Staff the Service Desk to Meet Demand

• With increasing complexity of support and demand on service desks, staff are often left feeling overwhelmed and struggling to keep up with ticket volume, resulting in long resolution times and frustrated end users.
• However, it’s not as simple as hiring more staff to keep up with ticket volume. IT managers must have the data to support their case for increasing resources or even maintaining their current resources in an environment where many executives are looking to reduce headcount.
• Without changing resources to match demand, IT managers will need to determine how to maximize the use of their resources to deliver better service.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

• IT managers are stuck with the difficult task of determining the right number of service desk resources to meet demand to executives who perceive the service desk to be already effective.
• Service desk managers often don’t have accurate historical data and metrics to justify their headcount, or don’t know where to start to find the data they need.
• They often then fall prey to the common misperception that there is an industry standard ratio of the ideal number of service desk analysts to users. IT leaders who rely on staffing ratios or industry benchmarks fail to take into account the complexity of their own organization and may make inaccurate resourcing decisions.

Impact and Result

• There’s no magic, one-size-fits-all ratio to tell you how many service desk staff you need based on your user base alone. There are many factors that come into play, including the complexity of your environment, user profiles, ticket volume and trends, and maturity and efficiency of your processes.
• If you don’t have historical data to help inform resourcing needs, start tracking ticket volume trends now so that you can forecast future needs.
• If your data suggests you don’t need more staff, look to other ways to maximize your time and resources to deliver more efficient service.