Standardize the Service Desk
Strengthen your service desk to build a strong ITSM foundation.
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Contributors
- Jason Aqui, IT Director, Bellevue College
- Kevin Sigil, IT Director, Southwest Care Centre
- Lucas Gutierrez, Service Desk Manager, City of Santa Fe
- Rama Dhuwaraha, CIO, University of North Texas System
- Annelie Rugg, CIO, UCLA Humanities
- Owen McKeith, Manager IT Infrastructure, Canpotex
- Rod Gula, IT Director, American Realty Association
- Rosalba Trujillo, Service Desk Manager, Northgate Markets
- Jason Metcalfe, IT Manager, Mesalabs
- Bradley Rodgers, IT Manager, SecureTek
- Daun Costa, IT Manager, Pita Pit
- Kari Petty, Service Desk Manager, Mansfield Oil
- Denis Borka, Service Desk Manager, PennTex Midstream
- Lateef Ashekun, IT Manager, City of Atlanta
- Ted Zeisner, IT Manager, University of Ottawa Institut de Cardiologie
Your Challenge
Service desk managers with immature service desk processes struggle with:
- Low business satisfaction.
- High cost to resolve incidents and implement requests.
- Confused and unhappy end users.
- High ticket volumes and a lack of root-cause analysis to reduce recurring issues.
- Wasted IT time and wages resolving the same issues time and again.
- Ineffective demand planning.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Don’t be fooled by a tool that’s new. A new service desk tool alone won’t solve the problem. Service desk maturity improvements depend on putting in place the right people and processes to support the technology.
- If they build it, they will come. Service desk improvement is an exercise in organizational change. Engage specialists across the IT organization in building the solution, and emphasize how everyone stands to benefit from the initiative.
- Use metrics data to tell the story of IT. Organizations are sometimes tempted to track their work under a single ticket type. Unfortunately, the practice obscures the fact that incidents, requests, and projects require radically different amounts of time and resources, and can create the impression that IT is underperforming. Distinguish between incidents, requests, and projects, and design specific processes to support and track the performance of each activity.
- Purchasing an ITSM tool is an expensive proposition. Remember, the value of any ITSM tool is a function of the processes it supports, and the adoption of those processes. The ITSM tool with the best functionality is worth little if you do not build the right processes, configure the tool to support them, and work to improve tool adoption in your organization.
Impact and Result
- Increase business satisfaction.
- Reduce recurring issues and ticket volumes.
- Reduce average incident resolution time and average request implementation time.
- Increase efficiency and lower operating costs.
- Enhance demand planning.
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should standardize the service desk, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you as you complete the project.
1. Conduct gap analysis
Conduct current-state assessment, review shift-left service support strategy, identify operations metrics, benchmarks, and reports, and review ticket handling procedures.
2. Design incident management processes
Develop the building blocks of the incident management process, including workflows, ticket handling guidelines, and ticket categorization, prioritization, and escalation guidelines.
3. Design request fulfilment processes
Develop the building blocks of a modern request fulfilment process, including service request workflows, the high-level planning for a service catalog, and a web portal for the service desk software.
4. Plan the implementation of the service desk
Now that basic service desk processes are built, review the performance of your existing ITSM tool and plan for a replacement if necessary.
5. Support your project
Hand over projects to the service desk and develop service desk customer service skills.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is a nine call advisory process.
Guided Implementation #1 - Lay the foundations of the service desk
Call #1 - Conduct current-state assessment and agent skills gap analysis.
Call #2 - Review service desk structure and identify agent skills, roles, and responsibilities.
Call #3 - Identify operations metrics, benchmarks, and reports.
Guided Implementation #2 - Design incident management processes
Call #1 - Design categorization, identify ticket channels, and build ticket templates.
Call #2 - Design escalation and prioritization guidelines, and review incident management workflows.
Guided Implementation #3 - Design request fulfilment processes
Call #1 - Differentiate between requests and projects; build request workflows.
Call #2 - Design processes and workflows to produce a targeted knowledgebase and self-help tools.
Guided Implementation #4 - Plan the implementation of the service desk
Call #1 - Review ITSM tool requirements and produce a vendor shortlist.
Call #2 - Build a communication plan and implementation roadmap.
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Service Desk
Strengthen your service desk to build a strong foundation for ITSM maturity.
This course makes up part of the Infrastructure & Operations Certificate.
Course information:
- Title: Service Desk
- Number of Course Modules: 5
- Estimated Time to Complete: 2-2.5 hours
- Featured Analysts:
- Michel Hebert, Research Director, Infrastructure Practice
- Natalie Sansone, Research Manager, Infrastructure Practice
- Now Playing: Academy: Service Desk | Executive Brief
Book Your Workshop
Onsite 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 onsite 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.
Module 1: Conduct Gap Analysis
The Purpose
Conduct a current state assessment of the existing service desk.
Key Benefits Achieved
Assess the process maturity, structure, staffing, and key metrics of the existing service desk, and determine your target state.
Activities
Outputs
Outline service desk strengths.
Outline service desk challenges.
Complete current state assessment.
- Current State Assessment
Identify key areas for improvement.
- End-User Satisfaction Diagnostic Survey
Analyze service desk organization.
Define service desk structure.
- Optimal service desk structure
Review implications of shift-left strategy.
- Shift-left service support strategy
Identify stakeholders and goals to inform metrics.
Identify metrics to track based on goals.
Create a list of required reports and dashboards.
- Service desk metrics and reports
Rationalize ticket channels.
Discuss ticket handling challenges.
- Shift-Handover Template
Define a QA process for improving ticket and call quality.
- QA ticket and call testing checklist
Use the ticket and call quality assessment tool.
Identify ticket template candidates.
- List of ticket templates
- List of recurring tickets
Module 2: Design Incident Management
The Purpose
Conduct a health check on incident management processes, improve the key elements, and align them to best practices.
Key Benefits Achieved
Develop workflows for incident and critical incident management processes, and develop guidelines for ticket handling, categorization, prioritization, and escalation.
Activities
Outputs
Review incident management challenges.
Define incident management workflows.
- Incident management workflows
Build end-user satisfaction survey.
- End-user satisfaction survey
Define critical incident management workflow.
- Critical incident management workflow
Design critical incident communication plan.
- Critical incident management communication plan
Assess ticket categorization.
- Enhanced ticket categorization scheme
Enhance ticket categories with resolution codes.
- Ticket resolution and status codes
Build a prioritization matrix.
- Optimized ticket prioritization scheme
Define response and resolution times.
Build escalation decision rights.
- Guidelines for ticket escalations
Build out escalation rules and guidelines.
- List of automatic escalations
Create a list of application specialists.
Module 3: Design Request Fulfilment
The Purpose
Conduct a health check on service request fulfilment, improve its key elements, and align them to best practices.
Key Benefits Achieved
Develop workflows for service request fulfilment, prepare for a service catalog project, and put in place a process to build and maintain a knowledgebase targeted on your most important tickets.
Activities
Outputs
Define service requests with SLAs.
- An estimated service level for each service request
Review general service request fulfillment process.
Document and analyze service request workflows.
- Workflows for the most common service requests
Distinguish between requests and small projects.
- Request vs. project criteria
Evaluate existing or desired features of your service portal.
Evaluate service portals.
Brainstorm ideas to optimize portal UX.
- Features and UX design ideas for current or future portal
Design the portal’s ticket intake form.
Draft a high-level project plan for a self-service portal project.
- High-level plan to implement a portal
Discuss the benefits or objections to implementing a knowledgebase.
- List of potential knowledgebase articles
Create actionable knowledgebase articles.
Design knowledgebase management processes.
- Knowledgebase article template
Build a knowledge management process workflow.
- Knowledgebase process and workflow
- Role Description: Knowledge Manager
Module 4: Plan the Implementation of the Service Desk
The Purpose
Prepare to implement the service desk processes built in previous modules.
Key Benefits Achieved
Compile requirements for service desk software, build a communication plan, and develop an implementation roadmap.
Activities
Outputs
Build implementation roadmap.
- Service desk implementation roadmap
Review project task list to assess timelines and accountabilities.
Create the communication plan.
- Communication plan
Discuss strategies to increase adoption.
- Adoption strategies
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this Blueprint, and what our clients have to say.
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agencies
Guided Implementation
10/10
$50,000
10
PRA Group Canada, Inc.
Guided Implementation
10/10
$10,000
5
Alabama Department of Corrections
Workshop
9/10
$33,091
44
Purplebricks
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
5
Auditor General IT Services
Workshop
9/10
N/A
N/A
Morehouse College
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
Sierra College
Guided Implementation
7/10
N/A
N/A
Rim Architects
Guided Implementation
10/10
$7,941
5
Grinnell College
Workshop
10/10
N/A
N/A
JMMB
Workshop
9/10
$13,236
20
Statistics Canada
Workshop
10/10
N/A
N/A
Ravensdown Fertiliser
Workshop
8/10
$66,183
50
Michigan Court of Appeals
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
Compass Health
Guided Implementation
1/10
N/A
N/A
Worthington Industries
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
City Of Bakersfield
Guided Implementation
10/10
$21,178
18
Northeastern Reg Info Ctr
Workshop
9/10
N/A
N/A
The University of Texas at San Antonio
Guided Implementation
9/10
$132K
50
VCU Health System Authority
Workshop
9/10
$33,091
23
Parker Hannifin Manufacturing UK
Guided Implementation
10/10
$16,278
7
Arkansas Department of Transportation
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
New Mexico Department Of Health
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
2
AAA Club Alliance, Inc
Guided Implementation
10/10
$9,265
8
Colorado Judicial ITS
Guided Implementation
10/10
$19,193
60
Westoba Credit Union Limited
Guided Implementation
10/10
$6,000
10
City of Colorado Springs
Guided Implementation
4/10
N/A
N/A
Arizona Western College
Guided Implementation
10/10
$33,091
20
CF Industries Enterprises Inc
Guided Implementation
9/10
$3,970
5
Modesto Irrigation District
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
90
Aerovironment, Inc.
Workshop
9/10
$132K
50
