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Policies and Guidelines

Information Technology Resource Management Strategies

Audience:

NU Departments

Statement:

Ticketing / Tracking System | Documentation of Processes | Communications
Resource Time Allocation | Successful Issue Resolution | Best Practices Home

Ticketing / Tracking System to Gain Metrics and Historical Data

An electronic system for tracking issues is essential to the daily operations of desktop support organization of any size. Additionally, the data from such a tracking system is invaluable for ongoing management and planning of desktop support.

Should an organization be unable to fund a commercial or self-developed tracking system, a reliable database, such as an Access database, may be used to log incoming requests and resolutions. It should be noted that, as a rule, all work performed must flow through the ticketing system; whether it is recorded by the customer, the desktop support consultant, or a third party. Neither the ticketing system, nor the tracking system, will provide optimal benefits if this first policy is not universally followed.

At a minimum, the information that should be recorded once a request for support is made should include:

  • User Name
  • Department, if applicable
  • Address, if applicable
  • Contact phone number / e-mail address
  • Description of technical problem
  • Other important information (OS, Priority, et. al.)
  • Date of request for support

Once a technical issue is resolved, the following information should be recorded:

  • Name of the technician who completed the work
  • Description of how the issues was resolved
  • Date of resolution
  • Amount of time allocated to resolving the issue

Recording the date that the request for support is made, as well as the date of resolution, allows for the gathering of metric data on the length of time the support ticket was open. This is just one of many benchmarks that can be used to evaluate ongoing service performance.

Just as important is a policy for support management staff to regularly "mine" the data recorded in the ticketing system in order to identify technical issue patterns and provide solutions. This will inherently increase service performance in future.

The Distributed Support Services (DSS) ticketing system operates under the idea that increased communication between DSS and its customers will lead to improved customer service. With the DSS ticketing service, an e-mail is sent to the customer once a support request ticket is opened. Upon resolution and completion of the ticket, an additional e-mail is sent informing the customer what actions have been taken to resolve their issue. A link to the DSS Customer Service Survey is included in the e-mail in order to gather additional information about customer satisfaction. This survey also offers the option for the customer to request a follow-up phone call from the Manager of DSS, thus providing an additional avenue of communication.

Documentation of Processes

Published Service Level Agreements (SLA's) are necessary to set internal and external service expectations. SLA's should define response time, supported hardware / software, as well as identify the type of services that are offered. It is just as important to promote SLA's to the customers as it is to author and publish them; making customers aware of SLA's assists in setting service expectations. Customer ignorance regarding SLA's inevitably leads to perceived deficits in customer service.

All other procedures and processes should be documented and made available internally, and in some instances, externally. For example, DSS has created security-standard documents, SES installation procedure documents, new hire training path documents, and new customer discovery documents. The ease of availability of these documents allows for consistent and successful service in repeated procedures.

Communications

The fact that external communication (service organization-to-customer) plays a major role in successful desktop support services cannot be stressed enough. Perceived competence, as well as customer satisfaction during and upon resolution, is significantly higher when substantial communications between service organizations and customers is enforced. For example:

DSS espouses a policy of early customer contact. In the event that a service cannot be provided immediately, customer contact is made to identify a timeframe or to simply alert the customer that their request has been acknowledged.

Regarding service calls, DSS espouses a policy that service can only be given if the customer is present at the onset as well as the conclusion of the service call in order for the customer to describe their needs in person. At that time, the support technician can assure that the customer's expectations have been met. Issues will arise if customers prefer to short-circuit this communication loop by requesting work to be completed in their absence.

DSS has created a Web page for its largest customers that allow them to view "in-progress" and "near-term" historical work directly from the DSS ticketing system. This benefit increases awareness on the part of the customer as to the daily load of the consultants, the types of issues being addressed, and the common problems occurring within their school or department.

DSS conducts regular meetings with customers (or their contacts) to provide information regarding IT and DSS; and in return, to gather information about upcoming customer projects and gain feedback on prior technical support service.

Internal communication is just as important to a desktop service organization. As with any group, regular meetings (group and individual) between management and desktop support consultants are necessary to convey issues and plans, especially in a decentralized environment like Northwestern University. DSS conducts the following meetings:

  • Bi-weekly meeting with all members of the support team
  • Bi-weekly meeting with full-time staff exclusively
  • Weekly meetings between management and individual support consultants
  • Bi-weekly meeting including the support staff for those customers with more than one full-time resource assigned to them
  • Centralized support staff maintains membership in security-related listservs, as well as active participation in security conferences, training programs, etc.

Resource Time Allocation

Being a charge-back operation, DSS has an obligation to pay particular attention to the time each resource spends on a task. This is done through two systems:

  • The DSS ticketing system. When a consultant completes a task, he or she enters the amount of total hours dedicated to completing that task for a customer.
  • Meeting Maker (for at least one of the major DSS customers). Each consultant servicing this major customer creates a color-coded history of work completed within Meeting Maker. This allows for visual representations of a consultants prior work.

While the primary focus of this record-keeping process is for invoicing purposes, many additional benefits can be derived from this data. Percentage metrics can be created to determine time devoted to research vs. problem tickets. Management can pinpoint items requiring a significant amount of time and resources.

In addition, the entry of this data into a ticketing system can allow for proactive monitoring on the part of the consultant to make certain that they are meeting allocation expectations. For example, within DSS, consultants are expected to allocate part of their time to customers and part of their time to DSS (for training, meetings, etc.). Both management and consultants can receive on-the-fly percentages based on recently entered data.

Successful Issue Resolution

A foundational concept within DSS is that resolving a request for service is not simply limited to resolving the technical issue at hand. Group training has focused on the fact that customer service and technical issue resolution are two separate tasks, requiring two separate talents. Successful customer service involves questioning the customer as to their expectations, making the customer comfortable with technology, promoting customer perception of quality work done by the consultants, and following up with the customer to ensure that the issues they expected to be resolved are, in fact, resolved. These are just a few examples of this additional aspect of desktop service that DSS views to be as important as technical skill and knowledge.

Original Issue Date:

February 2004

Revision Dates:

October 2005

Last Updated: 30 May 2007