Queue Management - Inside the Organization - Part 3 of 4

This is a continuation on our Queue Management Basics conversation. In Part 1, I covered a Brief History of IT Support Desks – Part 1 of 4. In  Queue Management Friend or Foe Part 2 of 4 I explained what Queue Management is and how to proactively manage your queues. In this post we will continue our discussion by defining roles in your organization, determining key indicators and how priority comes into play. This post and the next will be written as a workshop for you to determine how to maximize Queue Management in your organization. 

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions at [email protected] or 303-514-8958

Thanks,

Bob

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Now that you have a basic understanding of Queue Management, we move to understanding the roles involved in providing queue management activities. The first step is to understand who the players are. Take a moment and define who the following are in your organization and what is important to them.  

• Customer
• Service Desk
• Queue Manager
• Technician

The next step is to understand the Key Indicators. As you are reviewing ticket queues and determining assignments you will need to understand what to work on and why. Although there are many items required to ensure successful queue management few of the most important are listed below. Please take a moment to review and think of these questions. Are their any that you think you could add or modify to make them more pertinent for your environment? 

• Is the ticket in the right queue?
• Is the ticket’s priority and impact correctly established?
• Are available resources being allocated correctly?
• Are the technicians working their tickets efficiently?
• When should help form others outside the group be requested?
• Finally, and arguably most importantly, are the customers being “kept in the loop?”

Finally, you will need to determine the priority of the tickets in order to work them in the proper order. What factors influence the Priority? It is important to understand that Priority is Impact x Urgency. Most times with out taking priority into account, technicians will work the tickets in a first in - first out basis only.  This is only part of the story. We must add the priority to the decision of determining which ticket to work next. 

• Impact
  • Severity – refers to the technical impact on a system.
• Urgency
  • Priority – refers to the business impact to the customer.
• Customer Importance - e.g. a call from a VIP.
• Resources required to resolve the issue.
• Potential cost of non-resolution.
• Disruption of service to the customer.

How to Assign Tickets

Now that you understand what is important,  the key indicators and you have set priorities accurately, the next step is to assign the ticket to a technician. Determining and managing the "sweet spot" regarding number of tickets assigned to a technician is critical to productivity. It is important to understand the mentality of your support groups so you don't overwhelm or under utilize your resources. If you give them too many they will only work first in first out and will not pay attention to priority. Give them too little and they will not be as productive as you need them to be. Typically the sweet spot numbers are:

• Tier 1 (Help Desk) 10 to 15 tickets assigned to a technician
• Tier 2 (Desktop Support) 6 to 8 assigned to a technician
• Tier 3 (System Administration) 3- 5 tickets assigned to a technician

As well as the number assigned  in a technician's queue, you need to allow them to have success through the day so they stay motivated day in and day out. So for example, at the beginning of the day you assign 8 tickets to a Desktop Support Tech. Then at noon, you look at that technicians queue again and find that they have worked the tickets down to 5. Our natural inclination is to assign 3 more tickets to get them back to the 8 maximum.  If you do it this way, you technicians will not see their success through the day. They will feel overwhelmed and their productivity will fall as well as their morale. Try instead to let them have their success through the day. Empower them to take tickets themselves after they reach a certain level. This will let them see their success and engage them in the process, resulting in happier technicians and more sustainable output.  

In our next section we will cover a few scenarios to help you determine how to pull this all together in your environment.

Continued in Part 4: Queue Management Scenarios