Building A Winning Service Desk

Building a winning Service Desk

Author: Prakash Sharma QAI India Ltd

1 Abstract The traditional IT Help Desk has evolved over years into Service Desk, offering a range of services to offer a more business-focused approach. The Service Desk not only handles incidents, and Service Requests, it also provides a route for customers to interact with all IT processes, including change requests, procurement, service level management, and sometime extend beyond traditional IT Services. The overall value proposition of Service Desk has changed from simply responding to the needs of IT end-users, to realizing higher Value & helping organizations get a better ROI on ICT Investments. This paper gives a roadmap and key considerations for setting up an efficient Service Desk encompassing the traditional and evolving expectations from the new age Service Desk. The paper shall enable the Service Desk managers either planning to set up a Service Desk or managing a Service Desk to consider the implications for their organizations.

2 Why do you need a Service Desk? Let us first answer the basic question, as what is the need or are the key drivers for setting up a Service Desk.

2.1.1 End User Perception In most organizations, the compelling reason for setting up a Service Desk is to respond to endusers criticism of IT department’s effectiveness to respond to their problems. The Service Desk makes it possible to deliver a predictable and consistent Delivery of IT Service to end-users. The Service Desk also makes it possible to be objective in measuring Customer/User Satisfaction which goes a long way in devising short term and long term plans for the IT Function.

2.1.2 SPOC for growing needs While Service Desks have been a Single Point Of Contact for end users for IT incidents and Service requests, it is now evolving an organization-wide SPOC, many times for non-IT needs as well. Wherever there is a need for control and visibility, Service Desk that uses scaleable technology solutions with trained staff who can empathize with callers – provides the best solutions.

2.1.3 Infrastructure Availability Service Desks reduce downtime not only by coordinated and channelized (prioritized) efforts for faster resolution and thus ensuring a speedy resolution, but also by providing proactive/preventive information to users, which can greatly reduce the probability of repetition of such problems.

2.1.4 Higher Productivity and thus lower costs The cost of resolution at second and third level is multiple times the cost of a similar fix at first level. Utilization of staff at second and third levels is therefore a critical driver of overall efficiency. By separating the initial call logging, investigation and information gathering from technical troubleshooting, much higher utilization of second and third line staff can be achieved. The Service Desk is also a tool for objectively measuring the productivity of IT personnel and to determine the workload pattern. This further helps in manpower planning and scheduling for optimal utilization.

2.1.5 Input to key ITSM Processes The Service Desk provides valuable data on every item of hardware, software or professional service. The procurement authorities can use this data to determine the reliability or performance.

This data is also useful in planning the Capacity and Availability of various services and provisioning the Infrastructure accordingly. The Service Desk coordinates Changes and Releases as many Service Management Tools integrate the workflow of these processes in the conventional Service Desk tools. As illustrated above, implementing Service Desk becomes imperative for an organization wanting to implement full suite of ITSM processes.

3 Building a Service Desk Having established that efficient Service Desk is critical to business, it should be set up as a formal business improvement project with all key attributes like Ownership, Goals, and Deliverables etc clearly defined before the start of Project. Let us now discuss key considerations and Management decisions in order to setup a winning Service Desk.

3.1

Key Considerations • • • • • • • •

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3.2

Clearly establish and articulate needs in Business term. Define clear objectives and deliverables from the project Ensure Management commitment, budget and resources are available before thye project starts. Identify quick wins and communicate to all stakeholders. Involve Customer/User in the Project Definition and ongoing Reviews specially those who are outspoken and critical of the IT Support. Adopt a phased approach instead of a Big Bang. However, smaller businesses are better-off going for a big-bang approach. On-board the staff; take them in confidence, discuss with them the objectives and benefits. Educate and Train the staff o To be customer focused, o To be a team player, Service Desk is all about teamwork and will miserably fail in the absence of it. o Active listening, showing empathy with users, o Professionalism; not to be adhoc with users/customers, as they will come with unreasonable demands. Advertise, Sell & educate the new services and usage to users and Customers Identify key measurement matrices in customer understandable terms- e.g. Customer pickup response time, they must be advertised and demonstrated consistently for winning users trust. Standardize the user Interaction for a professional experience – e.g., have a standard welcome message

Key Management Decisions

3.2.1 Structure of Service Desk The term ‘Service Desk’ was originally conceived for IT support, however, it is now used to describe any Customer Support Center or part of a Support Center, which handles complex problem solving and associated processes. They are deployed in a wide variety of ways. The Service Desk Manager must decide a structure based on merits and the organizational needs.

3.2.1.1 Local Service Desk: Departmental Service Desks specializing in the support of certain types of internal or external customers and focused on very specific business objectives. Key considerations are: • Provide customized support for specific location-based groups or staff. • Staff can develop a deeper level of expertise specific to the location. • Providing support in multiple languages is easier if the Service Desk supporting each language group can be staffed from local native speakers of that language. • Each Service Desk provides backup to other Service Desks in the event that one should become unavailable (disaster, and so on). • Distributing the Service Desks creates a broader labor pool to draw from.

3.2.1.2 Centralised Service Desk: Dedicated corporate Service Desks consolidating expertise in handling internal and/or external customers and using advanced Service Desk tools with knowledge and asset management capabilities. Key considerations are: • Users know where to call for support. • Fewer staff may be required, which reduces training, equipment, and facility costs. • Consolidated management overview.

3.2.1.3 Virtual Service Desk: Large, linked networks of multi-tier support centers spanning geographies and businesses, and supported by expensive, integrated software to meet business requirements. Virtual Service Desk is increasing becoming a choice for globally spread Organization and the key considerations are: • This structure allows a “follow the sun” approach, where 24-hour coverage can be provided, with each Service Desk working only during the normal workday for its location. • As each Service Desk finishes work for the day, the calls are then routed to another Service Desk in a different time zone where the staff is just starting their workday.

3.2.1.4 Outsourced Service Desk: •

Large support centers (or a network of centers) built as generic facilities to provide Service Desk services for a wide range of clients who have chosen to outsource. In the main they focus on IT support and use expensive system solutions, although these have less functionality customization but more commercial options.

3.2.2 Communication Method, tools and technologies The Service Desk provides a communication interface between users and the IT department. The selection of technologies and methods of communication is thus a key consideration for Service Desk.

3.2.2.1 Telephone The most common, and often the easiest method of communicating with the Service Desk remains the telephone. Opportunities for clearer definition and explanation of an issue exist when the customer reporting the issue is interacting directly with the Service Desk analyst. The sporadic development of applications such as IVR, ACD, CLI, CTI etc., has revolutionized the Service Desk. While the tools go a long way in improving service efficiency and agent productivity, an improper implementation may prove to be counter productive for user perception for over-complex options and messages repeated too often. Managers must carefully evaluate the technology options while implementing them, so as not to irritate the users.

3.2.2.2 Self-service and Web-Based forms A Web-based ticketing system enables employees to initiate support requests and monitor ticket status without calling the Service Desk. This feature can result in improved productivity by minimizing call workload with self-service options for end users, ultimately saving Service Desk support staff valuable time. The advantages includes greater Customer Satisfaction by allowing users better transaction control, low cost compared to the Service Desk manpower costs; it works beyond office hours 24X7; and it can service a very large number of users simultaneously. The Service Desk Manager must work for following attributes for a successful self-service Web • Customer should be able to determines entry, exit and navigation to Service Desk • Communication and Awareness among users • Excellent FAQ’s (Frequently Asked Questions) so that users can be assured of a high hitrate for the most likely issues. • Look and feel that is compatible with other facilities made available to the user. • Avoidance of unnecessary technical jargon. • Metrics for usage and improvements • Robust methods of keeping the information on the self-service site live and updated •

3.2.2.3 Email E-mail is an increasingly common method of communicating with a Service Desk. Email makes it easy for customers to submit calls to the Service Desk; however, this method can be used only for less urgent calls. If all broadcast emails originating from the IT department are routed through the helpdesk it provides a consistent interface for users, and add to positive perception. For Service Desks which work at capacity or near-capacity at peak times, the encouragement of e-mail can be useful in helping to stagger the load and enable questions to be addressed during the lean hours of the day. However, the ability to respond well to email requires different set of skills. The biggest drawback is that it is essentially free-format; therefore, an e-mailed call may not provide a structured report of all the symptoms of an issue or the details of a request. However, e-mail forms can be developed for users to use to document all the relevant information. Large-scale call centers are now investing in mass e-mail-handling software to perform autoresponse, auto-categorization and auto-forwarding tasks.

3.2.2.4 Mobile devices The use of mobile devices and personal digital assistants will, in some cases offer remote workers even more choices in the means of accessing help. Broadcasts of planned maintenance, service interruptions or other messages can be done thru mobile devices. Modern Service management tools use the mobile devices for auto forwarding and auto escalation of tickets to the relevant support group/personnel.

3.3

Define the Scope and Service Levels for the Service Desk

Define and agree on the scope of Service Desk with Customer and users. The scope of Service Window should be in line with the SLA agreed with the customer. The Scope must be widely available to the users so that they are aware of what to expect (and what not to expect) from the Service Desk. Some of the key considerations while defi ning the scope are: • Define the Service Desk Coverage Window • Days and Hours Covered (Weekdays, Business Hours etc.) • Type of Non-Business hours support (No support or only web/phone support) • Time zone etc • Supported Business Locations, Geographies and Languages • Product/Platform and services – clearly define all facilities covered, e.g. Office Automation equipments like Fax machine covered/not covered.

• Clearly define types of contacts supported • Standard contacts for incident Calls, Service Requests etc. • Others e.g. consumable replenishment in printers etc. The SLA must clearly document the expected Service Level from the Service Desk. In case the SLA does not specifically mention the service levels applicable for Service Desk, the Manager must agree with customer on parameters like Call Hold, Incident Response etc. and must widely publicize them among the users. Along with the Service levels, the Service Desk Manager must also decide and agree with customer on Charges - Per Call, T&M, Service Contracts, free service etc.

3.4

Plan the staffing of Service Desk

A Service Desk is only as good as the employees staffing the Service Desk are. The Service Manager has to balance the cost and Delivery from the Service Desk and as the staffing is one of the primary cost component, planning the headcount and profile of people manning the Service Desk becomes a key consideration. Accordingly, the Service Desk Manager must decide on the Skill Set, Roles and Headcount for Service Desk considering the following factors as input: • Scope of Service Desk • Communication Methods – Phone, email etc. • Structure of Service Desk • Customer Expectations and SLA signed with customer on Call hold, Incident response and resolution targets etc. • Projected Call volume for Voice, emails tool alerts etc. Projects the call volume by hours, weekdays etc., to determine load pattern and thus the shift roster needs. • Budget and resources • Complexity of IT Infra The staffing once arrived must be constantly reviewed and realigned by doing trend analysis on SLA achievements, Customer feedback, work load pattern, call hold, total answer time etc.

4 The Winning Prescription Once all the key decisions listed above are taken, the Service Desk Manager must now focus on gaining the edge and make a winning Service Desk

4.1

Manage customer expectations

Customer satisfaction is the state of mind that customers have about a Service or a Product, when their expectations have been met or exceeded over the time. Hence it is paramount to manage the Customer expectations actively, in order to achieve Customer Satisfaction. Achieving Customer Satisfaction is thus a three-step process – identify customer, understand and set the expectations and meet or exceed the expectations.

4.1.1 Identify the “Customer” and User expectations The Service Desk Manager must clearly identify who are the customers and users and their needs from the Service Desk and IT. For Customer is someone who has responsibility for the funding of the service and hence will be more focused on Value for money. Users who actually uses the Services from Service Desk on a day to day basis will be not be concerned on value for money against high availability and Service Levels. Among user community also different users will have different needs. An IT department running a conventional IT support desk in a BPO Organization has to satisfy the Business Head who runs a Line of Business, a Process Manager who is responsible for an operational line unit and the team leaders. In addition, there may be hundreds of agents as well as a clutch of senior lead users, and supervisory staff. Every one of these different roles has a slightly different requirement of a Service Desk.

4.1.2 Set Expectations Managers need to be clear about whom they want to satisfy and to what extent. Trade-offs are inevitable and need to be considered carefully. Such Trade-offs must be proactively identified to the extent possible and must be signed-off with Customer. The SLA must ideally reflect such trade-offs (e.g. different category of users having different service priorities and having different Service levels) and must be publicized among users. However, despite care, not all business priorities can be reflected in the SLA and hence the Service Desk agents must understand the Business context and be sensitized for such exceptions.

4.1.3 Demonstrate Service Where quantifiable targets have been set, care is needed to ensure that they can be met as sufficiently & frequently, as to be believed by the users – and their managers. Special care has to be taken publishing service targets which users can, in an even partial way, measure for themselves. For example, a promise to answer the telephone within 10 seconds is much better understood by a user than a commitment to resolve 80 percent of problems without external escalation. The caller who waits on-hold for over a minute in three successive calls will simply conclude that the Service Desk’s claims are not credible. Some large-scale call centers, unable to provide a live agent immediately, calculate an estimated queuing time and advise the caller so that he or she can decide whether or not to hold on. Wise suppliers construct the algorithm so as to be most likely to improve upon the estimated delay; excellent expectation management.

4.2

Knowledge Management for Service Desk

Data are the individual known details; Data becomes information when structured in a particular way, and knowledge is the outcome when insight, context & experience are added to it. Successful leveraging of knowledge is the combination of the ‘involvement of trained staff with true insight and experience, with the delivery of relevant data and information into their hands, using Modern Service Management Tools. Some on the Knowledge Management aspects that are relevant for the Service Desk Managers are:

4.2.1 User identification The ability of Service Desk to identify the calling user and to retrieve key attributes without having to ask the caller can not only drastically reduce the processing time and improve productivity, but can enable a personalized user response resulting in high Customer Satisfaction. Much of this data is traditional for Service Desks and is now regularly auto-filled through screen popping CTI applications. The challenge however is to keep the information regularly updated.

4.2.2 Configuration Database The Servi ce Management tool must assist the agent to look into the caller’s circumstances without disrupting the customer dialogue. The agent should be able to see what equipment and software is installed, how it is configured and networked to other components and system elements. The key here is to implement Configuration Management Process and the ability of Service Managemnt tools to link the Configuration Items with users.

4.2.3 Transaction History A significant proportion of issues raised by IT users have some relevance to a previous query and hence it is important to keep updating the call diary or the transaction history for the user. The agent should be able to access the caller’s previous calls, or previous calls on a similar problem, or for the same asset.

4.2.4 Customer Needs and Requirements The requirement for IT support are captured in a Service Level Agreement and if it mandates a differential service level for various categories of users, the Service Desk must maintain user information indicating service/priority category. The implications of Service Levels must be stored widely in escalation thresholds and penalty trigger-points all over a Service Desk system.

4.2.5 Known Error Database As the ITIL best practices suggest, IT Service Desk, must have having access to known errors and resolution data. Modern knowledgebase uses navigation methods to find quickly the answer to multi-attribute questions and might even use advanced model-based or case-based retrieval of specially built, and constantly updated archives. It is now possible to buy pre-built third-party problem resolution databases or knowledgebase for widely distributed products.

4.3

Communication within Helpdesk

In a multi-Shift Service Desk, disseminating information, knowledge and work instructions to everyone is a tough challenge. The risks of not keeping everyone involved and informed are high, ranging from low morale, to analysts providing inaccurate or obsolete information to users/customers. Though communication within the Service Desk is something that will be largely driven by the specific needs, a few of the critical considerations are: Create a Shift Handover Process – Have a standard agenda and template for Shift Handover Notes. Have a regularly updated Bulletin Board; preferably Web based having some fun content besides having all Service Desk critical updates. Have formal review meetings with a fixed agenda such as: Daily: Exceptions/SLA Breaches, all open incidents Weekly: SLA Reporting, major Incidents, Service Breaches, complaints

5 Emerging Trends and Implication for Managers 1.

Email and Web Self-Help will Grow in contrast with voice calls: implications for Service Desk includes changing skill set needs and more focus on Knowledge Management tools and Processes.

2.

Increased globalization and smart sourcing of IT Services is resulting in increasing number of Multinational and multilevel Service Desks servicing customers outside there own domestic market. With increased use of automation and remote management tools, the remote Service Desk is becoming more acceptable. This brings opportunities to save cost and ability to scale up/down, matching the Business needs. The challenges on the other hand include language & cultural issues resulting in inability to empathize with users. While technology does provide an answer enabling skill based routing, care must be taken in making the agents assimilate with various cultures and ethos.

3.

While Outsourcing has been around for quite some time, SmartSourcing is a new phenomenon having strong appeal that many businesses are looking at. The Organisations were earlier out for outsoursing with the objective of focusing on their core competence and achieving cost savings. However, complex contracts, inflexibility and non being able to conclusively prove the cost saving, Organisations are now moving towards selective sourcing. This is due to the greater penchant of firms to engage in selective outsourcing or “smart sourcing” or “functional outsourcing”. Client firms thus

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recognize the need to engage multiple vendors to manage all of their outsourcing needs. Besides the original advantages of focus and cost savings, organizations realizing th following additional benefits Vendor Specialization ? Contractual Flexibility Domain Expertise – breakdown the tasks and give them to the experts in their field The flip side however is that the Service Desk will now have more number of Service Providers or the 2/3rd line of supports to manage. The Service Desk Managers must proactively strengthen the documentations, escalation procedures, tracking and review mechanisms and underpinning contracts so that the “front end” user service is not affected.