Metrics_ How to Improve Key Business Results - Martin Klubeck [88]
An immediate improvement to the Usage measure came through the inclusion of a survey result. We had revamped our annual customer satisfaction survey and added a question on how customers obtained assistance with information technology issues. We asked who the preferred source for help was: “When you have an IT problem, where do you turn to first?” The answer could be selected from the following choices:
Friend
Coworker
Internet (search engines, general information web sites, etc.)
Vendor/manufacturer web sites
Hardware/software manufacturer service desk
The IT service desk
Other
None of the above—I don't seek assistance
While the data resulting from this survey didn't directly reflect actual usage, we used it in this category since it provided answers in the spirit of why we sought usage data. Were our customers happy with our service? Did they trust our Service Desk to provide what they needed? Was our Service Desk a preferred provider of trouble resolution?
As you'll see in Figure 9-6, one interesting result of the survey collection was the higher percentage in the first year.
Figure 9-6. Unique users as a percentage of customers who chose the Service Desk as their first choice for assistance
The only difference in the survey from 2007 and the following two years was the number of options the respondent was offered. In 2007, there were only three choices and in the two subsequent years there were eight.
Another Usage measure we could use to round out the picture was unique customers for the abandoned calls. Regardless if they were counted against availability (greater or less than 30 seconds), it would be useful information to know how many unique customers were calling our Service Desk. In the case of those who didn't stay on the line to speak to an analyst and hung up before 30 seconds had expired, we were assuming that their need was satisfied. If they stayed on longer than 30 seconds and then hung up, we assumed their problems went unresolved.
So, for the calls under 30 seconds, we could count those as serviced customers. Looking at the number of calls abandoned could be a significant number of customers we were missing in our data pool. The data would also be useful to the manager of the Service Desk in other ways. If the same number was calling and hanging up before an analyst responded, the manager could contact that number and see if there was a specific need that was going unfulfilled. This would require that the automated call system captured the calling number without the phone being answered by an analyst. At the time of creating these metrics, this was not possible with the current phone system. So, the need was captured as a future requirement if and when the call system was changed.
Customer Satisfaction
The last set of measures we used to round out our metric involved the classic customer satisfaction survey. Our organization had been using a third-party agency for the administration, collection, and tabulation of Trouble Call Resolution Satisfaction Surveys for a while, so the data was readily available. The questions were standardized for all users of the service, allowing us to compare to the average for their clients—within our industry, and overall. This pleased our management and higher leadership immensely. They thoroughly enjoy the ability to compare their services against a benchmark. They like it even more when their services compare favorably (as ours did).
To keep to the same style of measure—percentages of a total, would be possible. We could have reported the percentages of fives, fours, threes, twos and ones. This would prove to be too complex, especially over four questions. Instead we opted to show the percentage of customers who were “satisfied.” We defined satisfied as