Service Desk Trends

Dedicated followers of fashion? - Barry Corless, November 2011

Anybody who has read my blogs, seen me present or joined my webinars will know I have an intense love of using a celebrity quote or line from a song to amplify points I’m trying to make.  This delve into the world of service desk and support trends and fashions is no different with the title taken from The Kinks hit of the 1960’s.  However, I’m not stopping there today and will quote from perhaps the man whose utterances I use more than any other, bohemian playwright and serial dandy, Oscar Wilde.  I’m going to use Oscar’s view on fashion to pose a series of questions about service desk and IT support trends.  A little controversy to start with.  “Is support ‘fashion’ changing merely to line the pockets of the vendors?  Are we creating change for changes sake when what our customers want is so much simpler?”.  So how does Oscar see it?  He said,

“From the artistic point of view, fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” 

Is he right?  Are we changing support fashions (gamification, social media, etc) so quickly that there is simply no point trying to keep up and nor do our customers really expect us to do so?  Do we really need every new innovation or is good service technology and process agnostic?  Posing the alternate view are we simply afraid of what the future holds and becoming so immune to constant change that we’re simply not selective enough in choosing which trends and fashions are right for us?

OK…so what about the evidence?  The primary source comes from a Global Knowledge survey carried out at a recent itSMF UK/ SDI joint event held in Liverpool.  Some 43 UK companies attended the event with 85% of them filling in the survey.  There was a range of service desk sizes but significantly 40% were over 20 people strong.  Large service desks from global market leading organisations where you’d expect to see the latest technology and trends.  Plus there were a number of organisations present who have achieved either the SDC standard or ISO20000 certifications in their IT department. 

More than an IT thing?  An interesting statistic was one which revealed 40% of the desks that responded use or plan to use (IT) service management processes outside of the IT environment.  This includes universities using processes to run library services, facilities management issues being handled in a similar manner in the public sector, retail queries from stores of a supermarket chain, total support within the NHS with one desk handling support for IT / Facilities / Clinical equipment / etc and so on.  This is one trend that I certainly cannot see reversing in the near future.  Indeed, the lessons learned and capability that IT support has developed can act as an ideal blueprint for the rest of the organisation.

A desk for all seasons?  A startling revelation in the face of being told that support is very mature and needs complex toolsets to match is the stat that ONLY 60% are dealing with more than just IT break / fix calls.  The service desk has been around since ITIL was revised to version 2 some 11 years ago but still 40% of desks are unable or unwilling to get beyond purely reactive, old style, IT help desk activity!  Now what the figure doesn’t tell us is how many of the 40% have chosen to remain like that as a conscious decision but attendance at an event promoting increase in SERVICE desk standards probably tells its own story!        

Help…I need somebody!  We were in Liverpool so I just couldn’t resist…Our next question concerned the primary mode of contact at the service desk.  57% telephone and 34% email accounts for the vast majority.  A big, round 0% were using instant messaging or the like as primary contact method.  Our own organisation is a fine example.  Even though we have a monitored Instant Messaging (IM) service for people to ask questions or raise queries about training they still prefer to call us or email.  The IM service sees the electronic equivalent of tumbleweed blowing across it.  Shock horror!!  We are being told if we’re not using social media we are techno-phobes and just not with it!! I’m sorry that’s not what our survey is saying.  Our service desks are telling us ‘don’t believe the hype’.  Was it maybe that all the ‘good’ service desks that are using social media weren’t there?  Well I saw at least two 4* SDI service desks in attendance so that’s just not true.  I’m not decrying social media and its use in the support environment.   Yes, it will have an effect eventually but it might take longer than the experts are predicting.

Measuring up!  Our next question tackled the thorny topic of the headline metric by which your desk is judged.  A full range of answers was topped by number of first time fixes (55%).  Well, it is all about opinions and in mine there are so many things wrong with using this as the headline metric not least of which is the fact that it means nothing unless it is catagorised by call type.  For example, you might expect 100% of calls regarding password resets to be a first time fix but conversely that figure might be 0% for a new system where all calls are being passed through to a triage early life support service.  Obviously, the balance between those two call types would have a tremendous affect on the raw first time fix number.  Some 23% are measured on abandons or phone answer time.  This could be a reaction to a desk where everything else is in balance and we need to measure something but much more likely to be driven by ultra demanding customers or resource issues at the desk.  Downtime is king for 19% of service desks and where they are driving the end to end incident management process this is a good measure.  The nirvana of cost per incident is the headline metric at just 3% of service desks.  In an aspirational sense, this is where many service desks would like to be but unfortunately too many organisations just don’t know the cost of downtime.  Equally, it’s not always the greatest measure where weak problem management results in numerous repeat incidents.  Reducing the time taken to resolve an incident is good but when it happens to be the same incident recurring over and over again that will temper our celebrations somewhat.                

What about the badges?  We asked about organisational accreditation.  How many desks are accredited, working towards it, thinking about it or just not going there?  The key accreditations were the specialist SDI service desk certification and ISO/ IEC 20000 badges and the more generic ISO9001 series.  Encouragingly, 21% were already accredited and another 21% are working towards it.  So, nearly half the desks questioned see the value in an organisational accreditation alongside the education of individuals.  Of those remaining 37% are considering accreditation.  There has to be a trend there with many citing increased control, better customer service, reduced costs and reduced risks as the key reasons for embarking on this path.  As one veteran Head of IT commented “I know my service desk is bloody good.  Now I want to show the rest of the organisation what I already know.  The cost of the certification over 3 years is ‘peanuts’ compared to the benefits we’ll see in that time particularly as the certification has been updated recently to cover things like exploiting social media in the support environment”.  Interestingly, an organisation ignores the use of social media until it appears in a standard.  So many organisations are risk averse with their support environment and are happy to be ‘first at coming second’.  The appearance of social media standards rather than believing perceived vendor hype being the driver.     

The importance of education in the support environment was also underlined by two questions we went on to ask.  What did surprise us was the strength of the most popular responses.  When asked why they embarked on training as surprising as the 61% who said “to meet organisational goals” was the 0% who just wanted to “improve their CV”.  A sure sign of both organisations becoming more selective in the education they choose and individuals becoming more focused about the need for education.  Interestingly, the UK remains one of the few nations where education isn’t seen as a reward for good work…or at least nobody owned up to that as an answer.

The quality of education also seems to be of paramount importance.  Some 39% of people questioned expected to be able to use new found skills immediately.  A further 39% needed to be using the education inside a month.  A trend for all the education organisations out there…good quality education is being seen as leverage to improve performance quickly.  The danger is seeing it as a ‘magic bullet’.  For education to work on attitudes, behaviours and culture of our people sometimes 1 month might be a little too optimistic to see discernable change.  Be realistic in what you hope to get from education and ensure its part of a much wider service improvement initiative.  Avoid at all costs the worst scenario where education takes place and there’s nowhere to use new found skills.  I’ve seen too many enthused people leaving service management training courses going back to nothing and having their desire to improve squashed immediately.  

So what about the hype?  What trends do I see?  Firstly, as organisations get smarter about the parts of their estate they trust to third parties the service desk has become less of a target for outsourcing.  Indeed the reverse is true in some cases with insourcing of previously outsourced desks.  One of the trends that supports the reversal of previous outsourcing is the ease with which a desk and support environment can be set up.  Cloud (Software as a Service) solutions are allowing companies to establish a presence quickly without the need to invest in expensive and time consuming infrastructure solutions.  Equally powerful when it comes to establishing and maintaining capability is the desire to “Keep It Simple”.  There is a real desire to replace complex support chains, tortuous escalation paths and multiple systems with self help, single point of contact and single interface.  One trend we have recorded is one for a greater number of support requests and incidents.  What isn’t clear yet is whether this is due to an actual increase in calls or us getting better at recording them!

So despite all the hype and forecasts of technological advances it still seems service desks are content to get the basics right and more importantly customers are happy that they do that.  There will be advances in support of that there is little doubt.  I’m not sure we’re quite at the stage yet where the service desk will be replaced by a smart phone app!  I still haven’t met the toolset that can display the same understanding, empathy and wisdom that a good service desk and IT support department will.