Original Article by TechSling Weblog:

The Helpdesk is a very important part of any organization that provides service to customers. The first point of contact for customers is helpdesk to resolve any of their problems or issues. When the customer wants to talk about anything related to the organization, the helpdesk is their first choice of contact. The success of the helpdesk thus has a direct bearing on the success of the organization. Organizations, therefore, regularly monitor the functioning of the helpdesk to evaluate how successful they have been.

The helpdesk function can be monitored by measuring their performance and recording the metrics. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be used to set targets for each helpdesk process and then measure the actual performance. This helps the organization to get a clear picture of how the helpdesk has functioned and whether targets set have been achieved or not.

Let us discuss some of the key metrics and KPIs that your organization can make use of.

1. Resolution of tickets

Usually, a Ticket is created for every complaint or issue reported by customers. This is, in fact, the main activity of a helpdesk, which has to raise tickets and close them. The metrics to measure here include the number of tickets raised during a particular period and the number of tickets closed. This would also give information on the number of tickets pending, which is a very important metric to track.

2. Time to reply

The time a customer has to wait before your helpdesk team members send a reply to him is another important metric. This tells you how fast your team can process tickets and start working on them. The moment the ticket is received you need to acknowledge its receipt and give the customer a commitment about how fast his problem will be solved. This time to reply is what enhances a customer’s confidence in you.

3. Time to resolve tickets

From the customer point of view, the most important performance indicator is the time to resolve tickets. The customer wants his problem to be resolved and is not ready to wait for a long time. How fast you resolve issues is an indicator of your helpdesk efficiency. A target can thus be set indicating how fast you resolve issues and you can work towards achieving these targets. In some cases, there would be an SLA or service level agreement already indicating the target time. In such cases, resolution time is an absolute critical metric.

4. SLA compliance rate

If you have an SLA, then the time to fix problems has already been decided. You only need to measure whether you have met this time frame in 100% of cases. This helps you to determine the efficiency of your helpdesk. While a 100% SLA compliance rate is expected, in practice it may not be possible due to various factors. Therefore, you need to track this to find how many times you have failed to achieve the SLA. This will also help you to make improvements to your system.

5. Ticket volume

Ticket volume is how many tickets are raised in a particular period of time. This analysis helps you to estimate how many issues your helpdesk would receive on an average. It also helps you to understand patterns. For example, if there is a sudden increase in tickets in a particular period, it gives you a trend to analyze. It could be a spurt of complaints due to a server issue or due to overload on the system. This metric is very useful for you to plan you helpdesk schedules.

6. Cost per ticket

Helpdesk operations cost money and a good businessman would track how much he is spending on each ticket. Your monthly helpdesk expenses divided by the ticket volume for the month gives the average cost per ticket. If your cost per ticket is too high, then you need either to reduce your expenses or reduce the number of tickets by providing a more robust product.

7. Lost business hours

A helpdesk is usually expected to function every day and in most cases for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week for all the 365 days in a year. You are expected to have a business continuity plan so that even if there is an emergency, you must ensure that key processes are run. The number of business hours lost is a metric, which helps you to evaluate the effectiveness of your helpdesk continuity.

8. Customer satisfaction rate

You need to measure how satisfied your customer is. You could this by simply calling him up and asking him to rate you on a scale of 1 to 10. Alternately, you could send formal feedback and collect ratings on various parameters. These rating can be then compiled to arrive at a customer satisfaction rate. This tells you how happy your customer is with your helpdesk. You would need to strive constantly to increase satisfaction rates.

Using metrics or key performance indicators is a good way to measure how effective your helpdesk has been. Tracking these metrics can help you to create a knowledge base, which can be then used for the improvement of your helpdesk operations.

The post Monitoring Helpdesk Metrics and Key Performance Indicators in your Organization first appeared on TechSling Weblog.