Which Is A Trend Affecting How Service Desks Are Run?

i: Observe, Keep, and Motivate Your Service Desk Staff

The Challenge

There is a reason why this challenge tops the list. Quality of service is largely reliant on the calibre of your analysts, and then having the right people is disquisitional. The service desk is the "human face" of IT and for many end users it is the only affect bespeak between them and IT. Equally a result, perception of IT is largely influenced by the quality of IT support provided by the service desk.
nonsuggestiveblouse
High staff turnover means a big portion of the service desk upkeep is spent on recruitment and basic grooming. This has a knock-on effect on quality of support and the amount of budget left over for advanced training, new service desk tools, and other budgeted improvement projects. The average cost-of-hire for non-management staff is over $900. With 42% of service desk staff leaving every 2 years, this equates to $ten,000 of recruitment costs per yr in a service desk squad of xxx.

In organizations with a large number of entry-level analysts, first-time-prepare-rates endure, IT client satisfaction ratings remain static (at best) and information technology is difficult to make headway with improvements. In brusk, staffing issues keep service desks in a rut. The Opportunity

As the quality of service that the service desk provides is influenced by people, finding, keeping and motivating your staff is a central challenge; but one that is ofttimes disregarded. The resulting staff churn has a negative impact on customer service and the perception of IT. Past reducing staff churn, you tin can retain skills and knowledge, make amend use of grooming budgets, free-upwardly upkeep for new engineering science, and better the IT customer experience.

The Solution

To successfully manage the people aspects of the service desk-bound, a strategic approach is critical. Service desk managers should recall carefully about how they can notice, retain and motivate the right staff – those that will support the objectives of the service desk.

The CIO.com State of the CIO 2018 survey constitute 59% of CIOs are experiencing skills shortages and recruitment challenges^five. Finding skilful people is difficult, and when under force per unit area there is a temptation to take a chance on a candidate. But hiring the wrong people can make the situation worse. Recruitment and training costs bleed budget. Rookie staff bleed fourth dimension from your existing agents.

It's better to accept your time, consider what yous really need, and go information technology right. Hither's what you should be looking for in a candidate:

Empathy – Having a sincere, respectful, client-focused attitude.
Responsibility – Willing to take ownership of the issue and see it through.
Planning – Plotting a grade of action to resolve the finish user's issue.
Effective communication – The ability to articulate what volition happen and when.
A absurd head – Ability to stay positive, piece of work under a ticking clock, and pacify angry customers.
Teamwork – Working with others to achieve the right outcome and better the service desk-bound.
Problem solving – Having a methodical problem-solving arroyo and, where possible, beingness in possession of the right technical skills to diagnose and gear up technical bug.

Six out of seven skills are "soft" skills. Technical noesis is not the main issue hither. Equally every organization is different, the service portfolio that an analyst supports will differ, so finding a match with technical skills is an incommunicable job. It'southward easier to train for technical skills than soft skills.

As the marketplace for service desk-bound analysts is so competitive, there are opportunities to cut corners past recruiting customer service agents from other service domains (such as a general help desk-bound, travel agent, ticket office or hotel concierge service) – where these soft skills already exist.

42% Of service desk-bound staff take a tenure of 24 months or fewer⁴

Keeping Your Best Staff

In a tough employment market, finding good people is difficult and organizations need to work difficult to keep them. When competition for staff is high, in that location is e'er a hazard that another organization will tempt your best people away. Service desk managers should be acutely aware of this threat, which must be actively managed.

There are a number of drivers for staff churn:

Low pay – In relative terms, a job on the service desk pays less than working in a more specialized technical squad—on average, more than $10,000 less per yr than second line IT staff.
Stress – Analysts are under pressure to manage a growing queue of incidents merely lack the tools and training to practice and so—causing mass staff "burn-out".
No career path – Many people see the service desk as an entry point into a career in It. Information technology is better to offering people a career path within your organisation than to lose them to another firm. That way, you lot keep their knowledge within the arrangement.

Motivating Your People

In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth Virtually What Motivates Us, Dan Pinkish states that in that location are iii keys to motivation: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

Autonomy – Requite service desk agents the freedom to do their ain trouble-solving skills and approach customer issues in their own way: one that fits the way they work and who they are.
Mastery – Have a clear development path for each agent, supported past tailored training and mentoring.
Purpose – When agents can see the bigger moving picture and how their ain contribution is relevant to the system—as a whole—they will be more than motivated and better aligned to business organisation priorities.

If y'all apply these three cardinal principles correctly, service desk agents will be motivated at an intrinsic level – having an internal bulldoze to practice the best possible job. Extrinsic motivators such as salary and bonuses play a part in a motivation strategy (people accept bills to pay), but these external bulldoze factors are not as powerful.

In summary, if you want to build a successful service desk, people come showtime. Processes and tools are there to support what they exercise.

"There are three keys to motivation: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose"

half dozen: Increase Information technology Customer Satisfaction

The Challenge

The service desk is the face of Information technology. For many terminate users, the service desk is the just touch point with It; so, much of the responsibility for IT customer satisfaction ratings falls on the service desk. As far every bit the terminate user is concerned, the service desk is IT. They don't care about what's under the hood.

IT customer expectations are a moving target. The consumerization of IT and the support experiences that consumers have are influencing what they wait from It in the workplace. Equally customer expectations increase, service desks must improve performance to track irresolute It client expectations. If you practise nix to amend, increasing expectations hateful that the perception of Information technology will pass up over fourth dimension. Every bit the perception of IT drops, business units and end users are more likely to bring in technology that is not sanctioned by corporate IT (Shadow It and BYOD) – and upkeep begins to leak out of the IT department.

The Opportunity

IT customers know that things sometimes get wrong. It's how yous deal with the upshot that counts. A quick and decisive response will get the end user productive again and they will exist satisfied that the service desk-bound has helped them get their job washed. This is the key to IT client satisfaction: removing friction and reducing frustration.

It people are usually too focused on the engineering science, so It client satisfaction metrics are essential to ensure that what IT does lines up with what the business needs.

When the service desk is more than constructive at dealing with issues, the perception of Information technology inside the system increases. With fewer detractors, Information technology stands a amend adventure of getting more funding for further improvements.

The Solution

If you want to ameliorate something you lot demand to manage it. If you lot desire to manage something you need to measure it. Client satisfaction surveys quantify the perception of IT (if you enquire the right questions). They help you target improvements, and give you lot a benchmark confronting which to evidence progress. Commit to regular surveys and apply the same metrics so yous tin can benchmark and graph progress (this means planning your surveys in advance). There should be some purpose and structure to the metrics y'all gather equally part of an It client survey.

It is of import to go on the survey focused, with as few questions as possible. There is an inverse correlation between the number of questions in a survey and the number of responses you will go. More questions mean fewer submissions (and less information to work with). Less data means a less accurate view of performance.

Selection a primary metric to written report up. Many It organizations are adapting the Net Promoter Score (NPS) question as a tool for measuring perception of It: On a scale of 0 to 10, how satisfied are you with Information technology support?

This is a simple quantitative question, which is followed by a qualitative question: Why did you give this score?

The NPS question gives you a superlative-level metric; the follow-up question draws out open feedback which tin can exist analysed for themes and specific bug to exist addressed.

The NPS question and the follow-upwardly question can exist used to benchmark the perception of It and provide some indication of where improvements need to be fabricated. However, it is a good idea to also include some lower-level questions which ask explicitly about what is most of import to the end user community. To do this, you lot volition need to look at which factors influence customer satisfaction (number of dropped calls, agent attitudes, kickoff-time-fix charge per unit, availability of self-service tools and more).

Essentially, the purpose of an It client satisfaction survey is non just to show how good (or bad) a task It is doing, but to find out what end users desire – and give information technology to them. From here, you tin prioritize specific improvement (like a cocky-service portal, more staff, more than grooming or new service desk tools) to bulldoze upwardly It customer satisfaction and increase the perception of Information technology within the business.