The Information Component: Help Desk Performance Measures

1
The Information Component Help Desk Performance
Measures

• A Guide to Help Desk Concepts, Second Edition

2
Information as a Resource

• Information is data organized in a meaningful way
• Data are raw facts that are not organized in a
  meaningful way
• Help desks that recognize information as a
  resource are more proactive than reactive
• A reactive help desk simply reacts to events that
  occur each day, while a proactive help desk uses
  information to anticipate and prevent problems
  and prepare for the future

3
Information as a Resource

• Proactive help desks rigorously analyze data and
  use the resulting information to justify other
  resources such as people, processes, and
  technology

4
Information as a Resource

• Help desks are not, however, all reactive or all
  proactive
• Many help desks are highly reactive but
  demonstrate proactive tendencies
• Help desks cannot move from a reactive state to a
  proactive state overnight
• The amount of data a help desk captures is
  determined by
• how much access to information management wants
• what tools the help desk has

5
Data Categories Captured by Help Desks

• Help desks that capture information divide that
  information into various data categories
• These data categories tend to be similar from
  help desk to help desk because most help desks
  perform similar processes
• This data, typically captured through fields in
  the help desks incident tracking or problem
  management system, enable help desks to track
  problems and requests measure team, individual,
  and process performances and perform trend
  analysis

6
Customer Data

• Customer data are identifying details about a
  customer, including the customers name,
  telephone number, department or company name,
  address or location, customer number, and
  employee number or user ID
• These data are stored in fields
• All of the fields that describe a single customer
  are stored in a customer record in the incident
  tracking or problem management database
• A field is a location in a database that stores a
  particular piece of data
• A record is a collection of related fields

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Incident Data

• Incident data are the details of a problem or
  request
• They include incident type, channel used to
  submit, affected component or systems, symptom,
  date and time incident occurred, date and time
  incident was logged, analyst who logged incident,
  incident owner, description, and severity
• These data are stored in fields, and all of the
  fields that describe a single incident are stored
  in an incident record in the incident tracking or
  problem management system

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Sample Trend Report
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Status Data

• Status data are details about an incident that
  are used to track incidents not resolved at level
  one
• Status data include incident status, the person
  or group assigned, date and time assigned, and
  priority

10
Resolution Data

• Resolution data describe how an incident was
  resolved
• It includes the fields required to track service
  level compliance and perform root cause analysis,
  such as the person or group who resolved the
  incident, resolution description, date and time
  resolved, customer satisfaction indicator, date
  and time closed, and root cause

11
Team Performance Measures

• Team performance measures assess characteristics
  such as
• Efficiency How quickly services are delivered
• Effectiveness How completely and accurately
  services are delivered
• Quality How well services meet customer
  expectations

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Help Desk Goals

• Help desk goals are measurable objectives that
  support the help desks mission
• Most organizations establish specific goals each
  year in an effort to clarify what analysts are
  supposed to focus on, eliminate conflicting
  goals, and encourage analysts to produce the
  desired results

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Service Level Agreements

• A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a written
  document that spells out the services the help
  desk will provide to the customer, the customers
  responsibilities, and how service performance is
  measured
• Senior management representatives from the help
  desk and from the customer community typically
  negotiate the terms of SLAs
• A number of different help desk tools are used to
  create SLA metrics, including the automatic call
  distributor (ACD) as well as the incident
  tracking and problem management systems

14
Customer Satisfaction Surveys

• Customer satisfaction surveys are a series of
  questions that ask customers to provide their
  perception of the support services being offered
• The two most common customer satisfaction surveys
  are event-driven surveys and overall satisfaction
  surveys
• Event-driven surveys are a series of questions
  that ask customers for feedback on a single,
  recent service event
• Overall satisfaction surveys are a series of
  questions that ask customers for feedback about
  all calls they made to the help desk during a
  certain time period

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Benchmarking

• Benchmarking is the process of comparing the help
  desks performance metrics and practices to those
  of another help desk in an effort to identify
  improvement opportunities
• Benchmarking services can be quite costly
• Companies benefit most from benchmarking when
  they identify opportunities for improvement
  rather than simply compare metrics

16
Individual Performance Measures

• The goals of measuring individual performance are
  to
• Set performance expectations
• Reward positive performance
• Set up a plan to improve weak performance
• Measure changes in performance throughout the
  year
• Document when an improvement plan is successful
  and when it is unsuccessful

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Individual Performance Goals

• Individual performance goals are measurable
  objectives for analysts that support the help
  desk mission
• These goals are communicated to analysts at the
  time they are hired and during performance
  reviews
• Certification is a document awarded to a person
  who has demonstrated that he or she has certain
  skills and knowledge about a particular topic or
  area

18
Employee Service Level Agreements

• An employee Service Level Agreement (employee
  SLA) is a document that clearly describes an
  analysts performance requirements and individual
  improvement objectives
• Employee SLAs are most effective when analysts
  are given the toolsin this case, reportsthey
  need to monitor their daily performance

19
Monitoring

• Monitoring occurs when a supervisor or team
  leader listens to a live or recorded call or
  watches an analyst take a call in order to
  measure the quality of an analysts performance
  during the call
• Used properly, monitoring is an excellent quality
  metric
• Monitoring is an excellent training technique
  because supervisors and team leaders can give
  analysts specific feedback on how they could have
  handled a call better and how they can handle
  similar calls in the future
• Used properly, monitoring encourages analysts to
  put themselves in the customers shoes and
  objectively assess the quality of their service
  from the customers perspective

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Skills Inventory Matrix

• A skills inventory matrix is a grid that rates
  each analysts level of skill on every product,
  system, and service supported by the help desk
• A skills inventory matrix is an excellent tool
  that management can use to determine hiring
  needs, develop training and cross-training plans
  for both individual analysts and the help desk
  team, and establish and measure how well analysts
  are attaining their improvement goals

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Skills Inventory Matrix
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Individual Contributions to Team Goals

• Although management directs most of the
  performance metrics analysts must meet, energetic
  analysts can suggest additional metrics, and
  supply other information that further
  demonstrates their contribution to the teams
  goals
• Management appreciates summarized information and
  can make decisions more quickly and in a less
  arbitrary manner when they have facts