State of the Service Desk Part 3: Metrics for Service Desk Management

The following metrics were most commonly mentioned as important to service desk performance:

Customer

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) (typically used in customer-facing interactions)
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) (typically used in employee-facing interactions)

Call Handling

• First call resolution (FCR)
• Call handling time (CHT)
• Call wait time (CWT)
• Abandonment
• Outstanding tickets daily, weekly, monthly

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

• Tickets currently in breach of SLAs
• Daily, Weekly, Monthly SLA violations

Capacity

• Calls per hour, day, week
• Employees per support analyst
• Cost per ticket
• Hours’ work logged per employee per day
• Recruitment pipeline

There was a range of maturity levels around metrics and SLAs.

At the lower end, one organization was bringing the service desk in house again and had no service levels in place yet. Another organization had only just brought in SLAs in the last six months as part of a service management professionalization program.

At the other end of the scale was a managed service provider who had more maturity and sophistication and was offering different SLAs for different customers, and even different SLAs for different pieces of equipment.

For those with SLAs, some wanted to improve their service levels while others were happy if they could maintain them while they added new services. Generally speaking, the organizations at the lower end of the maturity spectrum saw the most opportunity for improvement in service levels.

Next - Part 4: Increase in Demand

In late 2020 servicely.ai conducted 23 research interviews with service desk executives, managers and practitioners, to explore the State of the Service Desk in the post-COVID19 world.

The interview results were synthesised into a report that covers the following topics:

1. Executive Summary
2. Introduction
3. Service Desk Metrics
4. Increase in Demand
5. Transformation, Consolidation and Integration
6. Shift Left
7. Automation and Orchestration
8. Knowledge Management
9. People Management
10. Support Channels
11. Data Quality
12. Tools
13. Conclusion

This blog series will serialise the topics listed above. If you would like to discuss any of these topics please get in touch with us here.