1. Globalized IT Service Desk
Ellen Sittinger, Global Service Desk Manager
Joe Fousek, Customer Support Associate Director

2. The History Six independent Help Desks in our larger offices
Separate processes
Self-developed procedures
Most Help Desks also performing dispatched desk-side work

3. The History Inability to adjust
Unable to handle peak “system down” call volume
1 vacation + 1 sick = service nightmare
Off-hours support was an expensive, distributed endeavor
No vehicle to share lessons learned or best practices

4. Motivation to Change First and foremost, the MONEY
Inconsistent customer experience
Inability to cover peaks in call volume
After-hours cost and staff burnout
Customer frustration with waiting for call backs

5. K&E Globalization Project Goals
Create a Service Desk where the customer experience is consistently excellent
To leverage resources with the end-result of reducing expenses and providing a positive, consistent, unified experience for all users of the firm's IT services

6. K&E Globalization Project Goals
Create and maintain Standard Operating Procedures for all routine operations
Develop metrics and reporting that enables us to review and respond to trends and staff our resources for maximum efficiency and continual service improvement

7. First Establish the Play Book
Get all staff playing from the same play book.
We had to gather the information and start with a baseline.
How do we do what we do?

8. Prepare the Team to Be a Team
First and foremost, entire group needs to be in synch with their methodologies and access to knowledge
How analysts answer the phone
How escalations are handled
Resources available to them
No difference in answers dependent on analyst reached

9. PSPG Framework Standardization Project
Policies
Policies are rules that the department imposes on others
Blessed by upper management
Exceptions only be executive approval
Standards
Rules governing departmental operations
Standard configurations, standard service offerings, standard technologies
Exceptions by management approval
Procedures
Area requiring the greatest effort
Every process done by group
Designed to make operational expectations clear to staff
SOP manual is the deliverable
Guidelines
Loose rules like Operating Principles
Code of conduct, etc

10. Was it Easy? Differing opinions on the ease of building consensus
Most just delighted to have a standard.
Some offices believed the new standards were a step backward
Office culture/politics can make standards difficult

11. How Did We Create Buy-in?
We engaged local supervisors and managers to be part of the project team
We broke the project down into smaller pieces, and assigned sub-projects so that people felt a sense of ownership. However, everyone involved reviewed and provided feedback

12. How Did We Create Buy-in?
We made it clear from the beginning that this wasn’t going to be a home-office dictatorship.
We reinforced the idea that this was a globalization and that we wanted to learn how each office did things and come up with best practices based on our findings.

13. The Globalization Process
Rolled one office in at a time
We held training courses on the Standard Operating Procedures and on the new phone/ACD systems
Mock calls – to give staff the chance to get to know each other and assure readiness, and practice new escalation procedures

14. We’ve Finished the Globalization
In July, we finished our globalization when we added our Hong Kong and Munich offices to our Service Desk phone system.
It took us approximately two months to consolidate all of the offices (after many months of planning).

15. Workflow: Requests Received Via Telephone
When you place a call to the Service Desk, the automatic call distribution (ACD) system first checks the availability of the Service Desk staff.
If a Service Desk representative in the local office is available to receive a call, then the call will be routed to them.
If no Service Desk staff member in the local office is available, then call is then routed to the first available agent in any of the other offices.

16. Requests Received Via E-mail
We consolidated our local request routing and created a new, central IT Service Desk inbox.
Any s sent to a former local office address are automatically routed to the globalized IT Service Desk inbox.
The IT Service Desk mailbox is monitored during all business hours for the Service Desk (user benefits from extended coverage).

17. What if a User Requires Desk Side Assistance?
In cases when a user’s issue requires desk side or emergency assistance, the technician taking the call (or responding to the ) will escalate the ticket to the user’s home office Customer Care team.
The issue queues are monitored by the local office supervisor and are addressed promptly by local office (Customer Care – feet on the street people) staff.

18. How Do We Know if We’re Successful?
Metrics drawn from:
Automatic Call Distribution’s Call Management System
HEAT - Incident Tracking System
Surveys

19. Key Performance Indicators
We use weekly and monthly reports to communicate to the staff and management and measure our progress
We will analyze trends and adapt strategy based on data
We are monitoring and measuring
Call/ volume
Percent of call answered live
Average speed of answering calls
Abandoned call patterns (people that hang up)
The following slide shows total calls and s processed for each office for the week

21. Personal Performance Indicators – How Do We Manage People Globally
How many calls each analyst handled
What each analyst’s average time was spent on a call
Individual After Call Work time (this is time spent either entering a HEAT ticket or continuing to work on a problem without keeping the customer on the phone)
How many calls were directed to each analyst but went unanswered (and rolled over to another analyst) - RONA

23. The “Aux” Report - Choosing Your Codes
When an agent is not engaged in taking calls, how are they spending their time?
Lunch time
Break time
Helping coworkers
Going to meetings
Working on projects
Monitoring incoming
Attending training
Ensuring time spent away from phone duty is appropriate

25. Managing the Big Picture
Looking at 30 minute increments, throughout the day, what are our customers experiencing?
What adjustments might we need to make in scheduling?
Plotting
Our call volume
Staffing levels
Maximum wait time of any call
Abandoned calls (hang-ups)

27. Coming Soon – More Metrics to be Published
Percent of calls closed on first contact
Average time to close tickets (SLA’s and OLA’s)
Re-opened tickets
Reports outlining each group’s escalation management (OLA’s)
Number of tickets open longer than 2, 7, and 30 days
Mean time to acknowledge tickets
Mean time to resolve tickets

28. Reaping the Benefits 20% reduction in User Support head-count
Promotional Opportunities
Some trimming of head-count
Knowledge sharing across the team
Standardized services and processes
Metrics driven results
Staff understanding definition of success
Ability to compare performance across offices

29. Lessons Learned
Communicate early and often. Many of our users seemed surprised when their call was answered by a voice they weren’t familiar with, or someone not located in their office. While we did communicate this, it probably wasn’t enough.
Expect some users will not accept change (hearing an unfamiliar voice/accent)

30. Lessons Learned
Expect that there will be processes that vary office to office which may not have come out in the discovery phase. For us, it was offices vary on what kind of approval is required for accessing another user’s mailfile (calendar, address book).

31. Q & A ?
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