When managing an IT organization, the importance of KPIs is undeniable. However, it is not only the implementation of IT KPIs you should care about, but also the right choices when deliberating what to measure.  Service Desk is one the key areas that can affect the whole performance of your organization, therefore, it is crucial to create IT Service desk KPIs that enable management to make the right decisions and optimize operations.

Our team at Yorizon have witnessed the need to create a list of the IT Service Desk KPIs that bring the most value and impact for a modern IT organization!

Best IT Service Desk KPIs to measure

While the average IT Service Desk measures more than 25 KPIs, it is not necessarily efficient to invest the time and resources into measuring that many KPIs. In most cases, fewer and better analyzed IT Service Desk KPIs bring more insights than the whole bunch. We have analyzed many, and here are the IT Service Desk KPIs you should be measuring.

These following five metrics are derived from numerous Service Desk benchmarks and represent the most efficient way to measure your Service desk performance. Learn about these five metrics and save time by measuring the right KPIs.

KPI 1: Waiting Time

When thinking about Service desk performance and particularly KPIs, one of the most intuitive or obvious ones is probably the waiting time. Anyone that has ever contacted the tech support knows, how long this can take. Here it is of utmost importance that employees spending time on contacting support staff, feel their issues are being taken seriously and worked on. This includes submitting in a timely manner and also answering potential follow-up questions.

KPI 2: First Contact

Now that we’ve established that waiting time is important, we should again highlight that this is particularly crucial during the end user’s first contact. Extensive email contact back and forth, can make an end-user feel like they’re in a never ending loop of waiting. It can also lead to a loss of confidence in the effectiveness of engaging in the official way of solving a problem within your organisation. A quick response is not only important for customer or end user satisfaction but also for the credibility of IT.

KPI 3: Cost per Contact

Every contact your Service Desk employees face has its price. The cost per contact is essentially a measure of a Service Desk staff efficiency and is measured by average overall costs over the number of contacts. It has often times been named one of the foundational metrics within Service Desk KPIs. In the majority of IT organizations, cost and particularly unit costs are very important to control. An Upside to this KPI, is that if necessary or desired it can be broken down by channels. While your costs might exceed the average contact cost if they are accompanied by higher quality levels and might not be a bad metric in that case, it does show the importance of cost trend measurements on a recommended monthly basis.

KPI 4: Resolution Rate

A KPI that strongly correlates to the End-User satisfaction is the resolution rate, especially during the first call. If the resolution rate is high, the End-User satisfaction is likely to go along. Your organization’s Service Desk should aim to answer all the questions asked. Even smaller, unanswered tickets can very quickly become huge problems. IT End-Users can become very impatient and dissatisfied if the problem is not resolved in a fast and effective manner. Again, this is even more important during the first interaction with the Service Desk by a given IT End-User. This is mainly because that IT End-Users expect their problems to be resolved once they finish their call or email chain with the Service Desk.

KPI 5: Agent Satisfaction

This KPI involves the happiness of your IT End-Users with the specific Service Desk employees. You can track their performance on key metrics, for instance calls answered, resolution rate (differentiate between returning or first time call) or IT End-User satisfaction. This way you can determine which agents are performing well, and which ones need training. By including methods of gamification here, efficiency and effectiveness can be increased, by awarding points for certain accomplishments. An agent that has relatively higher scores than another is likely to be better at solving IT End-User’s problems and, thus, boost satisfaction.

Therefore, it is clear that Service Desk KPIs are very strongly related to the IT End-User satisfaction. These five main KPIs will help you improve Service Desk measurements and IT End-User satisfaction, so make sure you are measuring them!

Need help with measuring IT Service Desk performance? Want relevant Benchmarks for your organization? We’d love to help!