How to Measure your IT Service Desk Performance

Published 13/06/24 under:

Whether you’re managing your IT service desk function internally or outsourcing it to a partner, accurately measuring its performance is crucial.

With a plethora of different KPIs available, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with data without gaining a clear understanding of whether your service desk is performing effectively or if improvements are necessary.

Start with Industry-Standard KPIs

Begin by focusing on key industry-standard KPIs such as ticket volume, response time, first contact resolution rates, and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. These metrics are essential pieces of the puzzle when it comes to understanding your service desk’s performance. They provide a quantitative baseline that can help you gauge efficiency and user satisfaction.

SLAs are Only Part of the Story

As discussed previously on the Kerv blog, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) should be considered the bare minimum when evaluating the performance of your IT service desk. While SLA metrics outline the minimum contractual obligations that a supplier is supposed to fulfil, it is possible for a provider to meet these metrics while still delivering a subpar customer experience. Therefore, SLAs should not be the sole measure of performance; they should be complemented with other qualitative and quantitative data.

Benchmark Against Industry Standards

Given the critical importance of service desk performance to many businesses, there is a wealth of best practices and industry benchmarks available for comparison. For instance, frameworks like ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) offer comprehensive guidelines for IT service management. Adopting ITIL standards can help ensure your service desk aligns with best practices in areas such as incident management, problem management, and service request management. Regularly benchmarking your service desk’s performance against these standards can help identify areas of improvement and ensure you are on par with, or exceeding, industry norms.

Don’t Forget Qualitative Data

While user experience monitoring is a powerful tool for understanding how your IT services are performing and where problems may lie, it’s equally important to have real-life conversations with the users of your IT service desk. These conversations can provide invaluable insights into the service desk’s functionality, including whether users felt their tickets were prioritized correctly and their opinions on the quality of customer service received. This qualitative data can highlight areas for improvement that quantitative metrics might overlook.

Focus on the End User Experience

The best way to measure your IT service desk’s performance is by focusing on the experience of the end users who rely on it. Instead of getting bogged down in technical details, consider the practical impact on your users. End users don’t care about an extra decimal point on an uptime figure – they care about the hour lost trying to log into an important system or the call rescheduled due to connectivity issues. Their experience is the ultimate indicator of your service desk’s effectiveness.

Look at Strategic Support, Not Just Issue Resolution

While resolving issues promptly is a key priority for your IT service desk, true excellence involves more than just keeping things running smoothly. A highly effective IT service desk should proactively work to improve the overall IT environment. This includes analysing common issues to pre-emptively address larger problems and making strategic recommendations to help your business adapt and stay ahead of future challenges. Strategic support can transform your IT service desk from a reactive problem-solver to a proactive business enabler.

Realise your service desk potential with Kerv

At Kerv, we understand that an effective IT service desk is vital to your business’s success. Our approach goes beyond just meeting SLAs. We focus on delivering exceptional user experiences, leveraging industry best practices, and providing strategic support to help your business thrive.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can enhance your IT service desk performance and drive your business forward.