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Showing posts with the label Service Desk

Desktop as a Service

In today’s world of DevOps, development, deployment, operations and support are being done at lightning speed compared to methodologies employed just several years ago. With the implementation of “Infrastructure as Code” (IAC), a type of IT infrastructure, development and operations teams can automatically manage and provision through code rather than using a manual process.  A part of this movement includes, “Desktop as a Service” (DaaS) which is a cloud service where the back-end of a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is hosted by a cloud service provider. The service is purchased on a subscription basis. In the DaaS delivery model, the service provider manages the back-end responsibilities of data security storage,   backup, and upgrades. DaaS has a   multi-tenancy   architecture which means a single instance of a software application can serve multiple customers at one time. Each customer is called a tenant. Tenants may be given the ability to customize some parts of t

Trends Influencing the Service Desk

Trends such as mobile computing, consumerization (also known as bring your own device (BYOD), and cloud computing are having a dramatic impact on the service desk and present great opportunities for discussion within your organization. Considerations for the Service Desk and other IT support teams:  How does service catalog management support these trends? What about SACM and change management? What improvements might need to be made to incident and problem management and request fulfillment? What role does the service desk play in all of these processes? How does the service desk interface with business relationship management and service level management relative to these trends? The future is now.

DevOps and the Service Desk

DevOps is a cultural and professional movement that stresses communication, collaboration, and integration between software developers and IT operations professionals. DevOps responds to the demands of application and business unit stakeholders for an increased rate of production software releases. Driven by the adoption of agile development processes by IT development organizations, DevOps aims to help organizations rapidly produce quality software products and services. Although the “Ops” in DevOps is often viewed as the technical and application management professionals that deploy and manage applications and their associated infrastructure (e.g., application servers, web servers, and database servers), the service desk supports the goals of DevOps in a number of ways. A goal of DevOps is to produce more frequent software releases. This means the service desk must be prepared to handle a faster rate of change. One way to ensure the service desk is prepared is to engage the serv

Value of the Service Desk

Respond more quickly to urgent business needs and incidents while simultaneously providing stable, secure and predictable IT services, despite the fact that the systems on which the business operates are typically fragile and hostile to change.   Sound familiar?   Improving operational reliability and communications between ITSM functions and processes begins at the Service desk. I have to quote a coworker of mine at this point “All things flow through incident management”.   The service desk is the eyes and the ears of the IT organization.   If you think about it and utilize the service desk from both an operational and tactical perspective , ensuring that all of the other ITSM processes and functions are feeding accurate and up to date information and data that the service desk needs, they can become the glue that that binds the entire organization together in alignment with both IT and strategic business   goals.   A single great process alone cannot deliver as much value to th

National Customer Service Week October 7-11

It’s one of my favorite times of year…time for us to get ‘ United through Service ,’ which is this year’s theme for National Customer Service Week, according to the International Customer Service Association. National Customer Service Week (NCSW), held October 7-11 in 2013, is designed to raise awareness of customer service and the vital role it plays within an organization. It is also an opportunity to say thank you to those who work in customer service for a job well done. Organizations take part in NCSW by hosting events in their workplace.  These events can be large or small, serious or fun, they can be held all through the week or just on one day…. It's up to each organization to decide how to celebrate. Many organizations use this week as an opportunity to provide training and refocus the efforts of their staff on the needs of their customers. In IT, a common misconception is that the Service Desk is responsible for customer satisfaction because of its role

The Service Desk of the Future

The Service Desk of the Future Complimentary Webinar Join us on Thursday, October 17th at 11am (Eastern) Panelists: Donna Knapp, ITSM Academy, Curriculum Development Manager Every aspect of the service desk has changed in recent years: people, processes, and technology; the use of data, information, and knowledge; and, perhaps most dramatically, users. Today’s technology users are increasingly savvy and self-sufficient. In this session, we explore the strategies companies are using to address trends like social support, mobile support, self-service and self-help, BYOD, and cloud computing.  Attendee will also participate in a debate about the role of the service desk in the future and walk away a checklist of considerations to consult when developing future-state road map for their own service desks.

Unsourcing

I recently read a very interesting article in the June 2, 2012 Technology Quarterly edition of The Economist magazine.     There is a new trend in technical and customer support that relies heavily on the contributions from actual customers, “Unsourcing” involves the use of online communities to enable peer – to – peer support among users.   Instead of speaking to a paid internal or outsourced service desk analyst, customers post issues to a central forum and wait for answers from experienced users.     To create unsourced communities, companies are setting up discussion groups on their website or leveraging social networks like Facebook and Twitter.  As you can imagine, the savings can be considerable. Gartner estimates that user communities can reduce support costs by as much as 50%.   When Tom Tom, a maker of satellite navigation systems, switched to social support, members handled 20,000 cases in the first month , saving the firm around $150,000.   Best Buy has instituted an

ITIL at the Service Desk

Trends such as mobile computing, consumerization (also known as bring your own device (BYOD), and cloud computing are having a dramatic impact on the service desk. These trends are prompting many organizations to evaluate and improve their existing service management processes , or implement new processes where needed, and to rethink the role the service desk plays in implementing, executing and improving these processes. It would be easy to look at these trends and think of them only as the deployment of new technologies but there are bigger considerations at stake. What services are these technologies enabling? What business processes do these services underpin? How is the business impacted when these services are interrupted? An important key performance indicator (KPI) for service catalog management is whether the service desk has the information that it needs about those services and their associated interfaces and dependencies. This is because the service desk plays

First Call Resolution

I was recently asked "Do you have an average for the service desk of first call resolution?  We are trying to set a target for the team and I cannot find any data which gives me any indication what a good target would be."   First call resolution (sometimes called "first contact resolution" or FCR) is an industry recognized metric for the performance of the Service Desk.   Analysts are measured on their ability to restore service to a user and close an incident during the first call or contact.     This is a difficult metric to benchmark across all organizations and all incidents.   Factors such as incident complexity, service desk skills and empowerment,  outsourcing and remote control capabilities can influence the ability (or inability) to restore service during the first contact. While ITIL acknowledges FCR as an important Service Desk metric, it steers clear of offering a target or benchmark.  Industry experts generally accept a FCR range of 65 to 80 %.

Should Service Requests be Included in First Call Resolution metrics?

I recently had a question regarding the inclusion of Service Requests into metrics for First Call Resolution. As always, the answer is “it depends”! ITIL now treats Service Requests and Incidents as two different processes – Service Request Fulfillment and Incident Management. Both are generally logged into the same tool and owned by the Service Desk. They are also measured by their own key performance indicators and metrics. ITIL does not consider first call resolution as a process metric - it is more of a service desk performance measurement. First call resolution historically helps measure the handling of incidents by the Service Desk. The definition of an incident is usually pretty clear. However, since the definition of a service request can vary greatly from organization to organization, the value of including requests in incident metrics may also vary. If your definition of a service request includes pre-authorization and funding, then the Service Desk’s ability t

Metrics that Matter to Customers

I was recently asked to elaborate on a previous blog that discussed reducing metrics and reporting on those that matter to customers. In terms of any metrics, especially those that are important to customers, you should always think about or add the phrase “with quality”. Remember that the term “quality” is defined as “conformance to customer requirements”. So all metrics and measurements should ensure the work or actions you perform remains focused on the customer and their needs. Also in terms of how you phrase a metric it can often be more beneficial to measure in terms of increases and decreases rather than specific quantities. Given that, here some metrics that you might think about using: Increased Customer Quality Satisfaction %--perhaps the most important of all metrics Increase First Line Call Resolution [with quality] %--helps reduce costs but also builds perception of preparedness and knowledge in the eyes of the customer Decreased Mean Time to Restore Serv

Service Desk Metrics

Earlier in my career I had the pleasure of managing a Service Desk. This function is the unsung hero of IT support! We had a multitude of measurements and metric that were taken every day and then meticulously charted, reported and analyzed. At the time it’s what we did. I recently had the opportunity to visit my old Service desk and found to my horror, that many of these metrics were no longer being used. I also was informed that customer satisfaction had not dropped significantly and that some of the KPI still being measured were well within an acceptable range. Now that I no longer am in the thick of it, I took some time to really think about what was it we were measuring and what did it really mean. As an organization we did all of the industry best practices measurements. Speed of answer Call duration Number of calls per day/week/month and analyst Abandoned calls Number of tickets opened versus number of tickets closed Percentage 1st call resolved Customer satisfaction

Making the Case for Self-Help

HDI (formerly Help Desk Institute) recently released its 2009 Practices and Salary survey and reports that an incident resolved via the telephone costs $22, while an incident resolved via self-help costs $12. Furthermore, 11 percent of the organizations surveyed report that self-help tools are prompting a decrease in the number of incidents reported to the Service Desk. Having said that, these organizations also report that only three percent of incidents are resolved via self-help. With the Baby Boomers retiring and technically savvy Gen Y joining the workforce – and, oh yeah, the economy – the time has come to get serious about self-help as a support channel. Many think the solution lies in finding and installing the right technology; however, new technology projects often fail from a lack of preparation and management. Here’s where the four Ps come in to play. Introduced in the ITIL Service Design publication, the four Ps – in the context of self-help – include: People – How can yo