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Take Action on Service Desk Customer Feedback

Drive up CSAT scores by asking the right questions and effectively responding to user feedback.

  • IT leaders lack information to help inform and prioritize where improvements are most needed.
  • The service desk relies only on traditional metrics such as time to respond or percentage of SLAs met, but no measures of customer satisfaction with the service they receive.
  • There are signs of dissatisfied users, but no mechanism in place to formally capture those perceptions in order to address them.
  • Even if transactional (ticket) surveys are in use, often nothing is done with the data collected or there is a low response rate, and no broader satisfaction survey is in place.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • If customer satisfaction is not being measured, it’s often because service desk leaders don’t know how to design customer satisfaction surveys, don’t have a mechanism in place to collect feedback, or lack the resources to take accountability for a customer feedback program.
  • If customer satisfaction surveys are in place, it can be difficult to get full value out of them if there is a low response rate due to poor survey design or administration, or if leadership doesn’t understand the value of / know how to analyze the data.
  • It can actually be worse to ask your customers for feedback and do nothing with it than not asking for feedback at all. Customers may end up more dissatisfied if they take the time to provide value then see nothing done with it.

Impact and Result

  • Understand how to ask the right questions to avoid survey fatigue.
  • Design and implement two complementary satisfaction surveys: a transactional survey to capture satisfaction with individual ticket experiences and inform immediate improvements, and a relationship survey to capture broader satisfaction among the entire user base and inform longer-term improvements.
  • Build a plan and assign accountability for customer feedback management, including analyzing feedback, prioritizing customer satisfaction insights and using them to improve performance, and communicating the results back to your users and stakeholders.

Take Action on Service Desk Customer Feedback Research & Tools

1. Take Action on Service Desk Customer Feedback Deck – A step-by-step document that walks you through how to measure customer satisfaction, design and implement transactional and relationship surveys, and analyze and act on user feedback.

Whether you have no Service Desk customer feedback program in place or you need to improve your existing process for gathering and responding to feedback, this deck will help you design your surveys and act on their results to improve CSAT scores.

2. Transactional Service Desk Survey Template – A template to design a ticket satisfaction survey.

This template provides a sample transactional (ticket) satisfaction survey. If your ITSM tool or other survey mechanism allows you to design or write your own survey, use this template as a starting point.

3. Sample Size Calculator – A tool to calculate the sample size needed for your survey.

Use the Sample Size Calculator to calculate your ideal sample size for your relationship surveys.

This tool allows you to input your:

  • Desired confidence level
  • Acceptable margin of error
  • Company population size
  • Ideal sample size

4. End-User Satisfaction Survey Review Workflows – Visio templates to map your review process for both transactional and relationship surveys

This template will help you map out the step-by-step process to review collected feedback from your end-user satisfaction surveys, analyze the data, and act on it.


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Take Action on Service Desk Customer Feedback

Drive up CSAT scores by asking the right questions and effectively responding to user feedback.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Collecting feedback is only half the equation.

The image contains a picture of Natalie Sansone.

Natalie Sansone, PhD


Research Director, Infrastructure & Operations

Info-Tech Research Group

Often when we ask service desk leaders where they need to improve and if they’re measuring customer satisfaction, they either aren’t measuring it at all, or their ticket surveys are turned on but they get very few responses (or only positive responses). They fail to see the value of collecting feedback when this is their experience with it.

Feedback is important because traditional service desk metrics can only tell us so much. We often see what’s called the “watermelon effect”: metrics appear “green”, but under the surface they’re “red” because customers are in fact dissatisfied for reasons unmeasured by standard internal IT metrics. Customer satisfaction should always be the goal of service delivery, and directly measuring satisfaction in addition to traditional metrics will help you get a clearer picture of your strengths and weaknesses, and where to prioritize improvements.

It’s not as simple as asking customers if they were satisfied with their ticket, however. There are two steps necessary for success. The first is collecting feedback, which should be done purposefully, with clear goals in mind in order to maximize the response rate and value of responses received. The second – and most critical – is acting on that feedback. Use it to inform improvements and communicate those improvements. Doing so will not only make your service desk better, increasing satisfaction through better service delivery, but also will make your customers feel heard and valued, which alone increases satisfaction.

The image contains a picture of Emily Sugerman.

Emily Sugerman, PhD


Research Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations

Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Common Obstacles

Info-Tech’s Approach

  • The service desk relies only on traditional metrics such as time to respond, or percentage of SLAs met, but not on measures of customer satisfaction with the service they receive.
  • There are signs of dissatisfied users (e.g. shadow IT, users avoid the service desk, go only to their favorite technician) but no mechanism in place to formally capture those perceptions.
  • Transactional ticket surveys were turned on when the ITSM tool was implemented, but either nobody responds to them, or nobody does anything with the data received.
  • IT leaders lack information to help inform and prioritize where improvements are most needed.
  • Service desk leaders don’t know how to design survey questions to ask their users for feedback and/or they don’t have a mechanism in place to survey users.
  • If customer satisfaction surveys are in place, nothing is done with the results because service desk leaders either don’t understand the value of analyzing the data or don’t know how to analyze the data.
  • Executives only want a single satisfaction number to track and don’t understand the value of collecting more detailed feedback.
  • IT lacks the resources to take accountability for the feedback program, or existing resources don’t have time to do anything with the feedback they receive.
  • Understand how to ask the right questions to avoid survey fatigue (where users get overwhelmed and stop responding).
  • Design and implement a transactional survey to capture satisfaction with individual ticket experiences and use the results to inform immediate improvements.
  • Design and implement a relationship survey to capture broader satisfaction among the entire user base and use the results to inform longer-term improvements.
  • Build a plan and assign accountability for analyzing feedback, using it to prioritize and make actionable improvements to address feedback, and communicating the results back to your users and stakeholders.

Info-Tech Insight

Asking your customers for feedback then doing nothing with it is worse than not asking for feedback at all. Your customers may end up more dissatisfied than they were before, if their opinion is sought out and then ignored. It’s valuable to collect feedback, but the true value for both IT and its customers comes from acting on that feedback and communicating those actions back to your users.

Traditional service desk metrics can be misleading

The watermelon effect

When a service desk appears to hit all its targets according to the metrics it tracks, but service delivery is poor and customer satisfaction is low, this is known as the “watermelon effect”. Service metrics appear green on the outside, but under the surface (unmeasured), they’re red because customers are dissatisfied.

Traditional SLAs and service desk metrics (such as time to respond, average resolution time, percentage of SLAs met) can help you understand service desk performance internally to prioritize your work and identify process improvements. However, they don’t tell you how customers perceive the service or how satisfied they are.

Providing good service to your customers should be your end goal. Failing to measure, monitor, and act on customer feedback means you don’t have the whole picture of how your service desk is performing and whether or where improvements are needed to maximize satisfaction.

There is a shift in ITSM to focus more on customer experience metrics over traditional ones

The Service Desk Institute (SDI) suggests that customer satisfaction is the most important indicator of service desk success, and that traditional metrics around SLA targets – currently the most common way to measure service desk performance – may become less valuable or even obsolete in the future as customer experience-focused targets become more popular. (Service Desk Institute, 2021)

SDI conducted a Customer Experience survey of service desk professionals from a range of organizations, both public and private, from January to March 2018. The majority of respondents said that customer experience is more important than other metrics such as speed of service or adherence to SLAs, and that customer satisfaction is more valuable than traditional metrics. (SDI, 2018).

The image contains a screenshot of two pie graphs. The graph on the left is labelled: which of these is most important to your service desk? Customer experience is first with 54%. The graph on the right is labelled: Which measures do you find more value in? Customer satisfaction is first with 65%.

However, many service desk leaders aren’t effectively measuring customer feedback

Not only is it important to measure customer experience and satisfaction levels, but it’s equally important to act on that data and feed it into a service improvement program. However, many IT leaders are neglecting either one or both of those components.

Obstacles to collecting feedback

Obstacles to acting on collected feedback

  • Don’t understand the value of measuring customer feedback.
  • Don’t have a good mechanism in place to collect feedback.
  • Don’t think that users would respond to a survey (either generally unresponsive or already inundated with surveys).
  • Worried that results would be negative or misleading.
  • Don’t know what questions to ask or how to design a survey.
  • Don’t understand the importance of analyzing and acting on feedback collected.
  • Don’t know how to analyze survey data.
  • Lack of resources to take accountability over customer feedback (including analyzing data, monitoring trends, communicating results).
  • Executives or stakeholders only want a satisfaction score.

A strong customer feedback program brings many benefits to IT and the business

Insight into customer experience

Gather insight into both the overall customer relationship with the service desk and individual transactions to get a holistic picture of the customer experience.

Data to inform decisions

Collect data to inform decisions about where to spend limited resources or time on improvement, rather than guessing or wasting effort on the wrong thing.

Identification of areas for improvement

Better understand your strengths and weaknesses from the customer’s point of view to help you identify gaps and priorities for improvement.

Customers feel valued

Make customers feel heard and valued; this will improve your relationship and their satisfaction.

Ability to monitor trends over time

Use the same annual relationship survey to be able to monitor trends and progress in making improvements by comparing data year over year.

Foresight to prevent problems from occurring

Understand where potential problems may occur so you can address and prevent them, or who is at risk of becoming a detractor so you can repair the relationship.

IT staff coaching and engagement opportunities

Turn negative survey feedback into coaching and improvement opportunities and use positive feedback to boost morale and engagement.

Take Action on Service Desk Customer Feedback

The image contains a screenshot of a Thought Model titled: Take Action on Service Desk Customer Feedback.

Info-Tech’s methodology for measuring and acting on service desk customer feedback

Phase

1. Understand how to measure customer satisfaction

2. Design and implement transactional surveys

3. Design and implement relationship surveys

4. Analyze and act on feedback

Phase outcomes

Understand the main types of customer satisfaction surveys, principles for survey design, and best practices for surveying your users.

Learn why and how to design a simple survey to assess satisfaction with individual service desk transactions (tickets) and a methodology for survey delivery that will improve response rates.

Understand why and how to design a survey to assess overall satisfaction with the service desk across your organization, or use Info-Tech’s diagnostic.

Measure and analyze the results of both surveys and build a plan to act on both positive and negative feedback and communicate the results with the organization.

Insight Summary

Key Insight:

Asking your customers for feedback then doing nothing with it is worse than not asking for feedback at all. Your customers may end up more dissatisfied than they were before if they’re asked for their opinion then see nothing done with it. It’s valuable to collect feedback, but the true value for both IT and its customers comes from acting on that feedback and communicating those actions back to your users.

Additional insights:

Insight 1

Take the time to define the goals of your transactional survey program before launching it – it’s not as simple as just deploying the default survey of your ITSM tool out of the box. The objectives of the survey – including whether you want to keep a pulse on average satisfaction or immediately act on any negative experiences – will influence a range of key decisions about the survey configuration.

Insight 2

While transactional surveys provide useful indicators of customer satisfaction with specific tickets and interactions, they tend to have low response rates and can leave out many users who may rarely or never contact the service desk, but still have helpful feedback. Include a relationship survey in your customer feedback program to capture a more holistic picture of what your overall user base thinks about the service desk and where you most need to improve.

Insight 3

Satisfaction scores provide valuable data about how your customers feel, but don’t tell you why they feel that way. Don’t neglect the qualitative data you can gather from open-ended comments and questions in both types of satisfaction surveys. Take the time to read through these responses and categorize them in at least a basic way to gain deeper insight and determine where to prioritize your efforts.

Understand how to measure customer satisfaction

Phase 1

Understand the main types of customer satisfaction surveys, principles for survey design, and best practices for surveying your users.

Phase 1:

Phase 2:

Phase 3:

Phase 4:

Understand how to measure customer satisfaction

Design and implement transactional surveys

Design and implement relationship surveys

Analyze and act on feedback

Three methods of surveying your customers

Transactional

Relationship

One-off

Also known as

Ticket surveys, incident follow-up surveys, on-going surveys

Annual, semi-annual, periodic, comprehensive, relational

One-time, single, targeted

Definition

  • Survey that is tied to a specific customer interaction with the service desk (i.e. a ticket).
  • Assesses how satisfied customers are with how the ticket was handled and resolved.
  • Sent immediately after ticket is closed.
  • Short – usually 1 to 3 questions.
  • Survey that is sent periodically (i.e. semi-annually or annually) to the entire customer base to measure overall relationship with the service desk.
  • Assesses customer satisfaction with their overall service experience over a longer time period.
  • Longer – around 15-20 questions.
  • One-time survey sent at a specific, targeted point in time to either all customers or a subset.
  • Often event-driven or project-related.
  • Assesses satisfaction at one time point, or about a specific change that was implemented, or to inform a specific initiative that will be implemented.

Drive up CSAT scores by asking the right questions and effectively responding to user feedback.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

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10.0/10
Overall Impact

$27,500
Average $ Saved

110
Average Days Saved

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Authors

Natalie Sansone

Emily Sugerman

Contributors

Sally Colwell, Project Officer, Government of Canada Pension Centre

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