|
|
With the ever-increasing demands of Customers and the globalisation of companies, the delivery of a world-class service is becoming the difference between success and failure and, without a doubt, a major competitive advantage, as illustrated in the 'Service-Profit Chain model' shown in Figure 4.1. By understanding its Customers and business needs clearly , an organisation can deliver that service.
Efficient, high-quality support of the computing infrastructure and Customers is critical for the achievement of corporate business goals. With disparate and distributed architectures put together, often in a piecemeal approach, the management and support of such an environment becomes very expensive, time-consuming and frequently an exercise in futility.
At ground level, the requirement is far simpler: what would we do without a Service Desk?
When a Customer or User has a problem, complaint or question, they want answers quickly. More importantly they want a result - their problem solved. There is nothing more frustrating than calling an organisation or department and getting passed around until you find the right person to speak to - provided, of course, that they are not out at lunch or on holiday or it's just after five o'clock.
Figure 4.1 - The Service-Profit Chain model
Many support departments are under pressure to improve service and reduce costs. They tend to work in reactive mode, as a loose collection of disparate groups, spending vast amounts of time fire-fighting and generally keeping their heads above water. The current situations in many companies include:
To improve matters, a consolidated and team approach is required. More time is needed to plan, train, review, investigate, and work closer with Customers and Users - in short, to adopt proactive and structured working practices.
To meet both Customer and business objectives, many organisations have implemented a central point of contact for handling Customer, User and related issues. This function is known under several titles, including:
There are many variants on these names, with the main generic descriptions being Call Centre, Help Desk and Service Desk.
The main emphasis on professionally handling large call volumes of telephone-based transactions for commodity telesales services (e.g. banking, insurance).
The primary purpose is to manage, coordinate and resolve Incidents as quickly as possible and to ensure that no request is lost, forgotten or ignored. Links to Configuration Management and knowledge tools are generally used as supporting technologies.
The Service Desk extends the range of services and offers a more global-focused approach, allowing business processes to be integrated into the Service Management infrastructure. It not only handles Incidents, Problems and questions, but also provides an interface for other activities such as customer Change requests, maintenance contracts, software licences, Service Level Management, Configuration Management, Availability Management, Financial Management for IT Services, and IT Service Continuity Management.
Many Call Centres and Help Desks naturally evolve into Service Desks to improve and extend overall service to the Customers and the business. All three functions share common characteristics:
In this chapter, the focus is on the Service Desk as the prime service function.
The Service Desk provides a vital day-to-day contact point between Customers, Users, IT services and third-party support organisations. Service Level Management is a prime business enabler for this function. A Service Desk provides value to an organisation in that it:
Strategically, for Customers the Service Desk is probably the most important function in an organisation. For many, the Service Desk is their only window on the level of service and professionalism offered by the whole organisation or a department. This delivers the prime service component of 'Customer Perception and Satisfaction'. Internal to the IT function, the Service Desk represents the interests of the Customer to the service team.
One key benefit of a Service Desk is the provision of management information, including information regarding:
Are Service Desks only for larger organisations?
Providing a Service Desk for Customers will greatly benefit any size of organisation, whether the support staff is two or fifty, supporting ten or ten thousand Users. The basic premise of providing cost- effective Customer support is the same. For smaller organisations where staff resource and expertise is at a premium, issues such as resource management, staff dependency, documented solutions and procedures become significant.
When designing your new Service Desk, it is important to consider the costs involved and, if 'charge- back' is required, how this is to be managed. Although charging methods are not covered in this book, the method adopted needs to be identified to ensure that the Service Desk system can both collect and pass on the required information and costings. From a practical perspective, it may be better simply to apportion the charges between all Customers on a fair and equitable basis, rather than using an explicit charging method.
Several methods are available, which may operate as individual items or be amalgamated to provide a single cost. These include:
Rather than use actual cost values, it is common practice to use a 'charge unit', which has an associated value (e.g. 1 cost unit = 1 euro).
Charging per call can deter Customers from using the Service Desk, resulting in attempts to bypass the Service Desk or to resolve Incidents themselves before making a call. This could lead to increased diagnosis and resolution times at the Service Desk, because of the need to determine the action(s) that have been taken, which may have increased the complexity of the Incident.
In overall terms, the introduction of a Service Desk can be expected to produce benefits both for the business and for the provision of the service, including:
The modern Service Desk is at once Customer-facing and focused on its main objectives, which are to drive and improve service to and on behalf of the business. At an operational level, its objective is to provide a single point of contact to provide advice, guidance and the rapid restoration of normal services to its Customers and Users.
Traditional IT departments who are technology driven, and often use the Service Desk function as a barrier rather than an enabler, are quickly becoming extinct. They are being replaced with a customer- focused 'Service Team' with technical expertise, business awareness and interpersonal skills, with support from a wide range of technological tools.
This new breed of service professional is well positioned to extended service provision to all aspects of the business, providing a consolidated and revenue-generating business activity, handling all aspects of service beyond the IT department. With good people, process and tools, the product or service being supported is, to a great extent, immaterial.
Customer interaction is no longer restricted to the telephone and personal contact. Service can be greatly enhanced and extended to the Customer, Users and support staff by expanding the methods for registering, updating and querying requests (see Figure 4.2). This can be achieved primarily using email and the Internet/Intranet for remote offices, although fax can also be a valuable tool. These methods are best exploited for activities that are not business-critical, which include registering non-urgent Incidents or requests, such as:
For the support team, a number of benefits are derived, including:-
Figure 4.2 - Incident registration inputs
The usage of form-based inputs increases the integrity of the data supplied and assists in allocation to the best-suited support specialist, team or department. The Service Desk tool should automatically provide the Customer or User with a receipted unique reference number, which also allows for online querying of the request's progress.
Providing Customers and Users with confirmation that their request has been accepted (see Figure 4.3), and its progress, is one of the most important roles of the Service Desk. Yet very few organisations have the staff resources to focus on and maintain this activity. As stated earlier, the use of technologies, such as email, will assist in this. However the real challenge is to create a personalised bond with customers, even through electronic communication.
|
| Reference No. | INC-22323 |
| Description | Laser Printer not working |
| User Name | Mr. William Smith |
| Location | Library Rm.34B |
| Telephone | 0207 32324 ext. 2322 |
| Mail address | Smith_W@EVE21 |
| To be completed by | Monday 12-Jan at 17:00 hrs |
Should there be any further questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact the ACME Service Desk on 0207 333444, quoting your assigned Reference Number.
Yours sincerely,
John Jiles
(Service Support Specialist)
Figure 4.3 - Customer Incident Confirmation
This same approach can be made for all correspondence with the Customer, such as:
Such an approach is shown in Figure 4.4.
|
| Description | Installation of New PC |
| Location | Library Rm.34B |
| Telephone | 0207 32324 ext. 2322 |
| Mail address | jansen_w@eve21 |
| Start Date | Tuesday 14-Jan 2000 at 09:00 |
| To be completed by | Wednesday 15-Jan 2000 at 12:00 |
Should there be any further questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact the ACME Service Desk on 0207 333444, quoting your assigned Reference Number.
Yours sincerely,
Jill Adams
(Service Support Installation manager)
Figure 4.4 - Scheduling confirmation
When visiting a Customer location, the same personalised service can be provided to confirm that you have attended, especially if the Customer was not around at the time. Use a small form or business card, like the one shown in Figure 4.5.
|
| Reference Number: | INC-23323 |
| Incident corrected: | Yes [ ] No [ ] |
| Date/Time: | Monday 12-Jan 2000 at 09:20 |
| Reported Symptom: | unable to print |
| Solution: | replaced faulty printer cable |
Should there be any further questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact the ACME Service Desk on 0207 333444, quoting your assigned Reference Number.
Figure 4.5 - Action confirmation
Traditionally, the support function works in a reactive mode, responding to events, alarms and Incidents as they arise. In many cases, however, Incidents encountered with the infrastructure can be detected before they directly affect the Customer, or at least the support operation can be alerted immediately an Incident occurs.
Network and automated operations tools perform this function. In their simplest form they regularly monitor aspects of the infrastructure and upon detecting a non-standard condition automatically generate an Incident (also referred to as an Event). It is this Incident that can be automatically passed via the Service Desk to the required support team for action.
In addition to monitored Incidents, Incidents can be actioned from within scripts, applications and batch jobs. For example, when a backup fails, the Incident can be automatically registered in the support system, classified, prioritised and automatically forwarded via the Service Desk to the required support person or group.
The 'Infrastructure Service Desk Incidents' diagram at Figure 4.6 demonstrates this overall strategy. When an Incident is registered from the infrastructure, it is automatically routed to the appropriate person or group. If however, the request has not been acknowledged, the escalation management process will take over alerting the Service Desk that an action is required.
Often, scripting can not only log the event but also recover the situation, by, for instance, restarting a back-up to alternative media or devices. These events need to be recorded because they are Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on the success of an automated IT operation.
Figure 4.6 - Infrastructure Service Desk Incidents
The following benefits can be expected from infrastructure monitoring and action:
Advanced event management systems will attempt to correct failures and keep progress updated in the support system until the action is complete or requires manual intervention.
Internet technology provides a number of useful facilities for supporting Service Management in global, local and distributed environments. These include:
Allowing Internet access needs to be carefully considered and policed to ensure only authorised access is permitted and that, where applicable, only licensed and virus free software and other materials (e.g. pictures) are accessed. Care should be taken, when publishing or receiving any materials, that the content is both legal and accurate. Remember that legal consideration and copyright law differs from country to country.
The business benefits, costs and accessibility requirements of using Internet technology need to be fully understood, and an organisational policy defined to support Web usage.
|
|
