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Helps me to use the criteria as a reference to apply in a more general question, i.e. priorization of user requirements
Thank you,
I have other articles in the works on IT managment reporting systems.
Please let me know if I can provide additional consulting at rstefka@comcast.net.
Rick Stefka
I have other articles in the works on IT managment reporting systems.
Please let me know if I can provide additional consulting at rstefka@comcast.net.
Rick Stefka
Hi,
We are in the Process of building our security policy and Priority Of Support Calls in our premises. I have gone through your Point System Based prioritizing the support calls. you need to help me out in prioritizing call from the below listed scenario.
Call No 1:
A user in 4th floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
From your table the Call holds a value of 3000 points.
Call No 2:
A user in 1st floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
Again as per your system this call also holds a value of 3000 points.
Call No 3:
A user in 4th floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
Again the same is the point given to this call.
So I request you to prioritize all the three calls and do keep posted which call has to be attended first and justification for the same is required.
I'm pleased if you can give some other idea for prioritizing the call.
We are in the Process of building our security policy and Priority Of Support Calls in our premises. I have gone through your Point System Based prioritizing the support calls. you need to help me out in prioritizing call from the below listed scenario.
Call No 1:
A user in 4th floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
From your table the Call holds a value of 3000 points.
Call No 2:
A user in 1st floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
Again as per your system this call also holds a value of 3000 points.
Call No 3:
A user in 4th floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
Again the same is the point given to this call.
So I request you to prioritize all the three calls and do keep posted which call has to be attended first and justification for the same is required.
I'm pleased if you can give some other idea for prioritizing the call.
Hi,
We are in the Process of building our security policy and Prioritizing Of Support Calls in our premises. I have gone through your Point System Based prioritizing the support calls. you need to help me out in prioritizing call from the below listed scenario.
Call No 1:
A user in 4th floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
From your table the Call holds a value of 3000 points.
Call No 2:
A user in 1st floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
Again as per your system this call also holds a value of 3000 points.
Call No 3:
A user in 4th floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
Again the same is the point given to this call.
So I request you to prioritize all the three calls and do keep posted which call has to be attended first and justification for the same is required.
I'm pleased if you can give some other idea for prioritizing the call.
We are in the Process of building our security policy and Prioritizing Of Support Calls in our premises. I have gone through your Point System Based prioritizing the support calls. you need to help me out in prioritizing call from the below listed scenario.
Call No 1:
A user in 4th floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
From your table the Call holds a value of 3000 points.
Call No 2:
A user in 1st floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
Again as per your system this call also holds a value of 3000 points.
Call No 3:
A user in 4th floor is calling for a printer Paper jam problem and response time needed is immedieate.
Again the same is the point given to this call.
So I request you to prioritize all the three calls and do keep posted which call has to be attended first and justification for the same is required.
I'm pleased if you can give some other idea for prioritizing the call.
Prioritizing support calls is great, but you should combine it with three levels of support: Help Desk (L1) is the first point of contact from users/customers and should handle roughly 80% of incoming calls using well-defined problem management (responsibility/solution); if the problem can't be solved, it's escalated to Production Control (L2) where technical staff can try to fix it. Mostly 80% of calls at this level must be fixed, while the rest is escalated to System Administration (L3). Those are the gurus that plan, implement snd mantain the IT infraestructure.
Combining three-level support with support priorities gives an effective problem solving strategy.
Combining three-level support with support priorities gives an effective problem solving strategy.
The implementation of the points system looks to be a good one. I liked your example and would note the one (minor) flaw. The President with the Powerpoint problem (scored 5th of 5)will get priority service. The system looks flexible enough to create a group for high visibility/high maintenance user's.
The dept I am employed in, is researching improvements to our help request procedures. The points system used in the article looks perfect for a business orientated help desk, as opposed to a personality based one. I fully intend to put this scheme forward to my management. While rank having privileges is not an issue with my current employer (a nice change), I would hope that any company who tailored this system to themselves would not suffer from anyone tantruming their way to the top of the list.
I like the concept. Just taking this a bit further how do you link the points into other activities which should take place around a call such as escallation. The norm in prioritising calls is to create a severity 1, 2 or 3 based on objective criteria, similar to you points scoring criteria. These priorites would then have assocaited defined help desk tasks such as escallations applicable to them. How would you achieve this using a points system? Have you looking into ITIL's IT Service Management best practice framework for additional advice and guidance? Regards Conn
I like the idea of objective priorities. The big problem is jobs which come in "lower down" the list and stay there. We really need to be able to review the priorities. An auto-system that added "points" depending on waiting time would be nice.
I'm glad this point was raised (I would have if connw hadn't got there first). The prioristaion queue will have to change not just with the intorduction of new tickets, but also with the reprioritisation due to escalation. For example if the next day job can't be done today, by tomorrow it's "when" score will alter from 200 to 500, so it should move up the queue.
My one worry is that the system loook a little over-engineered. Most Helpdesk systems automate this kind of scoring by allowing you to set both impact and priority scores, and then escalate the ticket automatically based on built-in rules. All three dimensions can be configured by the user, and it makes for a simpler model than this one.
My one worry is that the system loook a little over-engineered. Most Helpdesk systems automate this kind of scoring by allowing you to set both impact and priority scores, and then escalate the ticket automatically based on built-in rules. All three dimensions can be configured by the user, and it makes for a simpler model than this one.
This system/scheme is great. But one real value is the ability to present a rational and readable scheme to executives and/or other senior management (beyond IS/IT) for comment, value-setting/ranking, and concurrence/acceptance. This avoids a commonIS/IT trap of trying to guess organizational priorities and preferences; and it simultaneously protects IS/IT staff from complaints and educates the organization about IS/IT's interest in optimizing the use of scarce resources.
That's very similar to how it works where I currently am -
we set up priorities, which have been agreed to with the rest of the company, and these have been written into our SLA.
We have four response levels -
Priority 1- Priority 1 jobs affect - whole company, whole state office, whole floor of building, instances where more than 50 people are affected, and special business units where priority is needed, eg. call center.
The Managing Director or General Manager of each division, and the Head Office executive (CEO, CFO) and the personal assistants also get priority one - provided that no other priority one's exist.
Priority 2 - more than 1, but less than 50 affected. eg. important printer not working,
access to a single application not working properly.
Priority 3 - individual client problems.
The response times given are :
Priority 1 - immediate.
Priority 2 - response to customer immediate,
action job withing 4 hours.
Priority 3 - response to customer within hour,
give eta, start work on problem within eight hours.
Priority 4 is a reponse time we assign to a job in progress that will take time to resolve - eg. if we have equipment sent away for repair, then we lower the priority of the job to 4,so that our email escalation system doesn't send our repeated notices. Priority 4 can also be given to requests by clients that dont' really need attention, eg. work that can be performed in slack time.
It seems to work with us, but in the past we've had PA's that tended to depend on the IT staff for more work than needed.
we set up priorities, which have been agreed to with the rest of the company, and these have been written into our SLA.
We have four response levels -
Priority 1- Priority 1 jobs affect - whole company, whole state office, whole floor of building, instances where more than 50 people are affected, and special business units where priority is needed, eg. call center.
The Managing Director or General Manager of each division, and the Head Office executive (CEO, CFO) and the personal assistants also get priority one - provided that no other priority one's exist.
Priority 2 - more than 1, but less than 50 affected. eg. important printer not working,
access to a single application not working properly.
Priority 3 - individual client problems.
The response times given are :
Priority 1 - immediate.
Priority 2 - response to customer immediate,
action job withing 4 hours.
Priority 3 - response to customer within hour,
give eta, start work on problem within eight hours.
Priority 4 is a reponse time we assign to a job in progress that will take time to resolve - eg. if we have equipment sent away for repair, then we lower the priority of the job to 4,so that our email escalation system doesn't send our repeated notices. Priority 4 can also be given to requests by clients that dont' really need attention, eg. work that can be performed in slack time.
It seems to work with us, but in the past we've had PA's that tended to depend on the IT staff for more work than needed.
Here are my thoughts to several comments that have appeared. By the way, thanks for your interest.
1. No need for a L1-L3 framework -- since the technician works on the tickets in order as presented in their queue. This is one of the big plusesin the sense the scoring provides for a continuous scale rather than defined breakpoints.
2. The routing takes care of the routine tickets -- tickets are automatically routed by answers to the questions to the right level of support from Helpdesk to Senior Level Technicians. In this respect lower level needs are properly routed to the appropriate group and the properly sorted in order that they should be worked on.
3. Wayward Tickets have several options ? tickets that never leave the bottom of the priority list have two options -- One option is to have the system add points to tickets systematically over time. The second option is to periodically clean up the queues with extra effort or with overtime if needed. I generally prefer the second approach because in reality everyone gets behind and it takes an extra effort to catch-up whether it be the IT Technician or the IT Manager. My technicians were also evaluated based upon keeping their queues current and were encouraged to let management know of problems and to request overtime if needed.
4. The President of our company did not receive any special points in the priorities. What did happen was that high profile calls had a special feature to alert IT management so that we were always on top of the current status. IT management could always interceded and provide extra priority if needed -- but I made sure that this was the exception rather than the rule. This approach also helped create creditability tothe everyday person needing assistance.
1. No need for a L1-L3 framework -- since the technician works on the tickets in order as presented in their queue. This is one of the big plusesin the sense the scoring provides for a continuous scale rather than defined breakpoints.
2. The routing takes care of the routine tickets -- tickets are automatically routed by answers to the questions to the right level of support from Helpdesk to Senior Level Technicians. In this respect lower level needs are properly routed to the appropriate group and the properly sorted in order that they should be worked on.
3. Wayward Tickets have several options ? tickets that never leave the bottom of the priority list have two options -- One option is to have the system add points to tickets systematically over time. The second option is to periodically clean up the queues with extra effort or with overtime if needed. I generally prefer the second approach because in reality everyone gets behind and it takes an extra effort to catch-up whether it be the IT Technician or the IT Manager. My technicians were also evaluated based upon keeping their queues current and were encouraged to let management know of problems and to request overtime if needed.
4. The President of our company did not receive any special points in the priorities. What did happen was that high profile calls had a special feature to alert IT management so that we were always on top of the current status. IT management could always interceded and provide extra priority if needed -- but I made sure that this was the exception rather than the rule. This approach also helped create creditability tothe everyday person needing assistance.
I am troubled by the wayward ones at the bottom of the list. After working in an organization with a chronic shortage of resources, let's just say that there are 20% of calls at the bottom of the list that will never get a solution. Overtime isn't an option. Adding points to the older ones only increases the size of the queue over time, although eventually the really old ones get a solution. One response is to simply deny the lowest priority request (with an explanation, of course!), but these have a way of creeping back on to the list in the form of a new request. Thoughts on how to effectively apply the points system in the face of limited resources?
This is a hard job and sometimes it is hard to tell when you are winning. You have no chance to win without the backing of your team, here are some ideas I used:
1. I developed an IT Information System that I could use to inform management thebenefits and costs to the company for actions that needed to be done. Surprisingly, they would authorize more if they understand the situation. The team also could be informed and knew I was involved.
2. I moved senior technicians to exempt status, called them architects, and setup a bonus system, and made the pledge that I would pay for better technology that would save time and effort. Initially they worked allot of overtime and got the idea that maybe they better find better ways to save themselves overtime. Their bonus was paid on meeting uptimes and completing projects.
I rewarded them with really nice nights out that included the significant other.
3. This next step was important, but a very hard sell. Senior technicians were required to do a certain amount of routine tasks. The benefits I found were that they found better ways to handle situations like writing scripts, different approach, or different technologies.
4. Provide other perks to the average technician such as buying any technical book they wanted, paying for exams whether they passed or failed. The benefits were they knew more, could solve problems faster, and were better motivated to go the extra mile because I gave something back.
5. Team activities. This cannot be understated. We had a facility in our city that offered the something called whirly ball. We did this about once a quarter and it was a tremendous pressure relifer.
I can say that I had zero employee initiatedturnover in 4+ years of difficult times.
1. I developed an IT Information System that I could use to inform management thebenefits and costs to the company for actions that needed to be done. Surprisingly, they would authorize more if they understand the situation. The team also could be informed and knew I was involved.
2. I moved senior technicians to exempt status, called them architects, and setup a bonus system, and made the pledge that I would pay for better technology that would save time and effort. Initially they worked allot of overtime and got the idea that maybe they better find better ways to save themselves overtime. Their bonus was paid on meeting uptimes and completing projects.
I rewarded them with really nice nights out that included the significant other.
3. This next step was important, but a very hard sell. Senior technicians were required to do a certain amount of routine tasks. The benefits I found were that they found better ways to handle situations like writing scripts, different approach, or different technologies.
4. Provide other perks to the average technician such as buying any technical book they wanted, paying for exams whether they passed or failed. The benefits were they knew more, could solve problems faster, and were better motivated to go the extra mile because I gave something back.
5. Team activities. This cannot be understated. We had a facility in our city that offered the something called whirly ball. We did this about once a quarter and it was a tremendous pressure relifer.
I can say that I had zero employee initiatedturnover in 4+ years of difficult times.
The more we try to tackle this within our department, the more complex it gets. Nice to see a simple approach that seems to be working.
Dave
Dave
This would solve by SERIUOS helpdesk problems. What can be done in situations where we have network problems and everyone is top priority and also we do not have a central site to receive calls?
This is a great system of points, and works in an ideal situation. I am sure it saves the technicians agony over which issue to tackle first. What if, someone calls with a very small problem that could have been handled very quickly if it were notfor the point system. Everyone in a company is interconnected to some degree. Just because someone does not rate maximum point as an Exec does not mean that they are not supporting the company mission in a very important way. Also, do you stop torate an issue that seems on teh surface to have a very quick resolution -- perhaps only a quick verbal response such as the suggestion to reboot the computer, or is that part of the initial triage from the Help Desk?
Overall, I'm quite impressed.
Overall, I'm quite impressed.
Perhaps you could try having some hours dedicated to doing just the quick and easy jobs. You know it will make people angry to suffer a productivity-eating problem for 2 weeks that gets fixed by a couple of mouse-clicks. (You're saying to yourself, those are problems users should fix themselves. Maybe in some companies...we're lucky if we hire people who can tie their own shoes) As to how to manage that, perhaps one person could scan the low-level priority jobs for the ones that appear they would take 15 minutes or less to do. If he attempts one and it starts to take longer, he drops it as elegantly as possible and goes on to the next problem. That is, he doesn't leave the user with a machine dismantled and walk away. He at least has to get them back to the point they started at. Anyway, the payoff for dealing with the quick problems is lucrative, in terms of enhanced productivity per hour of tech time.
Unless the ticket entry system is completely automated and the user fills it out, then those things can be screened out when the call is recieved. As part of the ticket entry and classification can involve the person taking the call ask the caller if they have tried the simple solutions (like rebooting) and putting that data into the ticket.
If help requests are via email, the person routing the ticket could send a canned responce with the quick solution, and a request for more detail if that does not work.
Of course this assumes the help desk agent has the skills needed to know what to send. Far too often, when I enter a help desk ticket electronically I get a call(or email) from some entry level screener who either does not read the problem description I enter or does not have the skill level to realize that the information needed to route the call was already in the ticket.
If help requests are via email, the person routing the ticket could send a canned responce with the quick solution, and a request for more detail if that does not work.
Of course this assumes the help desk agent has the skills needed to know what to send. Far too often, when I enter a help desk ticket electronically I get a call(or email) from some entry level screener who either does not read the problem description I enter or does not have the skill level to realize that the information needed to route the call was already in the ticket.
I have found in my experience that by assigning an individual the task of creating a knowlege database of issues that were resolved by the level two and level three technicians this becomes a grand asset to all members of the team. The helpdesk team has the ability to search for issues similar to the problem that the individual is explaining and regardless of their skill level, can sometimes walk the user through the steps to resolve an issue that they otherwise would have had to escalate onto technicians.
I love this ideal and believe that it has it's place in the industry, however I would have to expand on this ideal as it is only a steping stone for the larger picture. This individual is my kind of employee, he is thinking outside of the box and coming up with solutions that normally are steped over or around for answers.
The Knowledge database that we have created allows each and every helpdesk call rep to search through for issues that are categorized by the initial complaint and resolution. I have always advised my helpdesk call representatives that they have 3 minutes once the users data has been documented to determine if they can resolve the issue. If the issue cannot be resolved within a 7 minute time frame, the call center representative can offer to email the resolution found in the database to the user, or the call center representative can assign this ticket to a technician that has the ability to resolve this issue. Our call center representatives also work each week with technicians from the field that have the experience to resolve issues. Each technician has to work with the call center call takers for a set period of time each week to help train them to resolve issues at first contact with the user as well as to help understand what the call takers are dealing with on a daily basis. We have found this to be extremely effective and reduces training costs dramatically throughout our organization.
I love this ideal and believe that it has it's place in the industry, however I would have to expand on this ideal as it is only a steping stone for the larger picture. This individual is my kind of employee, he is thinking outside of the box and coming up with solutions that normally are steped over or around for answers.
The Knowledge database that we have created allows each and every helpdesk call rep to search through for issues that are categorized by the initial complaint and resolution. I have always advised my helpdesk call representatives that they have 3 minutes once the users data has been documented to determine if they can resolve the issue. If the issue cannot be resolved within a 7 minute time frame, the call center representative can offer to email the resolution found in the database to the user, or the call center representative can assign this ticket to a technician that has the ability to resolve this issue. Our call center representatives also work each week with technicians from the field that have the experience to resolve issues. Each technician has to work with the call center call takers for a set period of time each week to help train them to resolve issues at first contact with the user as well as to help understand what the call takers are dealing with on a daily basis. We have found this to be extremely effective and reduces training costs dramatically throughout our organization.
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