Your Service Desk Metrics are Lying to You

The ticketless service desk is coming. And that’s a good thing.

The ticket-based approach to IT consumer support has resulted in poor IT behaviors. Perhaps the worst of these behaviors is taking a self-referential, “one-size-fits-all” approach to measuring service desk performance.

Most of the measures tracked and published by the service desk evaluate how the service desk performed. These measures illustrate how quickly the service desk performed, how effectively the service desk performed, how much cost was incurred per consumer interaction and reward reacting rather than improving services.

The intent of tracking and publishing these measures is to illustrate the value of the service desk. But many (if not all) traditional service desk measures are ticket-based. What happens when interactions with the service desk are ticketless? The ticketless service desk is closer than many realize.

Make no mistake – measuring is good. Resolving consumer issues is good. Fulfilling requests in a timely and effective manner is good. But the simple break/fix actions performed by the service desk are rapidly being automated.

When it comes to consumer interactions with the service desk, it is not about ticket closure. It’s about something else.

Where the service desk is heading

It’s no secret that the role of the service desk is evolving. As I mentioned in this article, new support capabilities are emerging daily, consumer expectations are increasing and enterprise service management and value stream thinking are pulling non-IT teams into shared service and support workflows.

AI and automation are shifting which kinds of work that humans do – especially work that humans do at the service desk. Adoption of AI-enabled capabilities will render traditional service desk measures meaningless. These are the same measures that many use as evidence of the value and effectiveness of the service desk.

If you’re using traditional measures to manage the performance of the service desk, you’ll need to define new measures. AI-enabled capabilities change the way that service desks should be measured.

Here’s some examples:

• Ticket volume/tickets closed – AI will resolve many issues without the creation of a ticket. “Tickets closed” will become irrelevant.
• Cost per ticket – The “cost per ticket” measure reinforces the perception of IT being a cost center. But the introduction of AI will dramatically reduce the cost of a consumer interaction, making this measure misleading.
• SLA-based speed measures – I’ve never been a fan of SLA-based speed measures, because these measures are not service measures – they are service desk performance measures. AI at the service desk will shift the emphasis from speed of response to absence of disruption and quality of experience.
• Average handle time – AHT emphasizes speed over quality. With AI, speed is guaranteed; measuring AHT tells a service desk manager nothing about value.
• First Contact Resolution – I look at FCR as a vanity metric – it looks good on paper, but really doesn’t tell anything about value, outcomes or real performance from the consumer perspective. In fact, it is a measure of consumer disruption when using IT-provided products and services. With AI, FCR becomes a “why did the consumer need help at all?” AI will resolve the simple issues that make up much of the demand on the service desk.

What really matters

With an AI-enabled service desk, here’s what really matters.

• Employee experience – Often conflated with employee sentiment, employee experience is what someone goes through during her interactions with (in this case) the service desk. Was the interaction friction-free? How difficult was it for the consumer to get their issue resolved?
• Outcomes – As I discussed in this article, outcomes represent the results that the organization wants or needs to achieve. Service desks must begin measuring outcomes, not only outputs. What are the outcomes that a consumer realizes after interacting with the Service Desk?
• Happiness – “Happiness” is different from “satisfaction.” HappySignals defines “happiness” as how end-users feel about their IT experience, measured using a simple zero (extremely unhappy) to 10 (extremely happy) scale.

What’s in the way?

What is in the way of organizations realizing the benefits of a ticketless service desk?

• Lack of strategy – The service desk cannot exist in a vacuum. The goals and objectives of the service desk must align with the business strategy, with a focus on business outcomes, consumer productivity and value co-creation.
• Having a “tools first” mentality – Organizations get into trouble when they ask, “What tool should we implement?” instead of “What business problem are we trying to solve and what outcome do we need?”
• Poor ITSM practices – ITSM is not “just the service desk”; treating ITSM that way limits the value of the service desk within the organization.

IT tickets are dead – get ready for the ticketless service desk

Here are some steps organizations should take to get ready for the ticketless service desk:

• Develop a service desk strategy aligned to business outcomes – Ensure service desk goals align with enterprise objectives and employee workflows. Integrate service desk planning with enterprise service management, digital workplace initiatives and employee experience programs.
• Shift from ticket-centric metrics to experience and outcome metrics – I’ve discussed this before – the service desk needs to tell the right story with the right metrics. Move away from traditional, ticket-based metrics. Establish new metrics based on employee experience, business outcomes and consumer happiness.
• Expand ITSM across all of IT – Taking a holistic approach to ITSM enables proactive support, automation and seamless experiences that minimize disruptions.