general form of an incident.
The steps to handle an incident can be divided in three steps: logging the incident, resolving the incident, and closing the incident.
Depending on the method of reporting used by the user, the incident is logged during or after the issue is reported by the user. It is important that you get all the information before you start trying to solve the incident. A common mistake, especially for technically minded people, is to jump right to offering the most probably solution. This makes the user feel unheard and prevents the incident from being logged properly. The user normally calls or emails with a problem they have been experiencing and already have some idea about the cause of it. It is not said that they are right; however, it is more than polite to listen to their story first. Make sure to pay attention to what the user is telling you before doing too much and take notes as they speak. Ask questions if something is not clear and then write the issue down and repeat it to them asking them if you understood correctly. This is not possible if the user logged a request through a website or by email, of course, but the principle that you have to verify that you understood the problem is always valid.
Now you are ready to finish logging the incident in your tracking system. Take some time to select the proper priority and category for the incident. Doing this right the first time is very important, because most people do not go back to an incident to update the details and having this information entered is vital for planning your work and tracking things such as Service Level Performance.