Everything You Need to Know about Service Desk Metrics

When looking at service desk metrics, it’s good to start with your organization’s mission statement. An organization’s mission statement is its reason for being, with it often comprised of multiple components such as customer experience, employee experience, profitability, etc. Goals are usually identified from the mission statement, and specific targets are prioritized from the organizational goals. In addition to these goals, some organizations might have specific objectives and milestones to achieve their goals.

However, many organizations can be confused between and often interchange goals and objectives, as no definitive industry definitions exist. For this blog, we will use goals as the target or outcomes to be achieved and objectives as milestones on the journey to achieving these targets.  Hopefully, this differentiation will make it easier to understand what you need to know about successful service desk metrics.

This blog by @ITSMNinja takes a look at everything you need to know to be successful with service desk metrics. #ITSM #ServiceDesk Share on X

The pros and cons of traditional service desk metrics

Metrics are essential as they communicate value, progress, and improvements, facilitate alignment and collaboration, and convey an organization’s contribution to achieving a goal. However, too often, organizations don’t clarify or communicate the purpose of a metric, use the wrong metrics, or don’t understand why they need to change what they measure to mature and increase the value of the underlying services. The result is confusion, lack of alignment, and a loss of confidence in management.

An example is that service desks like to report on Average Speed to Answer (ASA), Abandon Rate (ABA), Average Handle Time (AHT), and resolution time. These are the metrics that their management used 20 years ago and are familiar with, yet the type of calls and work done by the service desk today can be quite different from the work done ten or even five years ago. These metrics are valuable as operating performance measures but may or may not help stakeholders understand the value provided by a service provider. Together, they can begin to give an understanding of how well (efficiency) an organization is performing, yet they don’t begin to communicate how effectively an organization is performing.

'Too often, orgs don't clarify or communicate the purpose of a metric, use the wrong metrics, or don't understand why they need to change what they measure' – @ITSMNinja #ServiceDesk #ITSM Share on X

Metrics drive people’s behaviors, so you must identify the correct measurements so people understand the behaviors necessary for the organization to achieve its goals. The organization should understand the desired outcomes, as they all play a role in achieving them. Later, I explain how to identify the correct measurements to provide more meaningful information to your leadership. When the metric is the goal, the organization often misses the target and improvement opportunities.

Setting the right metrics

Measuring whether you have achieved your goals is challenging, as measurements for outcomes are often lagging indicators, meaning that measurements take time to ‘catch up’ with the changes made. For example, it can take 4-6 weeks for customers to notice changes made to a process, so customer experience ratings will typically not change immediately when a process, functional, or organizational change is made. Leading indicators are typically transactional measurements, e.g., calls per hour, lines of code written, and the number of changes, which are easy to measure. Based on their trend, they should be viewed as an indicator or probability of the organization achieving its goals. A methodology to help you understand how to determine the Critical Success Factor (CSF) is the Goal, Question, Method (GQM) from NASA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GQM

The first step is ensuring everyone understands the goals, objectives, and expected outcomes. For example, is the expectation that a better client experience improves customer retention, reduces the cost of acquiring new customers, or increases the revenue per client? What is required (CSFs) to increase the probability of achieving the goal? Knowing all this is necessary to understand the appropriate measures to know if the actions taken are achieving the desired results. If not, alert management that the activities are not achieving the desired changes.

'Metrics drive people's behaviors, so you must identify the correct measurements so people understand the behaviors necessary for the organization to achieve its goals.' – @ITSMNinja #ServiceDesk #ITSM Share on X

Too often, we use terms to describe some of our metrics, yet, these descriptions are often misused and not well understood. CSF, Key Performance Indicators (KPI), and Goals lack a standard industry definition yet are often used when describing metrics. The following guidance should help.

Critical Success Factors

Understanding the purpose of CSFs, the audience for CSFs, and how to identify and report them is essential in ensuring management support. CSFs are the vital conditions or activities that must be met or performed for your organization to achieve its goals. For example, management support, funding, staffing, critical skills, technology, and transactional volumes could all be CSFs. If the CSFs are in place, then there is a high probability that your organization will achieve its goals. These CSFs must be reported to management so they understand if the organization is on track to achieve its goals. The CSFs will indicate a high probability of achieving the goals or if changes are needed to increase the likelihood of achieving the goals.

Key Performance Indicators

Another misused term is KPIs. Managers often have many measures, all of which are performance indicators (PI). As with a CSF, the adjective key indicates that these indicators (KPIs) are essential to understanding the organization’s performance and the likelihood that the organization’s goals will be achieved. Organizations tend to either have few measures or many measurements. However, when reporting to management, having only three to five measures (KPIs) to communicate performance and progress toward their goals is more effective than ten or more metrics, which no one understands. The correct KPIs will also provide management confidence that your organization is providing value and contributing to its success.

A KPI may be a number, percentage, ratio, or score/rating. For example, 10% increase/decrease per month/quarter, $100K increase/decrease, 15% turnover, etc. These KPIs and the final target (metric) must be agreed upon as part of the operating plan. Hence, everyone in the organization that is critical to achieving the goals, including partners and third parties, needs to understand the purpose of the measurements, what they mean, and their roles and responsibilities in achieving them. As organizations mature, KPIs may need to change to continue to improve the technology, processes, and people, all of which are part of the overall service experience.

From Critical Success Factors to KPIs, Goals to Objectives and Key Results, this blog by @ITSMNinja shares everything you need to know about #servicedesk metrics. #ITSM Share on X

Goals

Goals (or targets) refer to the end state, the purpose or reason an organization is doing something. Goals are more than a number or measure. The purpose of why the action or change is taken must be understood so both the people designing the technology and the people interactions are focused correctly on the outcomes, not the metrics. When goals become numeric targets, they’re often met, though the desired results are usually not achieved.

Objectives and Key Results

Another term used in many organizations in the last few years is Objectives and Key Results (OKR). In this model, objectives are viewed as the target, what the organization is attempting to achieve (goal). Key Results are how you will know if the objectives are achieved, i.e., how will you measure if the objective is achieved, e.g., employee experience/morale survey. But, again, remember, key results are typically lagging indicators, as results take time to be obtained.

Some final service desk metrics guidance

When reporting CSF, KPI, Goals, or OKR, an analysis should be provided to your audience. Metrics books that contain only graphs, tables, and charts are often misinterpreted. Every graph, table, or chart should include a narrative explaining whether the trend is good or bad, whether the progress is at the expected level, or if additional actions are necessary to increase the likelihood of achieving your goals.