3 Helpdesk KPIs to improve request resolution rates
"Why do I have so many open tickets?"
If you're a helpdesk manager, you've probably asked yourself this question a dozen times. Well, we don't have a magic trick to cut down your ticket count overnight, but we have a few tricks that can help you figure out how to keep your ticket resolution time short.
Keep the net ticket in-flow under control
Tracking the net ticket inflow can give you a clear picture of the efficiency of your helpdesk. A comparison report mapping incoming tickets against closed or resolved tickets can help you see how quickly tickets are getting resolved. If the lines are closer (as in the image below) you can infer that your ticket resolution rate is good, and if the lines are far apart, it shows you that your technicians are falling behind.
Tip:
1. When you notice a sudden spike in your ticket flow report, check if you've made any software or hardware upgrades during the said period.
2. If you notice surges in ticket volumes at regular intervals, say every Thursday or on the 15th of every month, check with your product team if your surges correlate with their product launches or feature updates.
Watch the troublemakers
Tip:
1. Apply additional filters to this report like site, sub-category, priority, mode, department, and level, to get more insight into your data and locate the root cause of the issue.
2. For hardware or network related issues, you can apply suitable filters to isolate specific vendors or locations that consistently record a high volume of requests.
3. Similarly for service-related issues, you can use filters to look at technicians who take longer to resolve issues and asses the need for further training or creation of instruction manuals.
Get down to the basics
Tip:
1. Isolate the type of incidents or service requests that garner the most SLA violations and use that data to asses the efficiency of your helpdesk system. Simple factors such as mismatch of technician skill set with ticket allocation, uneven distribution of ticket volumes between your technicians etc, could be the reason why your SLA metrics are down.
2. A higher percentage of SLA violations is not always a sign of an emerging problem in your helpdesk, it could just be an indicator that you need to rethink your SLA metrics. For instance, you can reconsider SLA metrics based on customer tiers (privileged or regular), priority of requests (high, low, or medium), or geography.
If you find these reports helpful or you need us to feature a specific report, do leave us a comment in the section below.