Forgetful staff plague IT help desks

Lost passwords account for 20 percent of calls.

A new analysis of almost two million help desk calls from over 20 large multinational companies has revealed that forgetful staff are making the lives of IT support staff a misery.

The research, which formed the core of SupportSoft's IT Headache Index, found that five groups of problems account for 75 percent of calls to the IT help desk.

Top of the list were forgotten passwords, which were responsible for 20 percent of calls.

Second were 'system issues', ranging from hardware failures and memory problems to overall performance, which caused 16 percent of calls.

'Enterprise applications' accounted for 16 percent of calls, including custom applications.

'Connectivity issues', including remote access set-up and VPN complaints, made up 12 percent of calls, while 'email problems' were responsible for 11 percent of calls.

"While we cannot automate the human memory to make it work without fail, we can help companies proactively address the common problems leading to most of the calls into the help desk," said Anthony Rodio, chief marketing officer at SupportSoft.