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Evaluate Your Company’s Service Desk: The Best Metrics to Follow

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Taking a measurement provides an assessment or comparison in order to appraise value, effect, and quality. Measures give feedback for process improvement, to establish alignment, enhance knowledge, and detect the correct placement or purpose of a system or an object.

The unit of measure that relates to Information Technology is a ‘metric’. Metrics assess IT functionality, infrastructure stability, and overall fluidity. They investigate the daily scope of a service desk while evaluating the ability and timeliness of support for the business and its end-users. Metrics uncover successes and failures while discovering ways for improvement.

It Starts with an Acronym

The metric categories as they relate to IT can be abbreviated into a ROPE acronym: Response, Operation, Productivity, Expense.

Response is a time-based metric that evaluates how long it takes to manage an issue from onset to resolution. It determines parameters, such as:
  • Time of first response of the IT tech to the end-user
  • Ability of the technician to manage the issue within the first call
  • Amount of time it took to resolve the issue
Operation is a personnel metric that measures the overall performance of the service desk as it relates to both end-user satisfaction and disposition of the technicians performing the work (how supported and successful they feel). It reports on the:
  • Technician’s level of ability
  • Technician’s level of work satisfaction
  • End-user’s or customer’s level of satisfaction with the IT experience
  • Technicians’ ability to respect the tier model and resolve the issue within the scope of the appropriate tier
  • Support of the business overall – contributing to continuity and success
    • Coming up with new ideas for efficiency
    • Managing departmental issues appropriately
    • Noting and managing trends
    • Changing or improving processes and systems as needed
Productivity is a resource metric that evaluates how effectively the service desk is at managing the requests of an end-user and the needs of the company. It measures efficiency and effectiveness, including:
  • Ticket volume per day, week, month, year
  • Number of calls and/or tickets handled per technician
  • Number of tickets completed per technician
  • Number of incoming tickets per hour
  • Strengths of the support team based on the task and the time taken to resolve it
  • Number of backlogs
  • Length of downtime and outages
Expense is a metric that pertains to the impact (positive or negative) that a service desk has on the financial bottom line of a business. It includes:

  • Cost per ticket or issue
  • Cost per technician as related to overtime hours, downtime associated with an end-user issue, and similar measures
  • Cost per peripheral, such as data storage, equipment, licenses, etc.

ROPE-ing It Together

Collecting and evaluating your metrics regularly allows for consideration of what is most important for business organization, management, and success. For example, if you are hearing from end-users that your help desk is slow to respond to issues, make a point to track metrics that pertain to response and resolution timing.

Share your metrics results with employees. Allow them to learn from the trends, improve from the deficits, and celebrate the successes. This is real-time data that they can trust and will help them grow.

Regularly review which metrics matter most to your business and update your strategy based on those preferences. Metrics that you currently gather annually may be better collected on a quarterly basis. Integrate metrics into your business priorities and allow them to work for you.

Metrics Matter

Companies can benefit or suffer from service desk performance. Metrics reveal everything from a weak support technician, to needed upgrades, to review of equipment and resources, to implementations that will make a great impact. Dysfunction and malfunction in the IT department can lead to issues with time, personnel, productivity, and expense.

Whether through in-house support or an outsourced provider, let your IT metrics help you and your team make a positive impact on your business and each other.

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