How To Improve Service At The Front Desk

As IT has evolved, the service desk-bound has remained the primary point of contact for users (and potential users) is the service desk. Despite advances in chatbots and digital assistants, the service desk continues to be essential, pivoting from dealing with technical problems to focusing on people and business organisation issues.

Because the service desk is integral to the success of an organization's business strategy, its performance is an indicator of the overall wellness of business technology service provision. It is said that a good service desk tin really mask poor It services.

Let'south expect at how to improve service desk operation relative to the 4 pillars of ITIL®:

Arrangement and people
Information and engineering science
Partners and suppliers
Value streams and processes

Organization and People

The service desk primarily deals with people. Therefore, information technology'southward imperative that any service desk comeback starts with the heart of the workplace—the visitor culture. The near successful service cultures brand the customers feel and believe that your visitor is committed to addressing customer needs. To do this, you must consider the actions and behaviors of people in the service desk-bound environs, which back up the overall functionality of the service desk.

If your service desk environment doesn't support a success service desk, you'll have to make changes. Models like Lewin's change model or John Kotter's 8-Step Process can assistance the organization address poor service civilisation by preparation staff not but on technical skills only too on empathy, emotional intelligence, squad culture, and servant leadership.

Another opportunity for service desk-bound improvement: the organizational structure of the service desk specifically and IT more mostly. While the traditional hierarchical structure has been the framework mainstay for escalating requests and incidents, you lot can improve and modernize your service desk by introducing more than active structures like product-based, matrix, or flat. These can allow greater flexibility, more collaboration, and quicker focus on the client's priority.

To measure out the success of these personnel and organizational comeback initiatives, look at:

Customer satisfaction
Employee appointment

Information and Technology

Information is the lifeblood of any organisation—mayhap the same can be said of the service desk. The service desk-bound is the chief beneficiary of ITSM engineering solutions, like ticketing and workflow systems. Improving the service desk can results in improve efficiencies, clear service priorities, reduced touch of service downtime/degradation, and increased strategy alignment. When these business needs are met, the ultimate issue is customer satisfaction.

To brand improvements along these lines, consider the correct solutions or new modules which can better facilitate the following activities:

Routing and escalating requests and incidents to relevant teams speedily
Workforce planning and resources management of service desk-bound personnel
Knowledge management including regular and faster updates on service offerings and troubleshooting guides
Monitoring and reporting including dashboards and data analytics
Asset and configuration management including mobile device management solutions
Deploying cocky-service, robotic procedure automation, and AI solutions to handle depression-level repeatable (algorithmic) tasks

To measure service desk-bound improvement related to information and technology, look at:

Response and resolution times for handling problems
Cost per ticket
Additional service desk-bound metrics equally applicable

Partners and Suppliers

No man is an island, and the service desk-bound isn't either. Even if your service desk-bound is fully stacked and capable with the right people and technology, a service desk won't be successful without good collaboration.

Service desks necessarily collaborate with players within and across the IT department: business partners, external suppliers, customers, and other entities that support the service lifecycle. Increasingly, the service desk-bound is expected to partner closely and seamlessly with other organizational units to provide the impression to users that they are dealing with i cohesive body—not a dysfunctional conglomerate of uncoordinated parts.

If others don't play well with your service desk-bound, consider initiatives that brings together your service desk agents and other personnel:

Team building exercises
Collaboration initiatives
Embedding service desk agents to other units or vice versa
Frequent review of targeted actions for service desk and other stakeholders

To measure successful partner and supplier relationships, look for:

Improved MTTR
Smoother collaboration
Increased employee satisfaction/appointment scores

Value Streams and Processes

The customer journey includes all interactions with the service desk, from a user'southward initial reporting of an issue to the handing-off to a specialist. It includes various touchpoints and perhaps more than ane moment of truth. Agreement this customer journey provides a wealth of opportunities for comeback initiatives.

Navigate the customer journeying yourself by conducting a mapping exercise. Using a template similar the one beneath, service desk staff can hands visualize CX/UX pain points, asphyxiate-points, and dropped assurance that negatively result value streams and processes. Armed with this information, your service desk can develop the necessary corrective and preventative actions that volition meliorate efficiency and effectiveness—and ultimately client perception.

Client Actions	Step 1	Footstep 2	Step 3
Interface/interaction points/systems
Service desk-bound agent deportment
Back up staff/partner actions
Customer perceptions/pain points
Service desk behaviors
Improvement actions (Corrective/ preventive)

Figure one: Sample template for customer journey mapping

Some other opportunity for improvement of value streams and processes tin come from benchmarking with international all-time practices and standards. The service desk, together with the residue of your arrangement, can reference frameworks that identify processes and primal comeback areas. Well-known frameworks include:

ISO 20000
SDI's Global All-time Practice Standard for Service Desk
Axelos' ITIL Maturity Model

To measure success in value and processes, look for increased accomplishment of business and client needs. Remember that benchmarking and organizational activities are non themselves goals—they are there to back up the larger goals.

Success is holistic improvement

A holistic approach to improvement is the simply way for the service desk to comprehensively enhance its role in the service value system. Neglecting or focusing too heavily on a single colonnade creates an imbalance, ultimately resulting in shortcomings in full-value realization and achieving business and customer outcomes.

A Plan-Do-Bank check-Human action approach with an emphasis on innovation and continuous improvement will go a long way in making the service desk a positive correspondent towards customers' perception of your company.

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These postings are my own and practise non necessarily correspond BMC'due south position, strategies, or opinion.

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About the author

Joseph Mathenge

Joseph is a global best practice trainer and consultant with over fourteen years corporate feel. His passion is partnering with organizations around the earth through training, evolution, adaptation, streamlining and benchmarking their strategic and operational policies and processes in line with best practice frameworks and international standards. His specialties are IT Service Management, Business Process Reengineering, Cyber Resilience and Project Management.