Nowadays helpdesk support analysts are required to do more than just picking up calls and escalate problem tickets to the next level of support, helpdesk is given more access to perform more things like,remote troubleshooting, remote software installation / upgrade, mail setup, rebooting servers... etc, since it is more expensive having people / field services on-site, more power is given to helpdesk to do more things to save costs, and only send people on site if there is really such need eg: Hardware failure. It is not easy to support through the phone / remote access, and manage fussy end users as you think, communication skills and problem handling skills are very important as you will be dealing with someone, who is not able to carry on with theri business due to IT issues and there is a financial impact to them if their system is not up, so you can imagine that their tone, which wouldnt be friendly most of the time (and especially they are the customers,they will always think they are right), so it is a good training for you too. Another good thing about helpdesk is, you got a bird eye view on the business process in the support environment, you understand which are the people who can perform certain tasks on a problem, and how do you route a problem ticket which is halfly solved to another team to follow up, you are very much doing the coordination for a big IT issue.

In term of career development, i would think that if you wanna go for a higher level of support, second level or third level, you may treat it as a stepping stone,
Good try, you get a start at an MNC i think. Well, i used to be in the helpdesk environment last time, last time, other than doing the things i mentioned above, i was required to update knowledge base for end users (one of the projects to reduce customer calls for standard issues), weekly conference call with Helpdesks in Europe, North America.. etc to discuss priority 1 issues.. and so on..

This post has been edited by montell81: Jun 2 2006, 01:17 PM