The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/21494
and Conversions Conversions cause a significant increase in helpdesk call volume and add additional strain to existing resources and systems. Firms typically staff to “maintenance,” not “project,” levels, and require additional support to properly service their user community during upgrades. Based on data from the 2010 ILTA Member Technology Purchasing Survey, that shows 43 percent of all respondents upgrading to Microsoft Office within the next year, the ability to properly (in a timely manner) juggle resources and identify volume “peaks and valleys” is especially essential to a smooth user upgrade experience. How much busier will your helpdesk be during that major Gurus Staff Properly During Upgrades Office rollout? Based on data collections from numerous law firm helpdesks, call volumes typically increase by 42 percent during firmwide software upgrades. The impact this has on staffing is significant and illustrates the difficulties firms face in recruiting and training a team familiar with new software while maintaining support for existing applications. Measuring helpdesk-specific statistics and data is an important way to effectively manage the desk and provide high quality service to the firm’s end users. Going beyond measurement by creating feasible and actionable follow-up to problem metrics will enable the helpdesk to grow and fulfill its service mission for many years to come. ILTA Lance Waagner is the President and CEO of Intelliteach, a legal-specific service desk outsourcing company with offices in Atlanta and London. Prior to founding Intelliteach in 1998, Lance served as CIO for a 450-lawyer firm. Lance leads a 135-person team of legal support analysts serving over 30 percent of the AmLaw 200 with 24/7 helpdesk support, overflow support and full- service outsourced helpdesk solutions. He is an active sponsor of ILTA and writes and speaks on legal helpdesk and service delivery topics. He can be reached at lwaagner@intelliteach.com. Manage What You Measure: Useful Helpdesk Metrics T FIND ADDITIONAL RESOURCES ONLINE: ickets by Origin is a common helpdesk metric used to track how end users originally contacted the helpdesk. Of the 600,000 logged tickets captured in the “Guru’s Guide,” 71% of contacts were made via phone and 26% via e-mail. While e-mail continues to rapidly grow as a helpdesk contact method, the question remains whether users are actually receiving better service, since, on average, tickets created via e-mail have a lifespan six times longer than those originated by telephone. Which are the busiest helpdesk days? After analyzing 600,000 tickets, we found that Tuesday (20.29%) and Wednesday (20.03%) typically see the highest support call volumes, and Friday the lowest (16.99%). Simple graphs showing office locations with percentage of users, tickets and unique users (specific users compared to all users in one location requesting support) will provide insight into helpdesk bottlenecks or location-specific training issues. Measuring user satisfaction is vital in effectively managing and improving the helpdesk function. Having ticket-specific reporting vs. annual or occasional surveys allows for action to be taken, whether the issue might be specific to a particular analyst or a lack of teamwide training. In the “Guru’s Guide,” a 17% user satisfaction survey response rate (68,000 end users) helped define quality of service, timeliness, friendliness and overall experience as key service attributes. Manage what you measure: Take surveys seriously and reward users for voicing their opinions. Once survey information is collected, any negative feedback should be addressed immediately. This can be accomplished by setting up a workflow where tickets with poor ratings automatically reopen, their priority changes to emergency status, and the ticket is escalated to a member of IT management. ILTA www.iltanet.org/helpdesk 72 www.iltanet.org Peer to Peer