| The key at this
stage is to identify what the specific services are, the levels of
service that matter most to the customer, and to create the
Service Level Agreements to meet those levels of service. This
includes surveys, visits and meetings with the customers. The
intention here is to ASK the customers to explain their
requirements, not to TELL them what they are getting. This happens
in the classic Service Level Agreement scenario where customers
are invited to negotiate their SLA, when in reality it is more or
less a take it or leave it scenario with little or no negotiation.
What you need to
determine is: what are the customer services the customer wants,
how important are these services to him/her, and the levels of
performance and quality the customer needs from these services.
For example, a customer may identify ten services from the service
desk. What you need to determine is which of these services affect
customers the most. When you hold meetings with customers, stay
focused on the customers. If they are asking for the impossible,
then explain to them the reasons for your concerns.
In this way, you
will be able to build a Service Catalog from your interviews,
visits and meetings. A Service Catalog is a description of all the
services offered by the service desk with their default values and
parameters. This is best explained by an example.
|
SERVICE
CATALOG—Service Desk
First Level Resolution
Performance
criteria: The intention is for the service desk to solve
as many incidents as possible on the first call, or when the
incident is first reported, so that the customer is fully
functional again as soon as possible. This is known as First
Level incident solving. The definitions for incident solving
levels are:
First Level
incident solving:
-
an incident that
is solved by the service desk analyst during the first
telephone call from the customer without interrupting the
telephone call to communicate with a support group, or any
other external service, to obtain advice, information or any
other support
-
an incident that
is solved during a personal visit from the customer
-
an incident that
arrived electronically and was solved by the service desk
-
an incident
solved at the service desk during the first telephone call
but requiring the customer to be put on hold while the
analyst had to contact a source outside of the service desk
for assistance in solving the incident
-
an incident
solved at the service desk after offline research is
performed by the service desk analyst after ending the first
telephone call
Second Level
incident solving:
-
an incident
escalated from the service desk to an IT support group
-
incidents
escalated from an IT support group to another are still
classified as being at the Second Level
Third Level
incident solving:
-
an incident
escalated from the support group to an external resource for
resolution
Performance
Targets: The service desk will solve XX% of incidents at
the First Level, XX% of incidents will be solved at the Second
Level, and XX% of incidents will be solved at the Third Level.
Quality
Criteria: The intention is for the service desk to
actively pursue a policy of incident reduction so that known
errors are eliminated whenever possible or feasible. Reducing
the number of incidents will increase the efficiency of the IT
customers and decrease the Total Cost of Ownership for
services and systems.
Quality Targets:
The service desk will maintain a Service Improvement Program
(SIP) that will reduce the number of incidents by XX% every XX
months. |
Figure 1 –
Service Catalog sample
Figure 1 shows an
example of a service item in a Service Catalog. The item is for
incident resolution and elimination; i.e., performance and
quality. You can see that the criteria describes the service while
the target contains the standard or default values. In the
example, they are represented as XX, but in real life, you would
enter the appropriate values.
|
PERFORMANCE
Speed to solve on
1st call
Time to escalate
Incident duration
Feedback frequency
Priority allocations
Speed to answer
Number of hits
Number of call diverts
Actual duration
Number escalated
Number of outages
Priority 1 average
Calls within availability
Number of calls
Number of incidents per category |
SUBJECT
First level
incident solving
Incident escalation
Incident closure
Customer feedback
Priority control
Incident answering
Self-service
Call diversion
Incident duration
Second Level solving
Outage publishing
Resolution within priority 1
Availability
New system
Category management |
QUALITY
Incident reduction
Correct escalation
Reopened incidents
Late/No feedback
Wrong priorities
Abandoned rate
Percentage solved
Re-diverted
Solving levels
Within priority
Number of call backs
No missing timing
Calls outside availability
1st level solving
Reduction by category |
Figure 2 – Typical Service Desk Catalog contents
Figure 2 shows us
the typical entries in a Service Catalog for a service desk. The
subject is in the middle column with the corresponding performance
criteria to the left. If you are not sure what to ask your
customers when you meet them, use this list as your guide; i.e.,
ask how important each one is to the customer. So, if the
customers wanted each item in Figure 2, you would have to produce
a Service Catalog with an entry for each. Then, using the results
and your service desk metrics you can add the default values and
parameters. It is important not to just use your current averages,
you should have also asked the customers their desired values. It
may be that you cannot meet those desirable levels. If so, you
should start by investigating where and if you can meet those
levels in the future.
At this stage you
will need to ensure that your upper level support groups will
commit to the values expressed in your Service Catalog.
To read more about
quality and performance, see HDI's focus book, Performance to
Quality, by Malcolm Fry. This book is available on the HDI
eStore at
www.thinkhdiestore.com. |
