The average Desktop Support organization tracks fewer than 5 KPI’s. However, there are literally hundreds of KPI’s that have been defined for Desktop Support. The vast majority of these metrics, however, are only marginally relevant – at best! When it comes to KPI’s for Desktop Support, less is more!The eight Desktop Support KPIs that really matter are the following:Cost per TicketCustomer SatisfactionTechnician UtilizationFirst Contact Resolution Rate (incidents)Mean Time to Resolve% Resolved Level 1 CapableTechnician SatisfactionBalanced ScorecardThese eight metrics represent the 80/20 rule when it comes to Desktop Support: 80% of the value you receive from performance measurement and management in Desktop Support can be derived from these eight simple metrics!In today’s blog, I discuss Technician Utilization.Desktop Support is a labor intensive function. For the average Desktop Support organization, 74% of all costs are labor related: salaries, benefits, incentive pay, and contractors. The best measure of labor efficiency for Desktop Support is Technician Utilization. When Technician Utilization is high, the Cost per Ticket will be correspondingly low. Conversely, when Technician Utilization is low, labor costs, and hence Cost per Ticket, will be correspondingly high.Technician Utilization is the average time that a technician spends handling both incidents and service requests per month, divided by the number of work hours in a given month. It measures the percentage of time that the average Technician is in “work mode”, and is independent of ticket work time or complexity. The formula for Technician Utilization, along with an example of how it is calculated can be found in MetricNet’s whitepaper on Desktop Support KPIs.Technician Utilization is strongly correlated with the following Desktop Support KPIs:Tickets per Technician per MonthIncidents per Technician per MonthService Requests per Technician per MonthCost per TicketCost per IncidentCost per Service RequestGiven the huge impact that Technician Utilization has on Desktop Support costs and productivity, every Desktop Support organization should track and trend Technician Utilization on an ongoing basis. You can register for MetricNet’s free webcast on Desktop Support Best Practices by visiting our webcast page.In my next blog on Desktop Support KPIs I will discuss Incident First Contact Resolution Rate.MetricNet conducts Desktop Support Benchmarks for organizations worldwide. For more information, please visit our benchmarking store, or contact MetricNet.
