4.1. Problem Discovery

Problems can be discovered either before they occur or after they occur. Discovering conditions that will eventually cause a problem—before the problem occurs—allows the service center to be proactive and to fix those conditions before a customer suffers any downtime. If you don't discover those conditions in advance—if you become aware of them only after they create a problem—then you are forced to fix the problem reactively. Many service centers, or help desks, today operate in a 100 percent reactive environment. This is a tough environment to work in because you are constantly putting out fires, which can be very stressful. If you are supporting external customers, there may not be much you can do to proactively eliminate problems in their environments. If you are supporting internal clients, there are many opportunities to be proactive and eliminate problems.

In a reactive service center, customers discover most of the problems. The customer is working, something bad or unexpected happens, and the customer reports it to the service center. The service center reacts by immediately setting out to isolate and fix the problem. Problems can also be discovered after the fact and reported by IT resources, the service center agents, and monitoring tools. Again, a problem occurs, it is discovered, and then it is reported through various access mechanisms.