Want to improve Customer Satisfaction, SLA’s, Service Desk Productivity and get a 20% improvement on the ROI of your IT Service Desk?

How combining the virtues of your Self Service Portal and restricting physical access to IT can deliver amazing results…

What does IT look like when you do not control of physical access?

Your Service Desk is a hive of activity, telephone constantly ringing, emails racing in and if that wasn’t enough, your end users walking in and demanding action.  If you currently have a half decent ITSM tool with a Self Service Portal, then the telephone and email traffic hopefully is manageable. 

How do you manage those who simply walk in with issues?

I have managed several service desks over the past 20 years and have witnessed first-hand the impact of not implementing adequate policy around how you want to manage the interaction your service desk has with its end users.  In the digital age, there are some really good tools that can reduce the foot traffic.  I would urge all Service Desk Managers to review and carefully consider introducing features such as a Self Service Portal and making Knowledge Bases effective.

Just to play out an example…

You have a field based sales team, one of them have a minor intermittent issue with their laptop.  There is a monthly sales meeting at Head Office where the IT Service Desk is based.  Rather than call ahead and book a slot to have the issue investigated, they simply wonder into IT at 9:00am (typically the busiest time of the day for the Service Desk).  They find the first person they can see, who happens to be a new student placement still learning about the technologies and a little nervous.  They drop the Laptop on the students’ desk, quickly explain the issue and say they will be back in 1 hour and expect the Laptop fixed.

So what is the impact of this? 

Well, straight away, you have what effectively amounts to a high priority issue.  All work that was currently being undertaken at the busiest time of the day stops.  The call wait time for those with legitimate high priority issues increases. Those users start to escalate to senior management as they can’t work.  Your student is unclear on how to fix.  They have to call in help from more experienced service desk experts making them aware of the urgency so they now stop what they were doing as well.  Even more calls back up, emails keep coming in, things are slowing down.  Customer Service quality is impacted, SLA’s are starting to breach as response and resolution times start to exceed agreed thresholds.  Your Service Desk are under pressure, feeling demotivated as their productivity takes a hit.  Their seniors are now putting pressure on.  Even worse, as there is a sales meeting, more sales employees start to wander in.  They now start wandering around IT talking to others about their recent holiday, weekend etc. The whole of IT is in melt down.

Does it sound familiar? Ok, so I’m exaggerating, but this is not beyond the realms of possibility.  I just wanted to set a scene.

What is the solution?

There are a few options here:

1. Speak to the business about kindly respecting IT and their time and ask that anyone visiting head office and requiring assistance from the Service Desk to book a slot at a suitable time in advance.
2. Refuse to investigate issues when they are not high priority and the user simply walks into IT demanding a fix.
3. Restrict access to IT and only allow users that have pre-booked a slot to have their equipment collected from an agreed secure drop off point.

My experience would suggest that the above solution options are:

1. Will be completely ignored further fuelling discontent with your service desk and negative feedback from end users
2. Typically, will get confrontational and result in escalation where he/she who shouts loudest gets what they want. Likewise, discontent and negative feedback and the issue still gets investigated.
3. Not a popular policy short term and needs careful introduction. Overtime end users get used to the idea.  This would be my recommendation.

So, how do you introduce option 3 of Restricted access to IT?

1. Carefully write a policy that addresses the walk-in challenges and impact. This should also cover the benefits for the business in restricting physical access to the IT area (see below, “What are key the benefits to the business of options 3?”)
2. Get senior management buy-in. This is your insurance policy as when you launch the change, end users will go straight to their management and complain.
3. Build a positive campaign for the change describing what will change and why the change is needed and once again the benefits for the business. Send out an emails with this information on over a period leading up to the change and after the change, changing the tone of the wording appropriately.  Post change, you could also share some of the positive impact the change has had, such as improvements to call wait and resolution times.
4. REALLY IMPORTANT – Get your service desk prepared and support them all the way 100%. They need to stay strong and positive.  Ideally prepare a script that keeps them calm and professional if challenged.  Let them know that you are 100% behind them every step of the way and to “sign post” to you immediately if they feel uncomfortable (don’t take holiday).
5. The change is best implemented in environments where you have a Self Service Portal and can setup Request Fulfilment Workflow for booking a slot and having a detailed description of the issue including useful information such as screen shots, error messages etc.
6. Have control of your physical IT entry points. Most IT areas have door control access systems in place where you can configure, via a card system, who can have physical access to the IT area.  Typically, this should include all IT employees, VIP’s, Health and Safety but obviously depends on your organisational structure.
7. Put a polite notice on the doors into IT providing the link to the Self Service Portal and a telephone number that should only be used for high priority issues.
8. Prepare your reception staff. They will get disgruntled end users for a period.  When this happens, they MUST contact you immediately.  Likewise, a script for them can really help.
9. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE spend time on improving your Knowledge Base with self-help advice for the most common walk-in issues. Look for the reoccurring issues in your ticket data and speak to your team about knowledge articles that would be really useful.  Get these published on your Self Service Portal.  The better ITSM tools such as 4me and ServiceNow have context sensitive search functionality that will match what the end user is typing against the knowledge base and bring up solutions.

What are key the benefits to the business of option 3?

1. Issues get correctly prioritised.
2. People with the right skills and experience investigate and quickly resolve.
3. Preparation can be done up front, you could even prepare replacement equipment, if you allow sufficient lead time.
4. The end users have more chance of their issue being resolved quickly with the right knowledge presented via the Self Service Portal & may even find resolution themselves. It’s interesting what end users can do when they have to (most people nowadays have better tech at home).
5. Response and resolution rates improve.
6. SLA’s improve.
7. Your service desk is more productive and can use the time banked for proactive tasks such as preparing replacement assets, writing knowledge articles and creating and resolving problem tickets.
8. Customer satisfaction improves (there may me a slight hit on this KPI as the business adjusts to the change).
9. Your service desk is more motivated as they are not under undue pressure to fix on the spot whilst being watched.
10. Improves the security, I have seen iPhones, Laptops etc. disappear from IT.
11. Overall, the ROI of your service desk improves as they and your whole business become more productive.

I really hope this helps. It’s always a tough and difficult decision restricting physical access to the IT area, but if managed in the right, way can make a huge difference.  I would only do this with the right tooling in place such as 4me and ServiceNow.  I recently did a speech on KPI and the area of most interest was the challenges faced on physically securing IT.  It seems that IT Service Desk Managers get the reasons why it is beneficial, but are very apprehensive based on the feedback they would receive from the business. When I implemented the option 3 policy, I improved the productivity of the service desk by 20%.

Aristar Consulting Group is more than happy to work with you to implement ITSM processes and tooling and is a certified 4me partner.