Free Desktop Support Training Series | Industry Megatrends in IT Support | MetricNet Certified

Industry Megatrends:
A Benchmarking Perspective

1© MetricNet, LLC, www.metricnet.com
20 Years of Help Desk Data
More than 1,200 Help Desk Benchmarks
Global Database
30 Key Performance Indicators
Nearly 80 Industry Best Practices

Then and Now: 20 Years of Benchmarking Metrics
Key Performance
Indicator
Industry Average Performance
1988 2007
Monthly Contacts per
End-User
0.79 1.92
Cost per Contact $9.57 $24.19
Average Handle Time 6:27 12:31
Resolved at Level 1 37% 71%
Starting Agent Salaries
(2007 dollars)
$27,280 $36,115
Help Desk Cost per
End-User per Year
$97 $584

The 20 Year Trend in Help Desk Budgets
Help Desk budgets have grown from 0.7% to 4.9% of corporate IT spending over the last 20 years.
0.0%
1.0%
2.0%
3.0%
4.0%
5.0%
6.0%
HelpDeskas%ofITBudget
1988 1993 1998 2003 2007
0.7%
1.6%
3.0%
3.9%
4.9%
A 7 Fold Increase in Help Desk Budgets!

The Underlying Megatrends

So What’s Going on Here?
Industry Megatrends: The Drivers
Increasing awareness and understanding of help desk TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
Help Desk evolving from a support to a strategic role in the enterprise
The growing importance of the help desk in shaping end-user opinions on IT

A Primer on Help Desk TCO
Support Level
Cost per Incident
Resolved
Vendor
Desktop Support
Field Support
(inside company)
Level 2
(outside help desk)
Help Desk
$466
$138
$62
$41
$24

 Newer help desks and
less evolved help desks
are in this category
 Help desks in this stage
are unable to anticipate
or prepare for problems
 A reactive “fire-fighting”
mentality prevails at this
stage
 Call volume continually
increases at this stage
 Customer satisfaction is
the goal
 The primary goal of a
strategic help desks is the
elimination of incoming calls
 Help desk anticipates
problems and takes action to
prevent occurrence
 A proactive mentality prevails
 Users are given tools to solve
their own problems
 Call volume typically begins
to decline at this stage
 Problem complexity increases
 Customer enthusiasm
is the goal
 Heavy investments in
training and technology
characterize this stage
 An expert network of
problem solvers is
established outside the
help desk
 Automation begins
 ACD, VRU, report
generation, etc.
 Knowledge base
established
 Call volume begins to
level off
Support Stage Growth Stage Strategic Stage
The Help Desk Evolution

What Drives End-User Perceptions of IT?
84%
47%
31% 29%
22%
8%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Help Desk Desktop
Support
Network
Outages
Quality of
Desktop
Tools
(Hardware
and Software)
Quality of
Enterprise
Applications
IT Training
%SayingVeryImportant
84% of end-users cite the help desk as a primary factor
in shaping their opinions of corporate IT

The Resulting Megatrends

So What are the Implications?
Industry Megatrends: The Result
Increased Emphasis on First Contact Resolution (FCR)
Strategic Application of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)
Investments in Agent Development
New Models for Measuring Help Desk Value
Renewed Emphasis on Internal Marketing
Increased Starting Salaries for Agents

Increased Emphasis on First Contact Resolution
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
First Contact Resolution
CustomerSatisfaction

 As the Level 1 resolution rate increases, the cost per contact for Level 1 increases
 But the total cost per contact, including Level X costs, declines
 The cost of resolution at level X is typically 2X to 10X greater than at level 1
LOWER
HIGHER
COST HIGHER
Total Cost per Contact
FIRST LEVEL
RESOLUTION RATE
First Level Resolution is Closely Related
Level 1 Cost per Contact
Total Level X Cost
COSTPER
CONTACT

The Economics of First Level Resolution
Resolved At % # Cost/Contact Cost
Help Desk 60.0% 3,000 $24 $120,000
Level 2 (outside Help Desk) 20.0% 1,000 $41 $41,000
Desktop Support 10.0% 500 $62 $31,000
Field Support (inside company) 8.0% 400 $138 $55,200
Vendor 2.0% 100 $466 $46,600
Total 100.0% 5,000 $293,800
Resolved At % # Cost/Contact Cost
Help Desk 70.0% 3,500 $26 $130,000
Level 2 (outside Help Desk) 15.0% 750 $41 $30,750
Desktop Support 7.5% 375 $62 $23,250
Field Support (inside company) 6.0% 300 $138 $41,400
Vendor 1.5% 75 $466 $34,950
Total 100.0% 5,000 $260,350
Scenario 1
Scenario 2
Scenario 2 yields a savings of $33,450/month or $401,400/year!

4
3
2
1
Customer
Enthusiasm
Strategic Application of Key Performance Indicators
Measure
Diagnose
Prescribe
Implement
Model
Component Description
1. Measure
Measure help
desk
performance on
an ongoing basis
2. Diagnose
Benchmark
performance and
conduct a gap
analysis
3. Prescribe
Define actions to
close the gap
4. Implement
Implement your
action plan and
improve
performance

KPI’s: Which Ones Really Matter?
 Cost/contactCost
Productivity
Quality
Call Handling
 Agent utilization
 Customer satisfaction
 First contact resolution rate
Agent  Agent Satisfaction
Read MetricNet’s whitepaper on Help Desk Performance Metrics. Go to www.metricnet.com to get your copy!
Aggregate
 Balanced scorecard
 Cost vs. Quality

The Balanced Scorecard
Step 1
Six critical
performance
metrics have been
selected for the
scorecard
Step 2
Each metric has been
weighted according to its
relative importance
Step 3
For each performance metric,
the highest and lowest
performance levels in the
benchmark are recorded
Step 4
Your actual
performance for
each metric is
recorded in this
column
Step 5
Your score for each
metric is then
calculated: (worst case
– actual performance) /
(worst case –best case)
X 100
Step 6
Your balanced score for each
metric is calculated: metric
score X weighting
Worst Case Best Case
Cost/Contact 25.0% $35.00 $6.00 $18.44 57.1% 14.3%
Customer Satisfaction 25.0% 60.0% 97.0% 73.2% 35.7% 8.9%
Agent Utilization 10.0% 30.0% 85.0% 51.7% 39.5% 3.9%
First Contact Resolution Rate 15.0% 25.0% 95.0% 68.3% 61.9% 9.3%
Agent Satisfaction 20.0% 34.6% 88.3% 74.0% 73.4% 14.7%
Average Speed of Answer (sec) 5.0% 140.0 10.0 52.0 67.7% 3.4%
Total 100.0% N/A N/A N/A N/A 54.5%
Metric
Score
Balanced
ScorePerformance Metric
Metric
Weighting
Benchmark
Performance Range Your Actual
Performance

Your Help Desk
Performance
Performance of
Benchmarking Peer
Group
Determine How
Best in Class
Achieve Superiority
Adopt Selected
Practices of
Best in Class
Build a Sustainable
Competitive
Advantage
The ultimate
objective of
benchmarking
COMPARE
The Benchmarking Methodology
Read MetricNet’s whitepaper on Help Desk Benchmarking. Go to www.metricnet.com to receive your copy!

Call Abandonment Rate vs. Customer Satisfaction
0.0%
20.0%
40.0%
60.0%
80.0%
100.0%
0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0%
Call Abandonment Rate

Call Abandonment Rate vs. Cost per Contact
$0.00
$10.00
$20.00
$30.00
$40.00
$50.00
0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0%
Call Abandonment Rate
CostperContact

Investments in Agent Development
0.0%
20.0%
40.0%
60.0%
80.0%
0 20 40 60 80 100
Veteran Agent Training Hours
AnnualAgentTurnover
$0.00
$8.00
$16.00
$24.00
$32.00
$40.00
0 75 150 225 300 375
New Agent Training Hours
CostperContact
0.0%
20.0%
40.0%
60.0%
80.0%
100.0%
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Veteran Agent Training Hours
FirstCallResolution
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350
New Agent Training Hours

New Models for Measuring Help Desk Value
Help Desk value models
 Cost of Service
 Money saved
 End user productivity
Example: End User Productivity
 2,600 end users generating 5,000 contacts per month
 Help desk saves each end user an average of 1 hour
10 minutes per contact
 The equivalent of 5,833 productive hours saved per
month
 That’s 33.7 FTE’s per year…or more than 1% of
payroll!

Renewed Emphasis on Internal Marketing
LOWER COST HIGHERACTUAL VALUE
PERCEIVED
VALUE
HIGHER
LOWER
Perceived Value > Actual Value
Perceived Value < Actual Value

Increased Starting Salaries for Agents
$0.00
$10.00
$20.00
$30.00
$40.00
$50.00
$0 $10,000 $20,000 $30,000 $40,000 $50,000 $60,000 $70,000
Agent Starting Salaries
CostperContact

The Bottom Line on Help Desk Megatrends
 The Help Desk is now being managed as a strategic
asset within the enterprise
 One that can reduce the overall cost of IT
 And dramatically improve the productivity of end-users
 Strategic Help Desks have a number of success
factors in common
1. Integrated into the IT value chain
2. An understanding of the economics of Help Desk TCO
3. Active efforts to maximize First Contact, and First Level
resolution rates
4. Use performance metrics diagnostically
5. Invest in agent training, coaching, and career pathing
6. Have active internal marketing efforts
7. And aggressively promote and communicate help desk value

About MetricNet:
Your Benchmarking Partner

Jeff Rumburg is a co-founder and Managing Partner at MetricNet,
LLC. Jeff is responsible for global strategy, product development,
and financial operations for the company. As a leading expert in
benchmarking and re-engineering, Mr. Rumburg authored a best
selling book on benchmarking, and has been retained as a
benchmarking expert by such well-known companies as IBM, Bank
of America, and General Motors. Prior to co-founding MetricNet,
Mr. Rumburg was president and founder of The Verity Group, an
international management consulting firm specializing in IT
benchmarking. While at Verity, Mr. Rumburg launched a number of
syndicated benchmarking services that provided low cost
benchmarks to more than 1,000 corporations worldwide.
Your Presenter: Jeff Rumburg
Mr. Rumburg has also held a number of positions of increasing responsibility at META Group, and
Gartner, Inc. As a vice president at Gartner, Mr. Rumburg led a project team that reengineered
Gartner's global benchmarking product suite. And as vice president at META Group, Mr.
Rumburg's career was focused on business and product development for IT benchmarking. Mr.
Rumburg's education includes an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, an M.S. magna cum
laude in Operations Research from Stanford University, and a B.S. magna cum laude in
Mechanical Engineering. He is author of A Hands-On Guide to Competitive Benchmarking: The
Path to Continuous Quality and Productivity Improvement, and has taught graduate-level
engineering and business courses.

More than 30 years of Benchmarking Experience
MetricNet is dedicated to helping business people worldwide
manage their organizations more efficiently and effectively. By
providing benchmarks, performance metrics, scorecards and
business data to managers in all industries and across all
functional areas, MetricNet enables you to:
 Benchmark your performance vs. other companies inside and
outside of your industry
 Track and trend your organization's performance
 Improve your performance using diagnostic benchmarks
 Establish performance targets that are in line with industry
averages or best practices
 Drive accountability for key personnel using metrics-based
performance goals
 Demonstrate measurable performance improvement over
time

You Can Reach MetricNet…
By Phone…
703-992-7559
On Our Website…
www.metricnet.com
Or E-mail us…
info@metricnet.com

Thank You!
We look forward
to serving you!

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