Reporting on your IT service desk activities might sound boring but without it you’re going to struggle to manage your environment, exceed expectations, or even just stay on track.
Here, we explain why reporting is vital for your organization’s IT service desk.
Reporting on Your IT Service Desk Helps You To:
UNDERSTAND RESOURCE VS DEMAND
You can use reporting to help you to understand if you have enough staff members to tackle the workload coming through your IT service desk.
A good performing desk will have a similar number of resolved tickets to the number of new tickets being logged. If your new tickets far outweigh your resolved tickets it could indicate that you do not have enough resource to deal with all of the incidents and requests that are being submitted.
Not being in a position to resolve tickets quickly enough will lead to a backlog of tickets resulting in failed SLAs, overwhelmed agents, and poor customer service.
STAY FOCUSSED ON YOUR GOALS
When you know what your goals are you can understand what you need your reports to tell you. Some IT service desk managers make the mistake of reporting on absolutely everything just because their reporting tool lets them do so.
When it comes to reporting, just because you can, does not mean you should. You want to look only at the data that’s aligned with your goals otherwise you risk drowning in noise.
If you fail to report on the correct measurements for your organization you run the risk of shifting focus to tasks that do not add value and steer you away from your goals. Once you have defined your reporting measures you can use the data to drive your future decisions. Analyzing data helps you to understand trends and see where you are so you can be confident with the direction you need to take. Data-driven decisions are always going to be better for your IT service desk than trying to predict the future based on what you think you know. Reporting can help you to prioritize your tasks as you move toward achieving your goals.
Once you have defined your reporting measures you can use the data to drive your future decisions.
Analyzing data helps you to understand trends and see where you are so you can be confident with the direction you need to take.
Data-driven decisions are always going to be better for your IT service desk than trying to predict the future based on what you think you know.
Reporting can help you to prioritize your tasks as you move toward achieving your goals.
REDUCE TICKETS
When you start to analyze your IT service desk data you can begin using the information to help you in your quest to reduce tickets (because what IT service desk doesn’t want fewer tickets?). Use reports to spot trends such as frequently logged tickets for basic IT incidents.
Tickets that can be resolved easily by your end users are a waste of time to your IT service desk agents who spend time fixing the same incidents each day. Instead, identify these incidents and create knowledge documentation for your end users to follow.
Customers resolve their own incidents without the need to contact IT support and your agents are freed up to concentrate on more pressing tasks.
Another trend that reports can highlight is repeat incident tickets. When the same incident keeps on happening it is likely there is a wider problem causing these.
When you report on your IT service desk tickets you can identify these and prioritize the problem fixes. Without reporting these kinds of problems could go unnoticed for long periods of time.
UNDERSTAND YOUR AVERAGES
It’s always a good idea when running an IT service desk to understand what your averages are when it comes to output.
Do you know your average time to fix, average response rate, average agent workload or average weekly ticket numbers?
Are your averages acceptable? If not you’ll know where you need to focus in order to step up your game. Understanding your average data highlights which processes might need improving.
Knowing your averages can also help you to spot anomalies in your data when they arise which means you can quickly identify when there is a problem and get the ball rolling on troubleshooting to fix the issue.
FIND IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES
Without reporting, without data, without knowing your IT service desk statistics, you’re going to struggle to improve and grow.
Statistics assist you in realizing where you are right now and historical data can show you where you’ve come from. Are you improving, losing focus, or just not moving in any direction? At this stage, it doesn’t really matter what the answer is as long as you have the answer. But, only through running regular reports and following your data closely will you be able to truly know.
Reports can help you to identify process gaps and training requirements too and help you to see whether everyone is following the same process.
When you measure the data from your IT service desk you can begin to understand how much value your organization is getting from IT support and focus on planning and achieving your goals.
IMPROVE YOUR CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SCORES
Reporting on your customer experience is essential if you want your IT service desk to add real value to the organization.
Knowing what your customers like and dislike about their IT support experience is basically the key to being able to improve your IT department as a whole.
When you find out what your customers want you can input their needs into your IT strategy to create an IT support experience tailored to them.
IT support that responds directly to its customers’ needs is going to result in high satisfaction scores but without data analysis, you might not get there.
The real-time data that reports can give you help you to fully understand where your IT service desk is and what value it is providing. Once you have this base of knowledge you can use the data to drive your decisions, prioritize your tasks, and create a smart working environment.
Without reporting you will find yourself forever on the back foot as you try to predict what your organization needs and how to get there.
Mint Service Desk offers a fully customizable reporting experience to help you on your IT service desk journey. To learn about other features we offer, visit our website.
