Metrics and reporting can be a significant asset for the service desk, as well the business, by allowing the service desk to monitor performance and measure service improvements. However, there are multiple factors that can reduce the efficacy and value of producing metrics reports.
This recent SDI report explores what organisations are actually reporting on and how often, how they produce reports, and what they do with this data. We ask could organisations be reporting more efficiently and how can we gain the most value from metrics?
90% of service desks measure their service in some way. SDI advocates that all service desks should measure metrics around areas such as efficiency, performance, progress, quality, and customer experience as this will ultimately allow them to monitor how changes to the service or improvement initiatives have an impact on performance.
We also discovered the most commonly measured metric is the number of incidents logged by the service desk. A slightly smaller proportion, 89%, measure the number of service requests while only a small percentage by comparison measure the cost per incident and service request, 17% and 16% respectively. These two metrics are essential for calculating the cost of your service, which can be a useful figure to have, for example when creating a business case for purchasing anew piece of technology to demonstrate the economic value the service desk could deliver to the organisation.
This report also looks at how much value the business places on metrics, as well as how useful service desk professionals believe the metrics they measure are. Surprisingly only 1% believe that their reporting outputs allow them to effectively articulate the value of the service desk to the business in certain cases. Do your metrics enable you to fully demonstrate value? If not, there may either be an issue with the way the rest of the business perceives the service desk, or in the way the performance reports are presented.
There should be a good level of communication between the service desk and the business to understand what each party requires in terms of the measurement of metrics and what the service desks capabilities are. As beneficial and informative as measuring and monitoring performance metrics can be, it should never be to the detriment of the quality of service.
Download the full report
Do you use your service desk performance metrics to effect business change? It is important to review business related metrics and report these effectively to the business, so they are better informed on how the organisation could change to improve efficiency whilst also understanding ITs capabilities and how they can work together to achieve the business’ goals. See how your service desk compares by downloading the report now.
SDI offers service desks lots of valuable support in the area of metrics and management information. As a key concept of the Best Practice for Service Desk, we are here to help you to be brilliant in this vital area of demonstrating value. Find out more about the metrics best practice concept here.
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