Below
is a list of the archives for the Help Desk Doctor. Hope you find
an answer to your problem.
- OLAs or SLAs - Which Comes First? (May 05)
I am a Project Manager overseeing a LAN/WAN & Help Desk contract for a federal agency. Our help desk has a standard SLA in place, see below. I need to create OLAs for some of the other IT Groups such as a Level 2 Email support team, a LAN/WAN Team and a Level 3 Team. All of these other groups are different contractors from different companies and all have their own SLAs different from ours. The Federal IT director wants the users to be only concerned with the help Desk SLA and make the support seamless to the end-user. These SLAs were created in the past prior to any OLAs. Would you recommend we create the OLAs first and then re-draft our SLA accordingly? Any thoughts or assistance would be appreciated and any tips on what the metrics should be in the OLA based on the existing help desk SLA,
- Operational Level Agreement (Feb 05)
I have been working on a scope of Help Desk Services and Products
and I have a matrix of the products that have Tier One support
in the Network Operations Area. I would like to develop an
Operational Level Agreement with the Network Operations Manager
to seal the deal. I want it
to be a simple and short agreement. Do you have any templates
or examples?
Thanks.
I am a Project Manager for a project supporting a major federal
agency. I would like to have an accurate staffing model to
determine correct staff size. We do not have an ACD phone
system in place therefore; our only measurement tool is via
remedy tickets. We support approximately 3000 users and log between 2800
to 3000 tickets per month. Is there a formula to use to determine
correct staff?
- Knowledge
Base Cleansing (Jan 05)
I have inherited a knowledge base constructed from five
separate systems, each having its own processes and strategies.
We have constructed a strong process that will be used as
we move forward. However, we still have a huge problem in
that our historical data is dirty. Of the 45,000 pieces included
in the database, some are incomplete, repetitive or inappropriate.
Are there any strategies or guidelines for cleaning existing
knowledge bases?
- First
Contact Resolution (Aug 04)
First, let me express my appreciation for the insightful and helpful advice provided through this forum. My question centers around the concept of First Contact Resolution. Specifically, what are the criterion for achieving FCR from an industry standpoint? How is this metric determined in a n-tier environment with multiple channels of communication? The most obvious answer is that it applies to incidents resolved while the customer is on the phone. However, it becomes more ambiguous when you have asynchronous forms of communication such as e-mail and chat. Is FCR measured from the customer perspective (i.e., any problem resolved before another call is placed or e-mail sent by the customer), or is it measured more stringently against the escalation path (i.e., a problem resolved at Level 1 only)? Or, is there a time element involved (i.e., does a problem have to be resolved in the same hour/day to be eligible for FCR)? Your assistance greatly appreciated.
- Benchmarking
Cost Per Call (Aug 04)
I look forward to every new posting on blueprintaudits.com;
I share the information with my team and other managers
in our organization.
I am the manager of a help desk that supports the retail
store divisions of our company. Over the past 3 months,
I've been
researching the "cost per call". It seems that
everyone uses a different methodology to determine this number. What is the industry standard for calculating cost per call?
Does this change when it is calculated as cost per contact? Your help will be greatly appreciated!
- Service
Level Metrics (Aug 04)
As the helpdesk leader, I'm trying
to measure the response time and resolution time of our
Helpdesk staff (1st level support) and our Engineer (2nd
level support). Please review the attachment file, to
see how we measure it. I did the benchmarking with our business partners such HP and IBM. I was surprised
with them since they never committed with their resolution time. They only
committed with the time to provide the backup devices instead of resolution
time. Through this email, I would like to get your opinion about this. Could you give me any advice?
- Consolidate
Multiple Help Desks (Jul 04)
We currently have four (4) geographical locations for
our help desks. Two years ago our organization experienced
reorganization and consolidated these four help desks under
one division. Although each of the four sites has local
requirements for help desk support we would like to virtually
consolidate our help desk functions using a tiered setup.
We envision a tiered setup that utilizes an ACD so that
our designated tier1 support would be in a queue that would
enable them to answer calls from different sites then forward
to designated, on-call, tier-2 support where necessary.
Tier3 support would be on-site support required at the
local site when necessary to elevate to that level. Our
first consideration is to do an in-depth audit of the existing
help desks before standardizing procedures and setting
up our support tiers. Any recommendations on the best way
to proceed with this change?
- Calls
per Month per Person (Jul 04)
Please
can you advise where I can find benchmark information
on typical helpdesk call rates for organizations of a
certain size. I have heard that call rate is approx 0.5
calls per person per month. I would be grateful if you
could point me in the right direction.
- STI
Knowledge Certification (Apr 04)
I have been visiting BlueprintsAudits.com for a while and have shared some
of the articles with my team. I would like to ask your opinion of the STI Knowledge certification program
(www.stiknowledge.com <http://www.stiknowledge.com> ). What if anything
can you tell me of the relevance or benefit of becoming say the Certified
Help Desk Director? Is there a high demand for this title in the industry?
I am a manager of a Help Desk for a Financial Institution (Bank) and we support
about 3,000 workstations, several hundred servers, all data communications,
and everything in between. At our last staff meeting (I have six Help Desk analyst) we discussed the need for a Knowledge Base but are unsure as to the
best practices for creating one. Our problem tracking system does have a Knowledge
Base feature. We have never pursued using at this time. I was wondering if
someone out there would have some good practices already in place on getting
started. Thanks for listening.
- Metrics
for Level 2 (Oct 03)
I
am a manager of a two tiered Helpdesk. I am looking for
guidance on how to measure the productivity of the 2nd
level team. The 2L team does not take incoming ACD calls.
They work escalated tickets from 1st level. They perform
testing, research, use advanced tools, and if unable to
resolve issues themselves escalate and work with 3rd level
which is IS. I would appreciate it if you could give me
any ideas on what/how to measure their work, or point me
to any books or articles on the topic.
- Customer
Service Training (Sep 03)
In
addition with my normal work, I teach at a local Community
College here in Orlando and was wondering if you know
of any software for classrooms. I teach Customer Service
online and have been unsuccessful so far in finding customer
service software suitable for my class. Any ideas?
- Data
Center and Help Desk Combined (Sep
03)
Can
a helpdesk be successful if the staff is also required
to operate a data center (tape backups, controlling access
and managing equipment changes)? Won't this result in
diluted commitment to customers. Do you know of any helpdesk
that are doing this successfully?
- Distributed
Staff in the Help Desk (Sep 03)
I
currently manage a Help desk for 9 offices in a law firm.
I have only 3 people and we support about 415 people. I
have been asked to come up with a plan to put a help desk
person in two of the next largest offices. Which will be
Cleveland and Naples, Fl. We are in Akron. Need info on
how you best manage that and maybe some example models
of how that would best work. I have no experience with
this type of Help Desk set-up.
- SLAs
- Industry standards for SLA development (Sep 03)
A
customer of mine is contracting a IT Help Desk and in the
contract we are defining an SLA (Service Level Agreement).
However, the customer wants to to use metrics in the SLA
validated by some neutral Institute, like Gartner or Help
Desk Institute. Are there average and maximum call answer
time, call hold time, 1 - and 2 level call time, wait time,
closure time, etc. considered as "good" by Gartner,
Help Desk Institute or another neutral Institute for an
IT Help Desk?
- Category
Structure - How to develop the category/subcategory scheme
for the knowledge assets (Aug 03)
How do you develop the category/subcategory
scheme for the knowledge assets that support a central
help desk within the IT organization?
- Service
Catalog - How to Create One with Service Level Management (Aug
03)
Has
anyone gone through the process of developing a "Service
Catalog for service level management?
- Burned
Out - Help with Dealing with Low Morale in the Help Desk (Aug
03)
I
have noticed that my staff morale has been a lot lower
since the economy has been suffering. Upper management
has asked us to reduce costs and has reduced staff and
we have not reduced the call volumes. Any ideas on how
I can tackle the poor morale without spending any money?
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