Service Desk

The challenge

You may be experiencing one or more of the following:

• You experience low business and internal IT staff satisfaction.
• The incident resolution cost is too high, as is the implementation cost of requests.
• End-users that are confused
• Your incident or ticket volumes, in general, are too high, but you do not have a root-causes analysis process to reduce recurrent incidents. This wastes valuable IT time.
• Your demand planning may be less than adequate.

Our advice

Insight

• The latest shiny tool is not it! Your service desk is about people and processes. 
• When you start to improve your service desk, you are engaging in organizational change. Engage your organization in defining and building the solution. Emphasize how the entire organization benefits from the new service desk.
• Clearly distinguish all the different interactions with the service desk: incidents, requests, and more extensive work. Design processes to track the performance of each of these areas.
• Just having an ITSM tool is not the answer. The value of a tool is a function of the processes it supports and the adoption of these processes. Then improve the adoption of the tool.

Impact and results 

• Your business and clients will receive relevant support and will be happier.
• The people that staff the services desk will be more engaged.
• You will reduce recurrent issues and hence, ticket volumes.
• That increases efficiency and lowers your total cost of ownership (TCO)
• It enhances your demand planning.

The roadmap

Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

Get up to speed

Read up on why you should standardize your help desk and understand how we can support you in your ways to reach your goal.

• Standardize the Service Desk – Executive Brief (ppt)

  Almost there!

  Please enter your email and a few details and you're on your way to an efficient process.

  First Name *

  Last name *

  Company name

  * I agree to the Terms and Conditions.

  Download

  You can always get support via our Contact options.

  ×
• Standardize the Service Desk – Phases 1-4 (ppt)

Conduct your gap analysis

Look at where you are today, review if a shift-left support strategy is in order, identify your operational metrics, benchmarks, and reports. Then check your ticket handling work instructions.

• Standardize the Service Desk – Phase 1: Conduct Gap Analysis (ppt)
• Standardize the Service Desk Task List (xls)
• Service Desk Maturity Assessment (xls)
• Standardize the Service Desk Executive Presentation (ppt)
• Service Desk Standard Operating Procedure (doc)
• Service Desk Shift-Handover Policy and Template (doc)
• Ticket and Call Quality Assessment Tool (xls)

Design your incident management process

Operations are about keeping the shop running. Stuff not working is a no-go. Collect the building blocks of your incident management process, ticket handling work instructions and guidelines, set your prioritization rules and escalation processes.

• Standardize the Service Desk – Phase 2: Design Incident Management Processes (ppt)
• Workflow Library (Visio)
• Workflow Library (PDF)
• Recurring Issues Template (doc)
• Service Desk Software – Ticket Categorization Schemes (doc)

Design your fulfillment process 

Handle service requests and the high-level planning for a service catalog, including a web portal for your service desk.

• Standardize the Service Desk – Phase 3: Design Request Fulfilment Processes (ppt)
• Service Definition Checklist (doc)
• Knowledge Manager (doc)
• Knowledgebase Article Template (doc)

Plan the implementation of your service desk 

With your design at this level, now it is time to review the performance of your existing IT Service Management (ITSM) tooling and plan to replace it if necessary.

• Standardize the Service Desk – Phase 4: Plan the Implementation of the Service Desk (ppt)
• Service Desk Roadmap (xls)
• Service Desk Roadmap (doc)
• Sample Communication Plan
• Service Desk Software and RFP Evaluation Tool (xls)
• ITSM Tool Vendor Briefing Script Template (doc)

Hand over your implementation and let it run 

During the run phase, ensure to develop your service desk skills.

• Project Handover Template (doc)