In a previous blog post, SysAid – a provider of IT management solutions – was kind enough to share some metrics/performance snapshots collected from its customers. As a quick recap, SysAid captures service desk benchmarking information through its customers’ use of its software (on an opt-in basis of course) for the benefit of all.

At some point we should sit down and compare the SysAid stats to those provided by HDI – a great independent source of service desk benchmarks – that’s a challenge to you Roy Atkinson … BTW, I hope the HDI 2013 event is going well in Las Vegas this week (the Twitter hash tag is #hdiconf13 for people, like me, who aren’t there). Anyway, back to those SysAid stats …

A selection of community-based service desk stats …

There are two points to note here: not all SysAid customers participate (according to its website, SysAid now has over 100,000 customer organizations); and I have cherry-picked a handful of the available stats from March 2013. There is also one caveat from me – there is no differentiation of organization size in these stats, we need to drill down further to account for any small or very large organization bias.

Percentage of incident tickets originating from the End User Portal, Average 60.31%

Forrester recently published “IT Service Management (ITSM) Case Study: Making The Transition From On Premises To SaaS With BMC” which is available to clients here. For non-clients (or hopefully “future clients”) I thought I’d create a blog on the good practices distilled from the discussion with the BMC client.

The situation … does it sound familiar?

The customer had found itself hamstrung by a highly customized on-premises ITSM tool that was: 1) too costly to run; 2) a poor fit to operational and customer requirements; 3) complicated and cumbersome to use; 4) unable to keep pace with the latest service management thinking; and 5) stranded on an out-of-date version because it would cost too much to upgrade.

The solution …

The customer used a honed set of requirements to select BMC Remedyforce from a shortlist of six SaaS ITSM offerings. In their words, they chose BMC Remedyforce because: 1) it was best suited to the agency's existing and future needs; 2) it was built on the salesforce.com platform; 3) its user experience was similar to (but better than that of) the incumbent Service Desk Express; and 4) it was the most cost effective.

Here's what they did:

• The initial deployment managed requests and tasks from both customers and internal IT.
• The customer took advantage of subscription-based licensing's ability to flex with demand.
• They also used BMC Remedyforce in different scenarios: in internally and externally facing call centers and, in addition to traditional IT support, addressing customer support, app development issues, and human resources (HR).

My most popular blog of 2012 wasn’t written by me … but I guess you might have expected this if you’ve already read a few. That blog's author, an end-user (or is that a customer of an internal IT organization), now returns to look at the IT service desk through a customer and customer experience lens. I’ll let them continue in their own words …

So how is your customer experience?

It’s never been more important to build strong customer relationships (regardless of what type of service you're offering).  Long gone are the days when the customer purchasing path was straight-forward, and when the only route of post-sales contact was the phone.  In 2013, we need to be proactive and embrace consumer-driven change, harnessing the power of new technologies as well as improving older methods of contact. 

Whether your interactions with customers are face-to-face, via the internet including social media, or over the phone; and whether they involve physical or virtual products; they now need to generate a good “experience” for customers.  In the age of the “empowered customer” failure to manage these “experiences” can lead to missed opportunities and/or customer loss. And not just with the affected customer(s).

So what is “customer experience” and could it apply to IT service desks?

Forrester’s definition is simple: “How customers perceive their interactions with your company.” So for an IT service desk, could it be: “How end users perceive their interactions with your service desk”? And if so, how do you deliver this increasingly critical “customer experience”? 

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the 15^th annual Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. I have attended DEFCON in the past, but never Black Hat. The conference has grown significantly each year, and judging by the size of the expo floor, the vendors understand its significance. I enjoyed the conference and had great conversations with practitioners and vendors alike. Here are some observations from two of the sessions that I attended: