Lead Service Desk

Key Accountabilities

• Lead, mentor, and manage a team of 17 IT support professionals across the IT Service Desk (11), Retail Service Desk (4), and Retail Support Analysts (2), ensuring high levels of service delivery and staff engagement.
• Ensure SLA and KPI adherence across all support teams, focusing on eliminating service disruptions and maintaining business continuity and the availability of applications, retail systems, and network services.
• Oversee day-to-day operations of all service desks, ensuring timely and effective resolution of incidents and service requests, with accurate and complete documentation.
• Implement and maintain ITIL-based service management practices, driving process maturity and consistency in incident, request, and escalation handling.
• Monitor, analyze, and report on performance metrics (monthly and quarterly), identifying trends, improvement areas, and service anomalies.
• Manage the IT Service Desk operational budget, ensuring optimal resource utilization, tracking cost savings, and reporting financial variances.
• Handle escalations—including sales-related and retail-specific issues—to minimize operational impact and ensure swift issue resolution.
• Coordinate shift planning and roster scheduling to ensure 24/7 service desk coverage, while addressing workload distribution, team availability, and backup readiness.
• Champion service improvement initiatives, conducting root cause analysis for recurring incidents and implementing permanent corrective actions.
• Maintain and expand an internal knowledge base, develop SOPs, and promote self-service resources to improve user independence and reduce ticket volumes.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders—including retail, sales, and business operations—to ensure IT support alignment with business needs and goals.
• Facilitate regular team training, promote technical certifications, and ensure standardization of troubleshooting practices.
• Communicate clearly with stakeholders, provide performance updates, and act as a liaison between users and support teams.
• Provide transparent updates to stakeholders on service performance, major incidents, and improvement plans.
• Conduct technical and functional training sessions for all team members; foster a culture of continuous learning and adherence to support best practices.
• Oversee and coordinate the Retail Service Desk and Retail Analysts’ daily activities, ensuring efficient first-level support, timely escalation, and high team performance aligned with business goals
• Serve as the first point of contact for all retail store IT issues, delivering immediate support to reduce downtime and avoid disruption to sales operations.
• Troubleshoot and resolve retail application issues (e.g., POS software errors, order syncing delays, transaction failures) to ensure seamless checkout and customer experience.
• Escalate unresolved or systemic issues to L2 support while providing complete context and impact details, especially where sales are directly affected.
• Collaborate with store managers, retail operations, and field technicians to resolve localized issues and ensure end-to-end support readiness.
• Monitor live retail system dashboards and proactively address alerts or degraded services before they impact sales transactions.
• Maintain a library of quick-resolution guides and runbooks tailored to common retail and POS incidents to empower fast first-contact fixes.
• Ensure that all first-level resolutions are documented, tagged, and fed into the knowledge base for future reference and team learning.
• Provide shift-based coverage during peak hours, holidays, and promotional events to ensure high availability of retail support.
• Work closely with IT infrastructure and software deployment teams to track recurring retail technology faults and drive service stabilization efforts.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Minimum of 7 years of experience in IT service management, with at least 2 years in a leadership role.
• Strong knowledge of ITIL framework and best practices.
• Proven experience in financial management and budget oversight.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams and manage multiple priorities.
• Experience in implementing or overseeing enterprise-level ticketing platforms and automation workflows

Experience

• Experience with service desk management tools (e.g., HPSM, CRM, BeyondTrust).
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
• Ability to adapt in a fast-paced, dynamic business environment.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional projects involving support, development, and infrastructure teams.

Skills

• Operating Systems: Proficiency with operating systems like Windows, Linux, and macOS. Knowledge of system administration tasks such as user management, permissions, and security.
• Networking: Solid understanding of IP addressing, subnets, DNS, DHCP, VLANs, routing, and switching.
• Service Tools: Proficient with HPSM, CRM, and BeyondTrust ticketing systems.
• IT Governance & Security: Knowledge of data privacy standards and compliance frameworks.
• Strong communication for stakeholder engagement.
• Proficient in workforce scheduling tools and operational reporting.
• Knowledge in RPA tools or chatbot solutions to enhance service desk productivity.