How World-Class Service Desks Use Benchmarking To Continuously Improve Their Performance

IntroductionrnBenchmarking is a well-established tool for measuring and managing Service Desk performance. Effective benchmarking enables you to quantify the performance of your Service Desk, compare your Service Desk to others in your industry, identify performance gaps, and define the actions necessary to close the gaps.rnThe power of benchmarking is that it enables a company’s Service Desk to save enormous amounts of time and energy by building upon the know how of its peers, competitors and world-class companies. Service Desks that are focused exclusively on their internal operations tend to make progress at an evolutionary pace. But, benchmarking forces an organization to look externally – at the competition. By studying the competition, and selectively adopting practices from the best-of-the-best, Service Desks that successfully employ benchmarking are able to improve their performance at a revolutionary pace.rnIn this article, MetricNet (www.metricnet.com), a leading source of online benchmarks and a pioneer in Service Desk benchmarking, provides a working definition of benchmarking, defines a proven methodology for achieving world-class performance through benchmarking, and discusses the key success factors for effective benchmarking.rnBenchmarking DefinedrnBenchmarking is the art of improving your performance by observing, studying, and internalizing the practices of your strongest competitors. The concept is not new. It has been around since the time Neanderthals tried to emulate the more successful Cro-Magnon by fabricating hunting tools from stone. But the rigorous discipline of benchmarking is new. Since the early 1980’s, the practice of benchmarking has grown explosively, fueled by high-visibility success stories like the Xerox turnaround, and the meteoric rise of General Electric whose market value increased by more than $400 billion under the stewardship of Jack Welch, and with the aid of benchmarking.rnBenchmarking is a common sense process that most people engage in every day without realizing it. At work we monitor the performance of our peers, compare our own career progress, and modify our behavior based upon what’s working for those around us. Likewise on the golf course, we study the grip, swing, and stance of the best player on the course for clues on how to improve our own game. In fact, any time we observe and learn from someone who is more accomplished than ourselves, we perform a rudimentary form of benchmarking.rnAny function within a company can benefit from benchmarking. It is not unique to manufacturing, R&D, sales, or any other activity. In fact, some of the greatest benchmarking success stories come from the ranks of the Service Desk industry, where many companies have built a formidable service-based competitive advantage through the continuous practice of benchmarking.rnWhat Cost? What Benefit?rnAs in any business undertaking, it is important to ask what benefit one might expect to gain from benchmarking the Service Desk, and what the costs of benchmarking will be. Historically, due to a relative dearth of benchmarking data, the cost of performing a Service Desk benchmark was quite high. It was not uncommon for a company to pay $100,000 or more for a comprehensive Service Desk benchmark. Fortunately, through the creation of large-scale benchmarking databases, companies such as MetricNet have reduced this cost by an order of magnitude, and a high quality Service Desk benchmark can now be had for around $15,000. The removal of this financial constraint puts benchmarking within the reach of virtually any Service Desk. Now, the biggest cost in benchmarking is no longer the price paid to an outside benchmarking firm, but rather the cost of the internal resources required to conduct the benchmark. The time an effort required for successful benchmarking is not insignificant, and can run into the hundreds of hours if not properly managed. As will be discussed in more detail below, the most resource intensive step in the process is data collection. It is critical to factor this “cost” into any benchmarking effort, as failure to do so will almost certainly doom any benchmarking project from the outset.rnThe question of benefits is a more difficult one to answer since the payoff from benchmarking won’t be known until the benchmark has been completed. However, what we can say is that the benefits of Service Desk benchmarking come in two forms: lower costs, and higher quality levels. In one recent Service Desk benchmark completed by MetricNet, an energy utility learned how to reduce their call handle time by 25 seconds, increase the number of agent-less calls by 8 percent through greater usage of their Automated Password Reset tool, and improved their agent utilization by 4% through improved workforce scheduling. In combination, these findings reduced the cost per call from $22.44 to $17.11. At 120,000 contacts per year, these relatively easy-to-implement actions saved the company $636,000 annually. All for an investment of less than $15,000!rnIn addition to cost savings, many Service Desks that perform benchmarking are also looking for ways to improve their quality of service. This can be measured in numerous ways, including improved service levels, quicker handle times, and improved resolution rates. But the ultimate judge of quality is the customer, and any improvement in service levels must result in higher levels of customer satisfaction to be of any value.rnThere are seven steps in the benchmarking process, including:rn1. Select the area to be benchmarked. Since we are talking about benchmarking the Service Desk, this step is a foregone conclusion.rn2. Identify key performance metrics to benchmark and compare. The metrics for Service Desk benchmarking fall into six categories: cost metrics, which include Cost per Contact; productivity metrics, which include Agent Utilization; service level metrics, which include Average Speed of Answer; quality metrics, which include Customer Satisfaction; call handling metrics which include Average Handle Time; and agent metrics, which include Agent Satisfaction. Although not a comprehensive listing, these are some of the key metrics that should be included in any Service Desk benchmark.rn3. Select the benchmarking peer group. This is critical for ensuring a fair, apples-to-apples comparison of data. Typically, but not always, the benchmarking peer group will be composed of other companies in your industry. In the case of the Service Desk, a lot can be learned by benchmarking companies from outside your immediate industry, so it is not uncommon to see multiple industries represented in a Service Desk benchmark.rn4. and 5. Collect the peer group data, and collect your own Service Desk data. Thorough and accurate data collection is the cornerstone of successful benchmarking. This is also the most time consuming step in benchmarking. It is therefore critical to rigorously define each metric, and ensure that all Service Desks in the benchmark interpret the data collection questionnaire in the same way. This step gets to the heart of benchmarking, and enables you to identify the performance gaps in your own Service Desk.rn6. Develop Strategies for Improved Performance. Without an action plan to improve performance, benchmarking is a pointless exercise. Ironically, this is one of the simplest steps in the benchmarking process, but it adds the most value.rn7. Implement and Monitor Results. Once the strategies for improved performance have been identified, you are in a position to implement your action plan. Additionally, the results of your benchmark can be imported into a simple scorecard that allows you to track and trend your performance over time. This is where the payoff comes, so don’t shortchange this step!