Your managed services helpdesk team is very busy. There are several service desk metrics that can help measure your performance. Here are some metrics that a service manager should be focusing on.
Simple Service Desk Metrics
Open vs Close
The easiest service desk metrics to focus on is the number of tickets open versus number of tickets closed. If there are 200 support tickets opened in a day you should be closing at least 200 tickets a day. This is a simple measure of your closure rate. If you aren’t closing more tickets than you’re closing, you will end up with a backlog. A backlog of tickets will lead to longer resolution time on tickets which will lead to unhappy clients and stressed out support staff.
Mature Service Desk Metrics
Service Level Agreements (SLA)
Once your service desk reaches a certain level of maturity and is able to close more tickets than are opened in a day, the team can move on to more advanced service metrics. Service level agreements (SLA) ensure that when a support ticket is opened, it is acknowledged, started, and resolved in a set period of time. An SLA will ensure that not only is the simple volume of tickets being managed, but the priority of the tickets is being managed as well. Since not all tickets carry the same urgency, it’s important to be able to juggle a little and close the high priority requests fast. I did a very detailed blog post previously about managing SLAs [here].
Performance Management (Advanced metrics)
Tickets Per Tech
Once the team metrics are in place, you can start to focus on individual contribution. How many tickets should the support techs be closing? This can vary a lot from person to person, but having an expectation of output from each team member can be invaluable. Tier 1 support staff, in general, should be able to close 10-20 tickets a day. Tier 2 slightly lower at 5-10 and Tier 3 maybe 5 a day. Whatever the number is, just simply having an agreement between the team member and the service manager is important. This allows for a measure of the output from each team member against a target. If there is a slip in actual output, the manager can work with the staff member to determine why. It can also allow the manager to increase the team performance by setting higher output targets with the team.
Client Satisfaction (CSAT)
One of the key risks to increasing a helpdesk staff members output is it can often lead to low-quality closes. In order to hit a certain number, the helpdesk staff will simply close tickets without checking with the user to ensure they are satisfied with the resolution. When you’re smaller you can review each ticket to ensure the staff is following the support policy and contacting the user to make sure they are satisfied, but this approach doesn’t scale well. Using customer satisfaction (CSAT) as a team metric as well as an individual metric is a great way to protect the clients from quick-closes. Having CSAT scoring available to measure individual technicians metric is really useful as well. If you’re using Connectwise or Autotask surveys you’re likely not getting the amount of feedback that makes this a useful metric. Instead, use SimpleSat. SimpleSat makes it crazy simple for the client to give you quick feedback on every ticket that gets worked on. Plus the data is collected in a beautiful dashboard for easy review or team and individual staff members.
Simplesat Connectwise Survey Dashboard
So if you’re just getting started with MSP helpdesk metrics or you’re already a mature operator, make sure you are using CSAT to measure and manage your customers feedback about the quality of the service your team is delivering. Simplesat has a free 30-day trial to get you started and if you tell them that you heard about Simplesat from Evolved, they will give you 15% the posted website price.
Header image thanks to Infocash on Flickr.