Help Desk Maturity Assessment Guide

September 15, 2019 Wayne Help Desk process, Help Desk Structure 2

IT Help Desk Maturity Assessment by Build a Help Desk

IT Help Desk Maturity Assessment by Build a Help Desk

Welcome to your Help Desk Maturity Assessment
This Help Desk maturity assessment will focus on 10 core areas.
For each core area, you will be asked 10 yes/no questions. If you believe the answer is somewhere between yes and no, just mark the answer as no.
Once completed, you will see your overall assessment results.
Please provide your name and email address so we can email you a more detailed report with improvement recommendations.

Name
Name
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Last

Structure

Is your Help Desk a Single Point of Contact where all issues and requests initiate with your Help Desk?
Does your Help Desk have one main contact phone number and email address?
Do you have a ticketing application used by the Help Desk agents and all escalation staff ticket are sent to?
Does the Help Desk Level 1 provide technical support verses ticket taking?
Does the Help Desk maintain the ownership of the ticket from start to finish?
Do Help Desk agents log into the phone system with a unique user account?
Does the Help Desk staff have clearly defined roles and responsibilities?
Does the Help Desk have a tiered support structure, such as level 1 and level 2 agents, and clearly defined position descriptions?
Does the Help Desk have a new hire onboarding training program in place?
Is the reporting ratio of Help Desk agents to supervisors ten to one or less?

Call Handling

Do Help Desk agents log into the phone system with a unique user account?
Does the Help Desk staff have clearly defined roles and responsibilities?
Does your help desk have a clearly defined call handling process?
Does the Help Desk have a tiered support structure, such as level 1 and level 2 agents, and clearly defined position descriptions?
Does the Help Desk have a new hire onboarding training program in place?
Do you train all help desk staff on the call handling processes and does the staff know what is expected from them?
Is the reporting ratio of Help Desk agents to supervisors ten to one or less?
Do you communicate the call handling process and procedures to your customer to establish expectations?
Does the Help Desk utilize skills-based routing, which routes calls to agents with specific skills matching the issue?
Do you regularly use a warm transfer method to hand off support calls to higher support levels when needed?

Incident Management

Do you have a formally approved Incident Management process?
Do you have a dedicated Incident Management process owner role defined and staffed?
When making changes to the Incident Management process and procedures, do you use a formal change process?
Does your staff create a ticket for every incident they handle?
Do you have an incident priority matrix and use to assign a priority level to all incidents?
Do you assign meaningful incident ticket categories to incident tickets?
When an incident is believed to be resolved, is it required to confirm the resolution with the customer?
When an incident has been resolved, does your agents document the steps taken to resolve this issue in the ticket support notes?
Do Help Desk agents have a ticket closure process to follow if the customer is not responding?
Is your staff not allowed to reopen incidents but allowed to create a new one if needed?

Service Request

Do you have a formally approved Service Request Management process?
Do you have a dedicated Service Request Management process owner role defined and staffed?
Does the Help Desk have a customer visible Service Catalog or self-service portal listing all products and services?
Can the customer order products and services from the service catalog or self-service portal?
Is your service catalog or self-service portal integrated with your ticketing application?
Do you have automated workflow rules in your service requested fulfilment process?
Is there a formal change management process to add, remove or change products or services?
Do you have Service Level Agreements (SLA) in place with your customers governing request fulfillment goals?
Do you have Operational Level Agreements (OLA) with support groups and vendors to meet the request fulfillment within target goals?
Do you meet with your customers regularly to discuss service request fulfillment performance?

Workforce Management

Do you have a formally approved workforce management process?
Do you create your staffing schedule using output from a workforce management application?
Is your staffing schedule based on data from your ACD or telecom system?
Does your staffing model utilize statistics such as number of calls/day, hours of coverage, number of calls/hour, outgoing calls, email, web and average length of call?
Does the Help Desk use a call volume model that calculate delays or predict waiting times for callers?
Is the Help Desk analyst utilization rate greater than 50%?
Does your staffing model take into consideration paid time off, training, holidays and special projects?
Do you receive reports that compare your day and hour staffing level to call volume patterns?
Do you use temporary or parttime staff to meet increased loads during peak periods?
Do you adjust staffing levels to assist with major rollouts?

Reporting

Do you have a Help Desk reporting process?
Are your reports used to make business or process improvement decisions?
Are most of your reports automatically generated with little or no human intervention?
Are most of your reports automatically delivered to the receiving audience, application or repository?
Do you have Help Desk reports that utilize call handling metrics from an ACD or telecom system?
Do you have a report repository where authorized people can view and download the reports?
Can a system or person generate an ad hoc report when needed?
Is real-time Help Desk performance data feeding into a dashboard that can be used by the business or department leaders?
Do you have performance and activity data displayed on monitors in the Help Desk area?
Can your reporting system generate notifications or alerts when thresholds are met?

Training

Do you have a training and staff development process?
Do you have a dedicated training and staff development process owner role defined and staffed?
Have you performed a skills assessment of each employee to determine their strengths and improvement opportunities?
Do you have a training and staff development plan created for all your employees based upon the skills assessment?
Do you allow at least 5% of staff time to be devoted to receiving training and staff development?
Does your training plan use multiple delivery methods such as classroom instruction, virtual training, and computer-based training?
Do you have a formal new-hire training and staff development program?
Is new applications or services support training for the Help Desk incorporated into your company's change management process?
Do you provide training for soft skills such as typing, writing, speaking, customer service, and call handling?
Does your training and staff development process include the opportunity to attain professional certifications?

Identity and Access

Do you have a formally approved identity and access management process?
Is it mandatory that your company's employee receive training on security, identity and access management policies?
Does the Help Desk have a process to validate the caller's identity before resetting a password?
Do your customers have the ability to reset their password using a self-service tool?
Do you have an automated onboarding process to setup permissions for new employees?
Do your Help Desk agents have a separate administrative account to use when elevated permissions are required?
Does your company have defined role-based access control permitting users access only to what they need to perform their job?
Does your company have a process to obtain approval from service owners and employee managers for access requests?
Do you audit password resets and account provisioning?
Does your company use multifactor authentication?

Knowledge Management

Do you have a formally approved knowledge management process?
Do you have a dedicated knowledge management process owner role defined and staffed?
Can anyone submit a knowledge article?
Do you have a knowledge article review and approval process before it becomes visible to the end user?
Can your Help Desk agents edit knowledge articles when updates are needed?
Do you have publicly facing knowledgebase articles providing end user with "how tos" and solutions?
Have you established metrics and useful ratings to determine which knowledge base articles are being used and are helpful?
Do you have your problem management system integrated with your knowledge base to publish known errors?
Do you have service summary articles in your knowledgebase describing important attributes of each service you Help Desk supports?
Do you have knowledge articles present to agents just-in-time during live support based on ticket categories selected?

Customer Satisfaction

Does your help desk have an established customer satisfaction measurement process?
Do you have a process to ensure that you are not oversampling your customers?
Is the customer satisfaction survey delivery process to the customer linked to resolving or closing a support ticket?
Are your surveys brief and succinct with no more than 5 questions to minimize customer disruption?
Do you receive at least a 30% overall response rate to your surveys?
Are you able to sort, group or filter survey results by categories such as customer's department, support issue, or location?
Do you publish the overall results of your customer satisfaction measurements to the customers?
Is it mandatory that someone follows up on all negative customer memo feedback and poor satisfaction scores in a timely manner?
Do you use customer feedback to establish your strategic and tactical plans for improvement?
Do you utilize your customer satisfaction results in the employee performance review process?

Yes, our IT Help Desk maturity assessment is free. For an organization initially setting up their Help Desk, there is a lot of industry-standard process information available to build a strong foundation. If you have an established Help Desk, you can have your current processes and practices assessed against these industry standards using an IT Help Desk maturity assessment. This will assist the Help Desk manager to understand how they are doing and what needs attention for improvement. In the IT Service Management community, we start by using something called a maturity assessment. An IT maturity assessment sometimes referred to as a gap assessment is a tool used by companies to determine their maturity compared to industry standards. It is important to note that the value realized from performing an assessment is directly related to the thoroughness of the assessment data gathered, which includes staff interviews. There are many benefits to performing an IT maturity assessment for your Help Desk team.

IT Help Desk maturity assessment benefits

Funding justification – Assessment results are frequently used to justify funding of improvement initiatives and projects. An analysis and recommendation from an independent group usually carry a lot of influence.

Cost reduction – By implementing process improvement recommendations from an assessment, teams can become more efficient. Efficiency gains can lead to consuming fewer resources and an overall cost reduction.

Improving the customer service experience – Customer service experience improvements are frequently realized when the Help Desk implements more mature processes. A mature process is a process that is repeatable and has an outcome that will be positive a high percentage of the time.

Productivity Gains – Ad hoc processes tend to consume a lot of time and resources. When Help Desk agents have efficient and well thought out processes, the team will experience increased resource productivity.

Future Growth – When processes are defined, managed, and optimized, it leads to departments being able to increase their scale. Scalable support processes will support future business growth.

Compliance – Chaotic and reactive support processes can be difficult to audit and lead to more frequent compliance violations. Mature processes have a strong adherence to governance and compliance regulations.

IT Maturity Assessment Core Focus Areas

A maturity assessment for the Help Desk will focus on key areas to gather information. The core focus areas of a maturity and gap assessment can vary between assessment vendors, but they all have similar focus areas. Below are examples of focus areas that will be assessed.

Leadership & Management Leadership and management play a major role in the assessed maturity level. Employees thrive when leadership and management are supportive of them and give them the tools so they can do their job. Assessment will look at controls and governance.

Organizational Structure – The organization or structure of a company is also very important. A maturity assessment will look at how decisions are made. A project management maturity assessment will analyze how projects are created, controlled and implemented. A review into how the department is structured, how teams are managed and how performance is controlled.

Employee Engagement Nothing can hurt a company’s performance like employees are disengaged. Employee engagement is a critical factor in the success of a company. measuring how engaged employees are is a key part of a maturity assessment.

Customer Experience As with any other department, the help desk is measured by how well the customer is treated. Customer satisfaction is lucky Focus on a maturity assessment for the help desk. It will look at the processes in place in the flow of the customer and their experience with the help desk.

Policies & Procedures – These are formal documents providing the high-level operational framework within which the Help Desk functions. A policy is expressed in broad terms and governs what, why, how, when, and to who the Help Desk services are provided. Procedures are the detailed instructions to carry it out. Policies and procedures will be compared against industry standards and assessed for their maturity level.

Technology The technology used at the help desk is also critical. You don’t need the most expensive equipment, but you need effective equipment. Does the help desk have the proper technology in place to meet the challenges that they face? An assessment will review the technology being used and provide a good recommendation.

Metrics and Reporting – Not only are metrics and reporting critical measure the performance of the Help Desk, but it’s also important to support the business decisions. A review of the metrics and reporting are part of the assessment. Recommendations will include how to improve this going forward.

Security Maturity Assessment – Security compliance with industry standards is always a major focus during an assessment. One area an assessment will focus on is password management procedures. Does the Help Desk validate the requestor’s identity using security challenge questions or other means? Are changes or resets to enterprise application accounts passwords tracked and audited? Is there a self-service password management method available to users? These are just some of the security maturity assessment areas focused on when determining the maturity level.

IT Maturity Assessment Scale

A maturity assessment has defined categories and standards. These categories and standards will help the assessor compare the Help Desk core areas of people, process, technology, governance, and controls against industry standards. All assessments will use a maturity assessment scale to rank each of these core areas and determine the level they are operating. Some assessments use a scale of four levels, five levels, or even up to eight levels. The most accepted assessment scale level of maturity in the industry is five levels.

Maturity Level 1 –  A maturity level of 1 is your basic level. It means you’re just starting or at a foundational level. This level means there are no real processes in place. There is little or no documentation on support processes in place. No automation is being used. Activities are not repeatable and can be described as ad hoc. The work environment of the team is chaotic, and the customers are not getting what they’re expecting. No reporting exists, or it is very minimal.

Maturity Level 2 –  A maturity level of 2 means that there are some processes are starting to be put in place, but they’re not very mature. Most of the support activities are documented but have not been improved regularly. There may be some automation used, but it is siloed. Many activities are repeatable to a point, but some level of still ad hoc still exists This level the employees will feel like their processes are reactive. They are firefighting issues, and whatever occurs they are trying to figure it out as they go. Reporting exists, and a few reports are used to assist with decisions.

Maturity Level 3 – At a maturity level of 3, the help desk is becoming more proactive. Their processes are documented and are reviewed occasionally for improvements. Automated systems are in use and centrally managed. The employees feel more empowered to make suggestions for improvement, and they are acted on. Customers feel like they are starting to get things that they expect. Reporting at this level is functional and are used frequently when making decisions.

Maturity Level 4 – At a maturity level of 4, decisions are being made by metrics and reports. Centrally managed automation is feeding output data to further refine the process. Processes are being optimized, customers are feeling important, and continuous Improvement is very effective.

Maturity Level 5 – a maturity level of five everything is up exceptional. There’s real value to the business. All processes are continuously improved expectations are being met everything is optimizing there’s a real value for the business. Automation is using AI to learn, improve and accelerate more refined processes. Self-service services are widely used. Knowledge is shared and used throughout the company.

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