Building a winning Service Desk

Author:
Prakash Sharma
QAI India Ltd
1 Abstract
The traditional IT Help Desk has evolved over years into Service Desk, offering a range of
services to offer a more business-focused approach. The Service Desk not only handles
incidents, and Service Requests, it also provides a route for customers to interact with all IT
processes, including change requests, procurement, service level management, and sometime
extend beyond traditional IT Services.

The overall value proposition of Service Desk has changed from simply responding to the needs
of IT end-users, to realizing higher Value & helping organizations get a better ROI on ICT
Investments.

This paper gives a roadmap and key considerations for setting up an efficient Service Desk
encompassing the traditional and evolving expectations from the new age Service Desk. The
paper shall enable the Service Desk managers either planning to set up a Service Desk or
managing a Service Desk to consider the implications for their organizations.

2 Why do you need a Service Desk?

Let us first answer the basic question, as what is the need or are the key drivers for setting up a
Service Desk.

2.1.1 End User Perception

In most organizations, the compelling reason for setting up a Service Desk is to respond to end-
users criticism of IT department’s effectiveness to respond to their problems. The Service Desk
makes it possible to deliver a predictable and consistent Delivery of IT Service to end-users. The
Service Desk also makes it possible to be objective in measuring Customer/User Satisfaction
which goes a long way in devising short term and long term plans for the IT Function.

2.1.2 SPOC for growing needs

While Service Desks have been a Single Point Of Contact for end users for IT incidents and
Service requests, it is now evolving an organization-wide SPOC, many times for non-IT needs as
well. Wherever there is a need for control and visibility, Service Desk that uses scaleable
technology solutions with trained staff who can empathize with callers – provides the best
solutions.

2.1.3 Infrastructure Availability

Service Desks reduce downtime not only by coordinated and channelized (prioritized) efforts for
faster resolution and thus ensuring a speedy resolution, but also by providing
proactive/preventive information to users, which can greatly reduce the probability of repetition of
such problems.

2.1.4 Higher Productivity and thus lower costs

The cost of resolution at second and third level is multiple times the cost of a similar fix at first
level. Utilization of staff at second and third levels is therefore a critical driver of overall efficiency.
By separating the initial call logging, investigation and information gathering from technical
troubleshooting, much higher utilization of second and third line staff can be achieved. The
Service Desk is also a tool for objectively measuring the productivity of IT personnel and to
determine the workload pattern. This further helps in manpower planning and scheduling for
optimal utilization.

2.1.5 Input to key ITSM Processes

The Service Desk provides valuable data on every item of hardware, software or professional
service. The procurement authorities can use this data to determine the reliability or performance.
This data is also useful in planning the Capacity and Availability of various services and
provisioning the Infrastructure accordingly. The Service Desk coordinates Changes and
Releases as many Service Management Tools integrate the workflow of these processes in the
conventional Service Desk tools.

As illustrated above, implementing Service Desk becomes imperative for an organization wanting
to implement full suite of ITSM processes.

3 Building a Service Desk

Having established that efficient Service Desk is critical to business, it should be set up as a
formal business improvement project with all key attributes like Ownership, Goals, and
Deliverables etc clearly defined before the start of Project. Let us now discuss key considerations
and Management decisions in order to setup a winning Service Desk.

3.1 Key Considerations

• Clearly establish and articulate needs in Business term.
• Define clear objectives and deliverables from the project
• Ensure Management commitment, budget and resources are available before thye
project starts.
• Identify quick wins and communicate to all stakeholders.
• Involve Customer/User in the Project Definition and ongoing Reviews specially those who
are outspoken and critical of the IT Support.
• Adopt a phased approach instead of a Big Bang. However, smaller businesses are
better-off going for a big-bang approach.
• On-board the staff; take them in confidence, discuss with them the objectives and
benefits.
• Educate and Train the staff
o To be customer focused,
o To be a team player, Service Desk is all about teamwork and will miserably fail in
the absence of it.
o Active listening, showing empathy with users,
o Professionalism; not to be adhoc with users/customers, as they will come with
unreasonable demands.
• Advertise, Sell & educate the new services and usage to users and Customers
• Identify key measurement matrices in customer understandable terms- e.g. Customer
pickup response time, they must be advertised and demonstrated consistently for winning
users trust.
• Standardize the user Interaction for a professional experience – e.g., have a standard
welcome message

3.2 Key Management Decisions

3.2.1 Structure of Service Desk

The term ‘Service Desk’ was originally conceived for IT support, however, it is now used to
describe any Customer Support Center or part of a Support Center, which handles complex
problem solving and associated processes. They are deployed in a wide variety of ways. The
Service Desk Manager must decide a structure based on merits and the organizational needs.
3.2.1.1 Local Service Desk:
Departmental Service Desks specializing in the support of certain types of internal or external
customers and focused on very specific business objectives. Key considerations are:
• Provide customized support for specific location-based groups or staff.
• Staff can develop a deeper level of expertise specific to the location.
• Providing support in multiple languages is easier if the Service Desk supporting each
language group can be staffed from local native speakers of that language.
• Each Service Desk provides backup to other Service Desks in the event that one should
become unavailable (disaster, and so on).
• Distributing the Service Desks creates a broader labor pool to draw from.

3.2.1.2 Centralised Service Desk:

Dedicated corporate Service Desks consolidating expertise in handling internal and/or external
customers and using advanced Service Desk tools with knowledge and asset management
capabilities. Key considerations are:
• Users know where to call for support.
• Fewer staff may be required, which reduces training, equipment, and facility costs.
• Consolidated management overview.

3.2.1.3 Virtual Service Desk:

Large, linked networks of multi-tier support centers spanning geographies and businesses, and
supported by expensive, integrated software to meet business requirements. Virtual Service Desk
is increasing becoming a choice for globally spread Organization and the key considerations are:
• This structure allows a “follow the sun” approach, where 24-hour coverage can be provided,
with each Service Desk working only during the normal workday for its location.
• As each Service Desk finishes work for the day, the calls are then routed to another Service
Desk in a different time zone where the staff is just starting their workday.

3.2.1.4 Outsourced Service Desk:

• Large support centers (or a network of centers) built as generic facilities to provide
Service Desk services for a wide range of clients who have chosen to outsource. In the
main they focus on IT support and use expensive system solutions, although these have
less functionality customization but more commercial options.

3.2.2 Communication Method, tools and technologies

The Service Desk provides a communication interface between users and the IT department. The
selection of technologies and methods of communication is thus a key consideration for Service
Desk.
3.2.2.1 Telephone
The most common, and often the easiest method of communicating with the Service Desk
remains the telephone. Opportunities for clearer definition and explanation of an issue exist when
the customer reporting the issue is interacting directly with the Service Desk analyst.

The sporadic development of applications such as IVR, ACD, CLI, CTI etc., has revolutionized
the Service Desk. While the tools go a long way in improving service efficiency and agent
productivity, an improper implementation may prove to be counter productive for user perception
for over-complex options and messages repeated too often. Managers must carefully evaluate
the technology options while implementing them, so as not to irritate the users.
3.2.2.2 Self-service and Web-Based forms
A Web-based ticketing system enables employees to initiate support requests and monitor ticket
status without calling the Service Desk. This feature can result in improved productivity by
minimizing call workload with self-service options for end users, ultimately saving Service Desk
support staff valuable time.
The advantages includes greater Customer Satisfaction by allowing users better transaction
control, low cost compared to the Service Desk manpower costs; it works beyond office hours -
24X7; and it can service a very large number of users simultaneously.

The Service Desk Manager must work for following attributes for a successful self-service Web
• Customer should be able to determines entry, exit and navigation to Service Desk
• Communication and Awareness among users
• Excellent FAQ’s (Frequently Asked Questions) so that users can be assured of a high hit-
rate for the most likely issues.
• Look and feel that is compatible with other facilities made available to the user.
• Avoidance of unnecessary technical jargon.
• Metrics for usage and improvements
• Robust methods of keeping the information on the self-service site live and updated
•
3.2.2.3 Email
E-mail is an increasingly common method of communicating with a Service Desk. Email makes it
easy for customers to submit calls to the Service Desk; however, this method can be used only
for less urgent calls. If all broadcast emails originating from the IT department are routed through
the helpdesk it provides a consistent interface for users, and add to positive perception.
For Service Desks which work at capacity or near-capacity at peak times, the encouragement of
e-mail can be useful in helping to stagger the load and enable questions to be addressed during
the lean hours of the day. However, the ability to respond well to email requires different set of
skills.
The biggest drawback is that it is essentially free-format; therefore, an e-mailed call may not
provide a structured report of all the symptoms of an issue or the details of a request. However,
e-mail forms can be developed for users to use to document all the relevant information.
Large-scale call centers are now investing in mass e-mail-handling software to perform auto-
response, auto-categorization and auto-forwarding tasks.

3.2.2.4 Mobile devices

The use of mobile devices and personal digital assistants will, in some cases offer remote
workers even more choices in the means of accessing help. Broadcasts of planned maintenance,
service interruptions or other messages can be done thru mobile devices. Modern Service
management tools use the mobile devices for auto forwarding and auto escalation of tickets to
the relevant support group/personnel.

3.3 Define the Scope and Service Levels for the Service Desk
Define and agree on the scope of Service Desk with Customer and users. The scope of Service
Window should be in line with the SLA agreed with the customer. The Scope must be widely
available to the users so that they are aware of what to expect (and what not to expect) from the
Service Desk. Some of the key considerations while defi ning the scope are:
• Define the Service Desk Coverage Window
• Days and Hours Covered (Weekdays, Business Hours etc.)
• Type of Non-Business hours support (No support or only web/phone support)
• Time zone etc
• Supported Business Locations, Geographies and Languages
• Product/Platform and services – clearly define all facilities covered, e.g. Office
Automation equipments like Fax machine covered/not covered.
 • Clearly define types of contacts supported
• Standard contacts for incident Calls, Service Requests etc.
• Others e.g. consumable replenishment in printers etc.
The SLA must clearly document the expected Service Level from the Service Desk. In case the
SLA does not specifically mention the service levels applicable for Service Desk, the Manager
must agree with customer on parameters like Call Hold, Incident Response etc. and must widely
publicize them among the users.

Along with the Service levels, the Service Desk Manager must also decide and agree with
customer on Charges - Per Call, T&M, Service Contracts, free service etc.

3.4 Plan the staffing of Service Desk

A Service Desk is only as good as the employees staffing the Service Desk are. The Service
Manager has to balance the cost and Delivery from the Service Desk and as the staffing is one of
the primary cost component, planning the headcount and profile of people manning the Service
Desk becomes a key consideration. Accordingly, the Service Desk Manager must decide on the
Skill Set, Roles and Headcount for Service Desk considering the following factors as input:
• Scope of Service Desk
• Communication Methods – Phone, email etc.
• Structure of Service Desk
• Customer Expectations and SLA signed with customer on Call hold, Incident response
and resolution targets etc.
• Projected Call volume for Voice, emails tool alerts etc. Projects the call volume by hours,
weekdays etc., to determine load pattern and thus the shift roster needs.
• Budget and resources
• Complexity of IT Infra
The staffing once arrived must be constantly reviewed and realigned by doing trend analysis on
SLA achievements, Customer feedback, work load pattern, call hold, total answer time etc.

4 The Winning Prescription

Once all the key decisions listed above are taken, the Service Desk Manager must now focus on
gaining the edge and make a winning Service Desk

4.1 Manage customer expectations

Customer satisfaction is the state of mind that customers have about a Service or a Product,
when their expectations have been met or exceeded over the time. Hence it is paramount to
manage the Customer expectations actively, in order to achieve Customer Satisfaction. Achieving
Customer Satisfaction is thus a three-step process – identify customer, understand and set the
expectations and meet or exceed the expectations.

4.1.1 Identify the “Customer” and User expectations

The Service Desk Manager must clearly identify who are the customers and users and their
needs from the Service Desk and IT. For Customer is someone who has responsibility for the
funding of the service and hence will be more focused on Value for money. Users who actually
uses the Services from Service Desk on a day to day basis will be not be concerned on value for
money against high availability and Service Levels.
Among user community also different users will have different needs. An IT department running a
conventional IT support desk in a BPO Organization has to satisfy the Business Head who runs a
Line of Business, a Process Manager who is responsible for an operational line unit and the team
leaders. In addition, there may be hundreds of agents as well as a clutch of senior lead users,
and supervisory staff. Every one of these different roles has a slightly different requirement of a
Service Desk.
4.1.2 Set Expectations
Managers need to be clear about whom they want to satisfy and to what extent. Trade-offs are
inevitable and need to be considered carefully. Such Trade-offs must be proactively identified to
the extent possible and must be signed-off with Customer. The SLA must ideally reflect such
trade-offs (e.g. different category of users having different service priorities and having different
Service levels) and must be publicized among users. However, despite care, not all business
priorities can be reflected in the SLA and hence the Service Desk agents must understand the
Business context and be sensitized for such exceptions.

4.1.3 Demonstrate Service

Where quantifiable targets have been set, care is needed to ensure that they can be met as
sufficiently & frequently, as to be believed by the users – and their managers. Special care has to
be taken publishing service targets which users can, in an even partial way, measure for
themselves. For example, a promise to answer the telephone within 10 seconds is much better
understood by a user than a commitment to resolve 80 percent of problems without external
escalation.
The caller who waits on-hold for over a minute in three successive calls will simply conclude that
the Service Desk’s claims are not credible.
Some large-scale call centers, unable to provide a live agent immediately, calculate an estimated
queuing time and advise the caller so that he or she can decide whether or not to hold on. Wise
suppliers construct the algorithm so as to be most likely to improve upon the estimated delay;
excellent expectation management.

4.2 Knowledge Management for Service Desk

Data are the individual known details; Data becomes information when structured in a particular
way, and knowledge is the outcome when insight, context & experience are added to it.
Successful leveraging of knowledge is the combination of the ‘involvement of trained staff with
true insight and experience, with the delivery of relevant data and information into their hands,
using Modern Service Management Tools. Some on the Knowledge Management aspects that
are relevant for the Service Desk Managers are:

4.2.1 User identification

The ability of Service Desk to identify the calling user and to retrieve key attributes without having
to ask the caller can not only drastically reduce the processing time and improve productivity, but
can enable a personalized user response resulting in high Customer Satisfaction. Much of this
data is traditional for Service Desks and is now regularly auto-filled through screen popping CTI
applications. The challenge however is to keep the information regularly updated.

4.2.2 Configuration Database

The Servi ce Management tool must assist the agent to look into the caller’s circumstances
without disrupting the customer dialogue. The agent should be able to see what equipment and
software is installed, how it is configured and networked to other components and system
elements. The key here is to implement Configuration Management Process and the ability of
Service Managemnt tools to link the Configuration Items with users.

4.2.3 Transaction History

A significant proportion of issues raised by IT users have some relevance to a previous query and
hence it is important to keep updating the call diary or the transaction history for the user.
The agent should be able to access the caller’s previous calls, or previous calls on a similar
problem, or for the same asset.
4.2.4 Customer Needs and Requirements
The requirement for IT support are captured in a Service Level Agreement and if it mandates a
differential service level for various categories of users, the Service Desk must maintain user
information indicating service/priority category. The implications of Service Levels must be stored
widely in escalation thresholds and penalty trigger-points all over a Service Desk system.

4.2.5 Known Error Database

As the ITIL best practices suggest, IT Service Desk, must have having access to known errors
and resolution data. Modern knowledgebase uses navigation methods to find quickly the answer
to multi-attribute questions and might even use advanced model-based or case-based retrieval of
specially built, and constantly updated archives. It is now possible to buy pre-built third-party
problem resolution databases or knowledgebase for widely distributed products.

4.3 Communication within Helpdesk

In a multi-Shift Service Desk, disseminating information, knowledge and work instructions to
everyone is a tough challenge. The risks of not keeping everyone involved and informed are high,
ranging from low morale, to analysts providing inaccurate or obsolete information to
users/customers. Though communication within the Service Desk is something that will be largely
driven by the specific needs, a few of the critical considerations are:

Create a Shift Handover Process – Have a standard agenda and template for Shift Handover
Notes.

Have a regularly updated Bulletin Board; preferably Web based having some fun content
besides having all Service Desk critical updates.

Have formal review meetings with a fixed agenda such as:

Daily: Exceptions/SLA Breaches, all open incidents
Weekly: SLA Reporting, major Incidents, Service Breaches, complaints

5 Emerging Trends and Implication for Managers

1. Email and Web Self-Help will Grow in contrast with voice calls: implications for Service
Desk includes changing skill set needs and more focus on Knowledge Management tools
and Processes.

2. Increased globalization and smart sourcing of IT Services is resulting in increasing

number of Multinational and multilevel Service Desks servicing customers outside there
own domestic market. With increased use of automation and remote management tools,
the remote Service Desk is becoming more acceptable. This brings opportunities to
save cost and ability to scale up/down, matching the Business needs.

The challenges on the other hand include language & cultural issues resulting in inability
to empathize with users. While technology does provide an answer enabling skill based
routing, care must be taken in making the agents assimilate with various cultures and
ethos.

3. While Outsourcing has been around for quite some time, SmartSourcing is a new
phenomenon having strong appeal that many businesses are looking at. The
Organisations were earlier out for outsoursing with the objective of focusing on their core
competence and achieving cost savings. However, complex contracts, inflexibility and
non being able to conclusively prove the cost saving, Organisations are now moving
towards selective sourcing. This is due to the greater penchant of firms to engage in
selective outsourcing or “smart sourcing” or “functional outsourcing”. Client firms thus
 recognize the need to engage multiple vendors to manage all of their outsourcing needs.
Besides the original advantages of focus and cost savings, organizations realizing th
following additional benefits
• Vendor Specialization ?
• Contractual Flexibility
• Domain Expertise – breakdown the tasks and give them to the experts in their field
The flip side however is that the Service Desk will now have more number of Service
Providers or the 2/3rd line of supports to manage. The Service Desk Managers must
proactively strengthen the documentations, escalation procedures, tracking and review
mechanisms and underpinning contracts so that the “front end” user service is not
affected.