Analyzing service desk metrics, through reporting and business intelligence systems, is certainly a significant resource for understanding performance and for measuring service trends.
According to a recent report by the Service Desk Institute, 90% of service desks evaluate their service in some way, but it seems that proper attention is not paid to all the relevant factors about the performance of services, such as efficiency, performance, progress, quality and customer experience.
All of these aspects must be measured, using specific service desk metrics, to understand how any changes to services or new initiatives can impact performance.
In fact, according to this report, the measurements that are made show simplistic analyzes, such as "the number of incidents registered by the service desk" or "the number of Service requests". Only a small percentage measures "the cost per incident or per service request", since it is very useful for understanding the economic value and the decisive impact that the service desk provides to the business organization.
The value of the service desk metrics
Service desk metrics therefore have an essential value to understand if everything is working as established, that there are no unresolved issues, delays or misalignments with the business objectives to which IT responds.
The Service Desk is one of the most strategic functions within the Information Systems Management, as it derives its value for the company in terms of its impact on effectiveness, dynamism and, above all, competitiveness and innovation. This value, in terms of performance, must be constantly monitored through appropriate service desk metrics.
The choice of service desk metrics must follow clear and contextualized objectives: the most correct KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) must therefore be identified and compliant with the set objectives, in order to obtain a correct interpretation of the performance of one's Service Desk in the organizational reality.
Top 5 service desk metrics to analyze
Here are some service desk metrics that are important to monitor to understand the value, effectiveness and efficiency of your services.
1. Ticket volume trend: identifies the total number of tickets open to the service desk in a given time interval.
This parameter allows IT managers to effectively manage incident load and service requests, identifying peak loads to optimize resource management.
2. Average ticket resolution time: identifies the time taken to resolve Incidents, in a given time frame, with respect to all open tickets. This data can be used to optimize the organization in planning SLAs and OLAs and to measure individual and service group productivity.
3. Ticket resolution on first call (first call resolution): identifies how many tickets are resolved on the first call. It is a parameter that measures the efficiency of the service desk and allows managers to be able to allocate technicians on different levels of support based on their experience and skill.
4. Compliance with SLAs (Service Level Agreements): identifies the resolution of Incident/Problem within the parameters provided for by the associated SLA. This metric measures the efficiency of the service desk, raising awareness in the IT department of the business impact that SLA overruns cause.
5. Cost per Ticket: identifies the operational cost of managing IT support compared to the total number of tickets in a given period. In parallel, identify the training needs of technicians or the creation of a meaningful knowledge base.
How to measure service desk metrics with HelpdeskAdvanced
The reporting and analysis features available in HelpdeskAdvanced, Pat's Service Desk solution, are extremely important to allow constant monitoring of KPIs. They help analyze the data, thus representing the quality and operation of the Service Desk.
HelpdeskAdvanced has specific analytical functions that guide the IT Department in defining strategic indicators to develop clear, timely, dynamic reports following business models in line with your company.