Entry Software Corporation

Entry

ITIL Service Desk

IT Incident Management System Metrics

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What is an effective incident management system? Taking action to restore normal service operation quickly while minimizing negative impact on business operations. Managing incidents effectively is an essential piece for providing quality customer support. This can also help teams improve their current operations to prevent future incidents.

Benefits of an effective incident management system:

  1. Increased productivity and efficiency
  2. Higher level of service quality
  3. Visibility and transparency
  4. Valuable IT service management documentation
  5. Enhance end user satisfaction

The self-service portal is the single point of contact for the users to report any incidents. IT responds, handles, and resolves any request or issue to the business and/or customers depending upon what both parties think about impact and urgency. Then the incident is designated to staff that can best resolve it.

Incident Management Metrics 

There are 3 major factors through which an incident order is decided upon: Impact, urgency, and priority.

Impact – How a business is affected by an incident?

Urgent – How urgent the incident is and how much time it will take to be resolved? 

Priority – What is the priority of the incident ? (Low, Medium or High)

5 steps of incident management:

  1. Incident Reporting  communication begins at the time an incident is identified to acknowledge to the user or business that a disruption is taking place and investigation is in progress.
  2. Incident Escalation occurs when an incident triggers an alert and the proper procedures are performed by the individual who is assigned to manage the incident.
  3. Investigation and Diagnosis IT team performs analysis, then staff can begin investigating the type, cause, and possible solutions for an incident.
  4. Resolution and Recovery  involve eliminating root causes of issues and restoring systems to full functioning. Resolving an incident also includes documenting analysis findings and steps taken to restore service.
  5. Incident Closure communicating and confirming from users that the service experience is normalized ensuring customer satisfaction is met.

Inexpensive Acts Your Customers Will Appreciate

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Customers come in all shapes and sizes, and that includes different personalities. Despite some of the hassles they may cause, they are a reason your business has become what it is. Many companies show appreciation to their customers, by offering free gifts on their next purchase. From a customer perspective, this is amazing! However, there are also inexpensive acts that make your customer feel special, without draining your budget.

Solid, Consistent, Customer Service

Customers want to feel appreciated and valued while doing business with you, and this can start with just having great customer service. Simple things like having the right people answering the phone, positively acting as the face of your company can boost your customer service dramatically. Training your employees to comprise the needed customer service skills will show a huge difference in your customer relationships. Positive and attentive attitudes are very important and will show that your employees care about your customers. Perfecting this area of service can quickly show positive relationships with customers, costing you little to nothing extra.

Start a VIP or Affiliate Club

VIP or affiliate clubs can not only give the customer exclusive deals or discounts, but it also motivates them to continue to purchase or direct new business to your company. They can be designed however you see fit; although they usually include a points system, depending on how much customers have purchased, or how long they have been a customer. Customers can gain points they can redeem on items such as purchase discounts. This way the customer has to be invested in your company before they begin to get discounts.

Personal Emails

The little things people do sometimes have the biggest impact on someone’s perception. Sending emails designed uniquely to customers let them know how much their service means to the company. Other email subjects such as wishing them a happy holiday can add a personal relationship with your customer. Allowing this, makes the customer feel special because it’s not just a spam email that’s sent to everyone. It shows that the company took time to that specific customer and show you care.

Social Media Callouts or “Shoutouts”

Social media has grown over the past decade and is now the main way the world communicates to one another. Some including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram. Companies take to these social media to advertise their product or service and connect with their customers. Another inexpensive way to appreciate a customer is to directly communicate with them on a social media page. This can be done by writing a sincere tweet, Instagram or Facebook post including a little about them, a picture and why they are valued.

The little things that are done can sometimes be the most impactful. Customers are very important to your company and should be shown appreciation for their time invested. Beginning with overall customer service, having the trained employees deal with customers with the correct skills such as respect, listening, and patience can display extreme value towards the customer. Once the company has customer service down, they can start reaching out to new ways to appreciate their customers. Maintaining good relationships with customers, by making them feel valued, will get your company name noticed in a positive way, benefiting the company dramatically.

How Your Company Benefits From an Incident Management System

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What is the goal of incident management? It aims to reduce the negative impact of an incident on business operations by restoring things to normal as quickly as possible. The result is better levels of service quality. But beyond that, incident management that is well-thought-out offers the company that is implementing an incident management system 5 major benefits: [Read more…] about How Your Company Benefits From an Incident Management System

The Essentials of ITIL® Service Desk

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What are the essentials of an ITIL® implementation project? You could use the ITIL® five-part process as your guide:

  1. Service Strategy
  2. Incident Management
  3. Problem Management
  4. Feedback Management
  5. Change Management

Or, I suggest that you limit your starting project to ITIL® Service Strategy, ITIL® Incident Management, and ITIL® Problem Management.

You can’t get far without an ITIL® Service Strategy. It will provide the team with a framework for decision-making and a foundation for excellent, continually improving service. Read more about this in my ebook – 4 Steps IT Awesome

ITIL® Incident Management. You really must have incident management. It’s a core function of ITIL® and the best way to go about it is to leverage the service book that you put together while developing your ITIL® strategy. I’ve developed some simple steps for this and you can read more on it with my ebook An IT Managers Guide to Implementing ITIL®

ITIL® Problem Management will help you mature. ITIL® talks about problem management as the practice of resolving the root causes of incidents. These c

an be understood through an examination of incidents, feedback from customers and change requests. This whole process is referred to as Problem Management. It’s critical to ITIL® and will really help your organization mature and grow.

ITIL® Feedback Management is great once you’ve got 1, 2 and 3 in place. I’ve worked through surveying and have developed some very sound strategies, questions, and reports that you can download. Here’s a link to my blog post Help Desk Customer Satisfaction Survey Best Practice where you can download the survey questions and reports.

See how TeamHeadquarters can help with your ITIL® strategy

What are the essentials of a good ITIL® project? Well, it all is really essential but unless you have a sound ITIL® Strategy, with effective and usable ITIL® Incident Management and Problem Management processes then all the feedback and change management in the world won’t help you. Focus on items 1 through 3 above, master them and then you can spend your time on 4 and 5.

Good luck – contact us to discuss ITIL® or tell me what you think.

Consolidate IT Work Management Applications | The Argument

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Consolidate applications for IT work management and reduce effort, cost and futz factor to the tune of 300%!

IT organizations are overloaded with apps. This graphics represents a typical sample of an organizations disparate IT work management application layer. Each app likely has its own database. Apps require maintenance and input and a cost to keeping the current.

It gets worse.

  • Multiple installations and databases of apps used in different silos
  • Apps installed by rogue IT staff that need/want them
  • Home grown applications may be installed for each department
  • Project management tools can include spreadsheets, open source applications and Microsoft tools.
  • Add SharePoint or Wiki tools

When does this become unmanageable?

It already is unmanageable. The real question is when does this become impossible?

The exact circumstance that leads to an impossible situation happens when the capability of the team to manage multiple data points breaks at a customer interaction point. In other words the customer, “fell through the crack”. Customer upsets increase and IT satisfaction plummets. Cracks become chasms and change then must occur.

Be certain that at some point in the future the IT organization will shake apart for this reason and that this is what keeps the IT manager awake at night.

What to do? Consolidate applications, eliminate duplication and redundant applications and data, and align your IT efforts with an IT strategy. Easy to say, tough to do; isn’t it? It sure is but this is a guaranteed win and an effort that the IT Manager can either choose to engage with or one that may be chosen for him.

The Benefits of Consolidation

Companies that eliminate, align and consolidate disparate IT management systems, processes and activities:

  • Improve employee work efficency
  • Have fewer resource crunches
  • Simplify your IT operations

Tips for condolidating apps

How can TeamHeadquarters Help?

Consolidate your IT work with TeamHeadquarters. Integrating project management, help desk, time sheets, resource management and more, TeamHeadquarters will streamline your IT work management.

Contact us for more information and help or take a tour of TeamHeadquarters.