Officer: Lead: End User Support Engineer (post level 10/11) - (998) at University of the Free State

Duties and responsibilities:

People Management    

• Ensure spearheading a team of support agents providing 1st line technical support through telephonic and remote desktop connection sessions.
• Help service desk agents to resolve support tickets (Incident/Task) by acting as a point of escalation for difficult/advanced technical support issues.
• Handle all advance support issues when service desk agents have exhausted all possible solutions.
• Identify and highlight best practices in support and contribute this to a knowledge base system.
• Participate in client meetings for escalated issues to provide faster resolution.
• Motivate and assist team members in reaching individual and team goals for quality, productivity and user satisfaction.
• Ensure team members resolve all assigned support tickets courteously and in a timely manner.
• Coordinate the service desk team members in their daily duties of attending to clients who come to make inquiries.

Create a mode of operations to be adhered to by team members in order to maintain a good routine and orderliness.

• Delegate specific service desk responsibilities to team members to create specialisation and increase service delivery pace.
• Observe service desk operation techniques to determine how effective they are and implement new techniques if necessary.
• Review performance reports, service improvements, service quality, and processes.
• Provide management and performance reports.

Client Relationship Management    

• Facilitate good customer service culture in team members.
• Develop a strong working relationship with clients, partnerships, and colleagues.
• Provide a structured, informative and supportive experience with timely and clear communication.
• Deliver regular high-quality communications with End users during service interruptions to their systems, e.g. outages, reductions, etc.
• Focus on managing communications across End users and IT supporters to ensure that incidents are dealt with by priority and End-user needs.
• Evaluate and assess service delivery performance metrics.
• Monitor and analyse customer needs, feedback and services rendered to determine the levels of service delivery.
• Manage the performance of services to customers.
• Ensure that service levels are achieved in line with SLAs and that user expectations are met or exceeded.
• Build services relationship with customers and conduct service reviews for key customers.

Incident Management    

• Manage the life cycle of all incidents that affect the service provided to End users, allocating Incidents that cannot be resolved by the service desk to second or third-line support resources and coordinating the response of these resources.
• Manage support tickets escalation which ultimately results in client satisfaction ratings.
• Follow-up on all support tickets to ensure team members align themselves with operational SLA's (Service Level Agreements).
• Maintain a high level of service delivery by monitoring all assigned technical support tickets/request.
• Monitor logged incoming incidents and requests, to ensure that these are diagnosed and escalated properly.
• Liaise with the Service Desk Manager/SLA and OPS Manager to escalate major incidents for them to get the required attention.
• Monitor incident queues to identify potential SLA breaches and contact relevant supporter or expediter within the groups to highlight any key SLAs that may or has breached.
• Manage critical customers incidents, associated with customer communication, activities and any appropriate escalations.
• Provide information about incidents analysis and KPls.

Inherent requirements:

•  Relevant BTech degree on NQF level 7 in Information Technology/Technical Support or a closely related field, or a three-year national diploma on NQF Level 6 in Information Technology/Technical Support or a closely related field.
• Minimum two (2) years’ relevant working experience related to the duties and responsibilities. 
• Valid Driver’s licence Code 08

Recommendations:
Knowledge of:

• How software and operating systems work.
• IT services theories and best practices.
• MCSE/Apple Certified Professional/MCSA/MCP would be advantageous. 
• Must be a team player and able to work collaboratively with and through others.
• Acute business acumen and understanding of organizational issues and challenges.
• Familiarity with project management approaches, tools, and phases of the project lifecycle. 
• Change management certification or designation desired.
• A+/N+ Certification.
• ITIL

Competencies
Required competencies: 
Results Orientated:

• The ability to be reliable, responsible, dependable and to fulfil obligations. 
• The ability to stick with tasks, not give up, and overcome obstacles in completing one’s task.

Strategic thinking

• The ability to focus on details, work towards perfection, and approach work in a neat and organise manner. 
• The ability to carefully analyse information and use logic to address issues and problems at work.

Business Acumen:

• The ability to adhere to rules and strictly follow work regulations.
• Proficient in using MS Office. 

Leading:

• The ability to be cooperative with others, display a good-natured attitude, and encourage people to work together.
• The ability to maintain high levels of personal motivation, energy and enthusiasm.

Building coalitions:

• The ability to interact with others and establish personal connections with people.
• The ability to make decisions through consultation, collaboration, and working with close supervision

Assumption of duties:
1 August 2023 / as soon as possible.

Closing date:
13 June 2023.