Single Point of Contact (SPOC)Service Desk KPIWatch the 2020 Single Point of Contact webcast here!The term SPOC refers to a Single Point of Contact support organization. This means that all IT issues, service requests, problems and incidents are first directed to the level 1 service desk to be logged in the ticketing system, and then either resolved at level 1 or dispatched to another source of support where the ticket can be resolved.A SPOC service desk is not expected to resolve every ticket it logs. Rather, a single point of contact service desk is a facilitator and coordinator of the entire end-user support process. They are responsible for resolving the tickets that can be resolved at level 1, and expeditiously dispatching tickets that cannot be resolved at level 1 to the most appropriate source of support. This could be desktop support, level 2 IT groups, the NOC, a vendor, or even specific individuals in the organization with unique expertise, say for a particular application in IT. Finally, a SPOC monitors the progress of all open tickets, prompting action on tickets that appear to be stalled, and closing tickets that have been resolved satisfactorily.A SPOC service desk is ultimately responsible for ensuring that all tickets are resolved within the service levels that have been established for the organization. The value of SPOC is that it brings order, discipline, and consistency to the support process. Support organizations that follow a SPOC model typically have lower costs, and higher customer satisfaction that those that do not follow a SPOC process.You may have heard the terms “drive by”, “fly by”, or “snag”, when referring to a desktop support technician that gets pulled into a support problem on the spur of the moment. This might happen, for example, when a technician is returning to their desk after completing a service request, and is “snagged” by a user who needs support for a particular issue – right then and there. These rogue requests happen in every organization, and there is a great temptation for technicians to provide support when asked, even if it means violating the SPOC support protocol. This effect, sometimes called bypass (because it bypasses the SPOC process), can actually be measured with a metric called % Resolved Level 1 Capable, which, as the name implies, measures the number of tickets resolved by desktop support that could have been resolved by the service desk. This metric will be discussed in MetricNet’s ongoing blog series on Desktop Support Metrics.
