Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
Deciding which service desk metrics to track and how to analyze them can be daunting. Use this deck to narrow down your goal-oriented metrics as a starting point and set your own benchmarks.
For each metric, consider adding the relevant overall goal, audience, cadence, and action. Use the audience and cadence of the metric to split your tracked metrics into various dashboards. Your final list of metrics and reports can be added to your service desk SOP.
When establishing a suite of metrics to track, it’s tempting to start with the metrics measured by other organizations. Naturally, benchmarking will enter the conversation. While benchmarking is useful, measuring you organization against others with a lack of context will only highlight your failures. Furthermore, benchmarks will highlight the norm or common practice. It does not necessarily highlight best practice.
Keeping the limitations of benchmarking in mind, establish your own metrics suite with action-based metrics. Define the audience, cadence, and actions for each metric you track and pair them with business goals. Measure only what you need to.
Slowly improve your metrics process over time and analyze your environment using your own data as your benchmark.
Benedict Chang
Research Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations
Info-Tech Research Group
Info-Tech Insight
Identify the metrics that serve a real purpose and eliminate the rest. Establish a formal review process to ensure metrics are still valid, continue to provide the answers needed, and are at a manageable and usable level.
Current Metrics Suite
19% Effective
36% Some Improvement Necessary
45% Significant Improvement Necessary
Source: Info-Tech Research Group’s CEO/CIO Alignment Diagnostic, 2019; N=622
Source: Info-Tech Research Group’s CEO/CIO Alignment Diagnostic, 2019; N=622
They can be the first step to reach an end goal, but if benchmarks are observed in isolation, it will only highlight your failures.
This does not account for all the unique variables that make up an IT organization.
For example, benchmarks that include cost and revenue may include organizations that prioritize first-call resolution (FCR), but the variables that make up this benchmark model will be quite different within your own organization.
Info-Tech Insight
Benchmarks reflect the norm and common practice, not best practice.
Being above or below the norm is neither a good nor a bad thing.
Determining what the results mean for you depends on what’s being measured and the unique factors, characteristics, and priorities in your organization.
If benchmark data is a priority within your IT organization, you may look up organizations like MetricNet, but keep the following in mind:
Review the collected benchmark data
See where IT organizations in your industry typically stand in relation to the overall benchmark.
Assess the gaps
Large gaps between yourself and the overall benchmark could indicate areas for improvement or celebration. Use the data to focus your analysis, develop deeper self-awareness, and prioritize areas for potential concern.
Benchmarks are only guidelines
The benchmark source data may not come from true peers in every sense. Each organization is different, so always explore your unique context when interpreting any findings.
Use metrics that drive productive change and improvement. Track only what you need to report on.
Ensure each metric aligns with the desired business goal, is action-based, and includes the answers to what, why, how, and who.
Establish internal benchmarks by analyzing the trends from your own data to set baselines.
Act on the results of your metrics by adjusting targets and measuring success.
Audience - Who is this metric tracked for?
Goal - Why are you tracking this metric? This can be defined along with the CSFs and KPIs.
Cadence - How often are you going to view, analyze, and action this metric?
Action - What will you do if this metric spikes, dips, trends up, or trends down?
Critical success factors (CSFs) are high-level goals that help you define the direction of your service desk. Key performance indicators (KPIs) can be treated as the trend of metrics that will indicate that you are moving in the direction of your CSFs. These will help narrow the data you have to track and action (metrics).
CSFs, or your overall goals, typically revolve around three aspects of the service desk: time spent on tickets, resources spent on tickets, and the quality of service provided.
Critical success factor | Key performance indicator |
---|---|
High End-User Satisfaction | Increasing CSAT score on transactional surveys |
High end-user satisfaction score | |
Proper resolution of tickets | |
Low time to resolve | |
Low Cost per Ticket | Decreasing cost per ticket (due to efficient resolution, FCR, automation, self-service, etc.) |
Improve Access to Self-Service (tangential to improve customer service) | High utilization of knowledgebase |
High utilization of portal |
Download the Service Desk Metrics Workbook
Example metrics:
Critical success factor | Key performance indicator | Metric | Cadence | Audience | Action |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
High End-User Satisfaction | Increasing CSAT score on transactional surveys | Monthly average of ticket satisfaction scores | Monthly | Management | Action low scores immediately, view long-term trends |
High end-user satisfaction score | Average end-user satisfaction score from annual survey | Annually | IT Leadership | View IT satisfaction trends to align IT with business direction | |
Proper resolution of tickets | Number of tickets reopened | Weekly | Service Desk Technicians | Action reopened tickets, look for training opportunities | |
SLA breach rate | Daily | Service Desk Technicians | Action reopened tickets, look for training opportunities | ||
Low time to resolve | Average TTR (incidents) | Weekly | Management | Look for trends to monitor resources | |
Average TTR by priority | Weekly | Management | Look for TTR solve rates to align with SLA | ||
Average TTR by tier | Weekly | Management | Look for improperly escalated tickets or shift-left opportunities |
Download the Service Desk Metrics Workbook
Example metrics:
Metric | Who Owns the Data? | Efforts to Track? | Dashboards |
---|---|---|---|
Monthly average of ticket satisfaction scores | Service Desk | Low | Monthly Management Meeting |
Average end-user satisfaction score | Service Desk | Low | Leadership Meeting |
Number of tickets reopened | Service Desk | Low | Weekly Technician Standup |
SLA breach rate | Service Desk | Low | Daily Technician Standup |
Average TTR (incidents) | Service Desk | Low | Weekly Technician Standup |
Average TTR by priority | Service Desk | Low | Weekly Technician Standup |
Average TTR by tier | Service Desk | Low | Weekly Technician Standup |
Average TTR (SRs) | Service Desk | Low | Weekly Technician Standup |
Number of tickets reopened | Service Desk | Low | Daily Technician Standup |
Download the Service Desk Metrics Workbook
Metrics are typically focused on transactional efficiency and process effectiveness and not what was achieved against the customers’ need and satisfaction.
Understand the relationships between performance and metrics management to provide the end-to-end service delivery picture you are aiming to achieve.
ITSM solutions offer an abundance of metrics to choose from. The most common ones are typically built into the reporting modules of the tool suite.
Do not start tracking everything. Choose metrics that are specifically aligned to your organization’s desired business outcomes.
Don’t ignore the correlation and context between the suites of metrics chosen and how one interacts and affects the other.
Measuring metrics in isolation may lead to an incomplete picture or undesired technician behavior. Tension metrics help complete the picture and lead to proper actions.
An arbitrary target on a metric that is consistently met month over month is useless. Each metric should inform the overall performance by combining capable service level management and customer experience programs to prove the value IT is providing to the organization.
This project will help you build and improve essential service desk processes, including incident management, request fulfillment, and knowledge management, to create a sustainable service desk.
Take Control of Infrastructure and Operations Metrics
Make faster decisions and improve service delivery by using the right metrics for the job.
Analyze Your Service Desk Ticket Data
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