By Jamie Bell, Service Operations Manager, SDI
At some point in your life you’ve probably been part of a conversation debating which group of superheroes are the best and why?
Is it the Avengers who benefit from the leadership skills and tenacity of Captain America, the pure strength and resilience of the Incredible Hulk, the genius of Iron-Man and the front-line close combat prowess of Black Widow? Is it the Justice League who benefit from the bravery and skill-set of Batman and Superman, the pure strength and resilience of Wonder Woman, the technical genius of Cyborg, and the front-line close combat prowess of Aquaman?
In our world – is it the Service Desk who benefit from the leadership skills and tenacity of the Service Desk Manager, the pure strength and resilience of the Service Desk Team Leader, the genius of the 2nd and 3rd line teams and the front-line close combat prowess of the 1st line team?
Well, where the Avengers and the Justice League are concerned, we’ve got George Elcombe who would welcome a debate on the subject at any time, day or night! I’m confident he’ll even be able to pick a specific leader for the Justice League out of Batman and Superman too! But what about service desks?
How do you know how your service and your service desk superheroes compare against others in the industry? The SDI Benchmarking Report, that’s how! Every 2 years the Service Desk Institute survey hundreds of IT Service Management and Service Desk professionals to gain and provide insight into trends, statistics, and a wealth of information relevant to the industry. We collate this information and put it together into an easy to digest report, to find out where your Service Desk operation sits among its peers.
A balanced scorecard is another key way to track and trend your performance, using key metrics and weighting them based on their significance for your service. A balanced scorecard can be useful for monitoring performance against an XLA, as you are able to assess which metrics have the greatest impact on CX, and measure performance against them. There are a few steps to create a balanced scorecard:
- Select the metrics to include in your scorecard
- Establish a weighting for each metric based upon its relative importance in the scorecard
- Identify your best and worst performances for a specified time period, i.e. a month
- Input your average performance for the same time period
- Calculate your metric score using the formula below
- Calculate your balanced score based on that metric’s weighting
- Total your balanced scores to give your service desk an overall score for the specified time period
This score can then be tracked overtime, i.e. month to month, to trend service desk performance and monitor improvement; essentially, it can serve as a benchmark.
This ITSW19 show us what a force your service desk is!
