How To Build A Self-Managing Service Desk
As ambassadors of your brand, your Service Desk is the frontline of support for your organization.
In many ways, your Service Desk acts as the face of your business for most of your customer interactions. Theirs is the face that your customers see or the voice that they hear when an issue or questions arises with your products/services.
Because of this, it is critical that consistent quality is hard-coded into the daily tasks performed by your agents. High quality experiences drive customer retention and secure brand loyalty. To ensure this desired level of quality, your Service Desk should be self-managing. What does self-managing mean? Your agents are empowered, trusted and have the proper tools and reports to manage the interaction of the desk hour-to-hour and day-to-day. They must have the ability to make decisions about where to best use their time and to assist other agents when volume or the complexity of problems become an issue. However, this does not mean you shouldn’t have strong, experienced leadership directing your Service Desk.
So, how do we achieve this self-sustaining ecosystem? Here are fives ways to ensure that you are optimizing your Service Desk so that agents are providing a best-in-class experience to your customers:
Make the most out of your service desk software
There are quite a few ITSM workflow tools available today. Since your processes should be compliant with ITIL best practices, choose the Service Desk software that best supports ITIL procedures to make sure your team is operating with best-in-class protocols. You will need to be able to maintain performance targets, and having software that assists you in monitoring and managing those targets is essential.
Embrace knowledge centered support methodologies
Knowledge-Centered Service is a service delivery method that focuses on knowledge as a key asset of your organization. Embracing this methodology not only grants your agents access to the answers for the most frequently asked questions, but will also help in providing them insights into process and procedural questions that may crop up as they facilitate an incident. This paves the way to assist you in managing ticket volume and improving resolution times. It is also a way to ensure that your agents are following operational protocol in the administering of cases/tickets. Having a knowledge database to have access to process and procedures will address many simple questions that might otherwise result in an error or poor productivity.
“You must do things so astonishingly well that customers become not mere loyalists but rather outright apostles.”
— Skip LaFauve, former CEO of Saturn
Build and Deploy an Agent Scorecard
At the end of every week, every agent must receive his/her operational scorecard. This card is used to outline the agents weekly performance goals, what are they doing well and areas of improvement. To focus on a high-level of customer service, you need a method to measure, oversee and modify performance. Below are 4 quick steps to designing an actionable performance scorecard:
Determine a clear purpose and usage
Define the right metrics
Secure stakeholder input
Review and refine often
The scorecard data should be widely distributed, discussed and reviewed throughout your Service Desk. Providing your agents with a holistic view helps them realize that operational excellence is a foundation within your organization’s core values.
Build better SLAs
Service Level Agreements are more than just metrics. They are an agreement you have with your customers regarding priorities, ongoing performance and strategic direction. Your operational SLAs are metrics you are holding the team to. These metrics are used as a gauge to determine performance and operations of the Service Desk. Meeting and/or exceeding these metrics should drive decisions such as staffing models, training, automation and tool creation and deployment. In the end, effective SLAs will create a clear view of performance goals, productivity, availability and standardization.
Empower your people
Reaching operational excellence is only one part of the equation. You must promote a culture of teamwork, continuous improvement, collaboration and success. Developing internal programs such as leadership and mentor programs, ambassador workshops and having staff that is proficient in data analytics are crucial methods to promote and encourage agent growth.
Leadership Teams - these individuals are not managers or supervisors, they are mentors (senior agents) to your junior/mid-level agents. Utilizing a 1:8 ration, mentors assist educate, support and uplift those that they mentor. These mentors can change periodically (not too often - maybe once every 6 months).
Ambassador’s Workshop - Providing your ambassadors with a voice is critical. Conduct agent workshops on operational, morale and customer satisfaction issues.
Data Analytics - These are the resources knowledgeable in breaking down the data so that you can understand how to get to the root cause of what you are doing wrong as well as what you are doing right. You must know both to succeed.
In the end, having a self-managed Service Desk allows an organization to move from a reactive support model to a proactive one. This will also a create an environment of ownership to the agents, one where they are engaged in the higher-level strategy and workings of the desk and understand the direction to collaborate with each other to provide the best possible customer service.
We have developed many cases where implementing such a model has provided the following benefits:
Agent attrition has dropped from double digits to low single digits
Agents competing in being the top performers of the week, month or quarter
Knowledge is freely shared among the agents making others more productive
Professionalism increases so it not just about the task, but the value that is delivered
Cost per ticket decreases to better performance at the desk level
Customer satisfaction score go up due to better customer experiences
Contact Us
Peak Process Group can uncover what your business needs to thrive.