Staffing levels

An organization must ensure that the correct number of staff are available at any given time to match the demand being placed upon the desk by the business. Call rates can be very volatile and often in the same day the arrival rate may go from very high to very low and back again. An organization planning a new desk should attempt to predict the call arrival rate and profile – and to staff accordingly. Statistical analysis of call arrival rates under current support arrangements must be undertaken and then closely monitored and adjusted as necessary.

Many organizations will find that call rates peak during the start of the office day and then fall off quickly, perhaps with another burst in the early part of the afternoon – this obviously varies depending upon the organization’s business but is an often occurring pattern for many organizations. In such circumstances it may be possible to utilize part-time staff, home-workers, second-line support staff or third parties to cover the peaks.

The following factors should be considered when deciding staffing levels:

• Customer service expectations
• Business requirements, such as budget, call response times, etc.
• Size, relative age, design and complexity of the IT Infrastructure and Service Catalogue – for example, the number and type of incidents, the extent of customized versus standard off-the-shelf software deployed, etc.
• The number of customers and users to support, and associated factors such as:
• Number of customers and users speaking a different language
• Skill level
• Incident and Service Request types (and types of RFC if appropriate):
• Duration of time required for call types (e.g. simple queries, specialist application queries, hardware, etc.)
• Local or external expertise required
• The volume and types of incidents and Service Requests
• The period of support cover required, based on:
• Hours covered
• Out-of-hours support requirements
• Time zones to be covered
• Locations to be supported (particularly if Service Desk staff also conduct desk-side support)
• Travel time between locations
• Workload pattern of requests (e.g. daily, month end, etc.)
• The service level targets in place (response levels etc.)
• The type of response required:
• Telephone
• E-mail/fax/voice mail/video
• Physical attendance
• Online access/control
• The level of training required
• The support technologies available (e.g. phone systems, remote support tools, etc.)
• The existing skill levels of staff
• The processes and procedures in use.

All these items should be carefully considered before making any decision on staffing levels. This should also be reflected in the levels of documentation required. Remember that the better the service, the more the business will use it.

A number of tools are available to help determine the appropriate number of staff for the Service Desk. These workload modelling tools are dependent on detailed ‘local knowledge’ of the organization such as call volumes and patterns, service and user profiles, etc.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 817