Single point of contact, also known as SPOC, is one of the industry's best demonstrated practices in IT Service and Support. It turns out that more than 70% of IT Service and Support organizations claim to operate as a SPOC, but in reality, most of them don't.
In this exclusive member webcast, I will be discussing single point of contact (SPOC) in IT Service and Support. If you're looking for expert guidance on operating a true SPOC model, what constitutes a violation of the SPOC model, what metric is critical to gauging the success of your SPOC initiative, the drivers of SPOC in IT Service and Support, or simply wish to familiarize yourself with the SPOC concept, this webcast is for you!
Let's start our discussion by imagining an end user within an enterprise. These end users on average are going to reach out to the level 1 service desk between 1 and 1.5 times per month and they are going to reach out to desktop support anywhere between .4 to .6 times per month. If you combine those two, you're looking at almost 2 contacts per user per month to IT Service and Support or approximately 20 to 24 touches per year. That's a lot of contact and oftentimes, these individual users don't know whether or not they should be interfacing with desktop support, field support, level 2 IT support, or vendor support. They may not know where to go. In any event, we don't want them contacting these n level support groups directly.
So, the level 1 service desk operates as a SPOC, a single point of contact. Now, it turns out that more than 70% of IT Service and Support organizations claim to operate as a SPOC, but in reality, most of them don't because the end users will oftentimes violate the SPOC model and contact vendor support directly or desktop support directly or field support or level 2 IT support directly.
But, in a true SPOC model, the users/customers go directly to the level 1 service desk, level 1 resolves the incident or the service request, or answers the question when possible. When that's not possible they will triage, escalate, or transfer the ticket out to one of these n level support groups. That's the essence of single point of contact.
Now some of the principles behind SPOC include:
Taking an end to end view of end user support. Viewing support holistically. So, you're not just looking at level 1 support or desktop support and sub-optimizing at each level. Instead, you're looking at the entire end to end support picture and you're asking yourself 'How can we deliver the support in the most efficient and effective way possible?’ It does require an end to end view.
This gives the customer a single point of contact for anything IT related. Whether it’s an incident or a service request, a question or a problem. It’s a great convenience to the end user to be able to go to a single point of contact. But there’s also an economic driver which we’re going to get into on the next page.
The level 1 service desk is the SPOC. This makes the most sense. The level 1 service desk is in the best position to answer the majority of user questions, incidents, and service requests, and know where to send the ticket, escalate it or transfer it, when they cannot resolve at level 1. So, level 1 is generally responsible for triaging tickets, resolving if and when possible, effectively handing tickets off to other levels of support. They’re responsible for resolution, coordination, and facilitation of tickets and closing tickets. Now, this doesn’t mean they close every single ticket, but it does mean they’re responsible for ensuring that tickets do get closed if not at level 1, then at these other levels of support. It needs to be closed somewhere. Whether it’s at desktop support or field services, vendor support, and so on.
In this environment, so called “drive-bys”, “fly-bys” and “snags” represent a violation of the SPOC model. These are vernacular for when an end user grabs a technician and asks that technician to help resolve some IT related issue. The proper answer on the part of the technician is to tell the end user to contact the service desk first and if the service desk determines that in fact a desktop visit is necessary or a field support visit is necessary or a vendor support solution is necessary, the level 1 service desk will make that determination and dispatch the ticket out to the appropriate level of support. But these “drive-bys”, “fly-bys” and “snags” are quite common and they do represent a violation of the SPOC model.
There’s also something called “bypass” which is when the end user deliberately bypasses the level 1 service desk and contacts their known or favorite technician in level 3 IT or in desktop support or in field services. This kind of bypass violates the SPOC model and is to be discouraged at all costs because these violations end up costing the organization a lot in terms of TCO – Total Cost of Ownership.
What we’re showing here on page 4 is a TCO diagram. It ranges from level –2 support on the far left to vendor support on the far right and the dollar amounts we’re showing here are the fully loaded cost of resolving a ticket at each of these levels. Last year in North America for example, the fully loaded cost of resolving a ticket at the service desk was about $22. The incremental cost, or additional cost, of resolving a ticket at desktop support was almost $70, level 3 IT was a little over $100, field support $220, and then vendor support the cost fully loaded was about $600 per ticket.
If you have “bypass”, where you’re violating the SPOC model, and the users are going directly to desktop support, IT support, field support, or vendor support, when they could have gotten resolution at level 1, they are increasing total cost of ownership. They are shifting right on this diagram and we want them shifting left on this diagram. A SPOC service desk is going to ensure that tickets don’t go to these other higher cost levels of support like desktop, IT Support, field support, or vendor support unless absolutely necessary.
Now we have a metric to measure this and it’s called PRLC - % Resolved Level 1 Capable. It’s simply the percentage of tickets resolved at any level of support that could have and should have been resolved at level 1. For example, let's say that desktop support handles 1,000 tickets per month and we determine that 200 of those tickets could have and should have been resolved at level 1. The % Resolved Level 1 Capable in that case is 20% because 200 out of those 1,000 tickets could have and should have been resolved at level 1.
That 20% number is not just a coincidence. It turns out that when we look at all these different levels of support to the right of the service desk, approximately 20% of desktop tickets, 20% of IT level 3 tickets, 20% of field support tickets, and 20% of vendor tickets could have and should have been resolved at level 1. Imagine how much that is costing an organization. It increases your total cost of ownership when you have tickets resolved at higher cost levels of support when they could have and should have been resolved at level 1.
So that is the economic driver behind SPOC. The other driver is simply convenience for the end user. They know where to go for anything IT related. Whether it’s a service request, an incident, a question, whatever it happens to be. That end user may suspect that they are ultimately going to get resolution at desktop or field or vendor support, but in order to truly have a SPOC model, you want as few violations of the SPOC principle as possible and you want every customer going directly to the service desk. If you don’t get resolution there, the service desk is responsible for appropriate triage, escalation, and transfer of those tickets.
Please keep in mind that SPOC – single point of contact – represents just one of many industry best practices in IT Service and Support. Over the years, MetricNet has identified 72 industry best practices and they fall into the 6 categories I’ve shown on page 7. Some of the best practices relate to IT Support strategy, some relate to human resource management, some are related to ticket handling processes and procedures, some related to technology, some related to the discipline of performance measurement and management, and some related to stakeholder communication.
Ideally, you should be concerned not just about SPOC, but also the other 71 industry best practices, and you should – on an annual basis – be comparing your maturity in key processes and procedures to the industry’s best demonstrated practices. The best way to do that is through benchmarking.
Many of you know that benchmarking involves comparing your own performance to that of a valid external peer group. It’s not just comparing your processes to the industry’s best demonstrated practices, but it’s also looking at quantitative performance such as your cost per ticket, your customer satisfaction, your first contact resolution rate, your mean time to resolve, and more than 20 other metrics that we use when we benchmark an IT Service Desk, Desktop Support group, or Field Services organization.
You see, the power of benchmarking is that you don’t have to improve incrementally through trial and error. Benchmarking enables you to bypass all of that and build upon the industry’s best demonstrated practices so you can improve your performance not at an evolutionary pace, but rather at a revolutionary pace. You can achieve World-Class performance in weeks or months, not years or never by relying upon trial and error, incremental improvement which really never gets you very far. Benchmarking accelerates your continuous improvement and allows you to achieve World-Class performance in a relatively short period of time.
In fact, we have found that benchmarking is the single most effective tool for enabling continuous improvement, rapid improvement, and achieving World-Class performance. Yet only about 20% of IT support organizations engage in benchmarking annually. This is unfortunate because benchmarking is the single most effective tool for empowering IT organizations to ramp up their continuous improvement efforts and achieve World-Class performance. Benchmarking doesn’t take a lot of time; it doesn’t cost a lot of money. If it’s not something you’ve done before, or if it’s not something you’re doing at least once a year, I would suggest that you might consider benchmarking your performance in IT Service and Support.
To get more information about SPOC, or benchmarking, or the other 71 industry best practices in IT Service and Support, you can reach MetricNet by phone at 775.298.7772 or via email at info@metricnet.com.