- Customers expect a consumer experience with IT. It won’t be long until this expectation expands to IT service support.
- Messaging and threads are becoming central to how businesses organize information and conversations, but voice isn’t going away. It is still by far people’s favorite channel.
- Tickets are becoming more complicated. BYOD, telework, and SaaS products present a perfect storm.
- Traditional service metrics are not made for self service. Your mean-time-to-resolve will increase and first-contact resolution will decrease.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Bring the service desk to the people. Select channels that are most familiar to your users, and make it as easy possible to talk to a human.
- Integrate channels. Users should have a consistent experience, and technicians should know user history.
- Don’t forget the human aspect. People aren’t always good with technology. Allow them to contact a person if they are struggling.
Impact and Result
- Define which channels will be prioritized.
- Identify improvements to these channels based on best practices and our members’ experiences.
- Streamline your ticket intake process to remove unnecessary steps.
- Prioritize improvements based on their value. Implement a set of improvements every quarter.
Improve Service Desk Ticket Intake Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should improve your ticket intake, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
- Improve Service Desk Ticket Intake – Phases 1-3
1. Define and prioritize ticket channels
Align your improvements with business goals and the shift-left strategy.
- Improve Service Desk Ticket Intake – Phase 1: Define and Prioritize Ticket Channels
- Service Desk Maturity Assessment
- Service Desk Improvement Presentation Template
2. Improve ticket channels
Record potential improvements in your CSI Register, as you review best practices for each channel.
- Improve Service Desk Ticket Intake – Phase 2: Improve Ticket Channels
- Service Desk Continual Improvement Roadmap
- Service Desk Ticket Intake Workflow Samples (Visio)
- Service Desk Ticket Intake Workflow Samples (PDF)
- Service Definition Checklist
- Service Desk Site Visit Checklist Template
3. Define next steps
Streamline your ticket intake process and prioritize opportunities for improvement.
- Improve Service Desk Ticket Intake – Phase 3: Define Next Steps
Workshop: Improve Service Desk Ticket Intake
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
1 Optimize Ticket Channels
The Purpose
Brainstorm improvements to your systems and processes that will help you optimize.
Key Benefits Achieved
Develop a single point of contact.
Reduce the time before a technician can start productively working on a ticket.
Enable Tier 1 and end users to complete more tickets.
Activities
1.1 Prioritize channels for improvement.
1.2 Optimize the voice channel.
1.3 Identify improvements for self service.
1.4 Improve Tier 1 agents’ access to information.
1.5 Optimize supplementary ticket channels.
Outputs
Action items to improve the voice channel.
Populated CSI Register for self-service channels.
Identified action items for the knowledgebase.
Populated CSI Register for additional ticket channels.
2 Streamline Ticket Intake
The Purpose
Create long-term growth by taking a sustainable approach to improvements.
Key Benefits Achieved
Streamline your overall ticket intake process for incidents and service requests.
Activities
2.1 Map out the incident intake processes.
2.2 Identify opportunities to streamline the incident workflow.
2.3 Map out the request processes.
2.4 Identify opportunities to streamline the request workflow.
Outputs
Streamlined incident intake process.
Streamlined request intake process.
Populated CSI Register for request intake.