When Josh Nelson, Ph.D., joined Power Design Inc.’s service desk in 2019 as the director of technology experience, he called it the “worst service desk he’d ever seen.” Ouch. But his co-workers, sitting right next to him at the panel discussion at HDI Service & Support World, agreed with him.
He was joined by Thomas Gartner, senior manager of technology experience; Ray Brown, technology asset manager; and Daves Vargas, senior manager of global service. The four told the story of how they turned the service desk into something the C-suite was seriously considering outsourcing to a five-star, world-class SDI-certified operation.
Matt Beran, IT industry analyst at InvGate, moderated the discussion, and set up the backstory of how the service desk operated in 2019. At the time, the company had 2,500 employees and seven people on the IT team doing everything (technical support, new hire setup, shipping, receiving).
The service desk manager had a background in logistics, not tech. There were no processes, no knowledge base, no SLAs that meant anything in practice. Tickets would get escalated and disappear. Three separate email addresses existed for different types of IT help, and most users had no idea which one to use or whether anyone would respond.
Nelson took the audience on a step-by-step process of how he worked with the team to turn everything around.
Look at the data
When Nelson joined the company, the service desk team morale was low. He also had a sense that the metrics didn’t match how the team was performing. He dug into the backend and discovered the dashboard hadn’t refreshed in 60 days. It was showing frozen data with only slight variations as older records dropped off the date range.
Next, he pulled ticket volumes, calculated what each technician could handle given the team’s turnaround time expectations and SLA commitments, and built a staffing case. The number he landed on: 289 tickets per technician per year as a benchmark. Multiplied against total volume — 30,000 to 35,000 tickets annually — the math showed the team was running at roughly half the headcount it needed. BTW: Now, the team is at 10,000 tickets annually because the majority of the tickets are getting resolved proactively.
Improve morale with a rebrand
Hiring more people helped, but the team needed a reason to see themselves as something worth believing in. Nelson rebranded the department as ATLAS (All Things Logistics and Support).
“We are the backbone of this company,” Nelson says. “We’re not always looked at as something that should be celebrated, but we are absolutely essential to the whole situation.”
Nelson also launched a program called “My Impact,” where every team member made a weekly commitment to do something above and beyond their regular job description.
“At first, they were doing the low-hanging fruit, pretty easy stuff,” Nelson says. “But as time went on, you saw people really trying to push themselves to make the entire team better and make the organization better.”
Understand that perception is reality
Nelson came back to one phrase over and over throughout the session: “perception is reality.”
“It doesn’t matter how fast you solved something,” Nelson says. “You can provide the best service in the world, but if the person you’re giving it to doesn’t feel that way, then you didn’t. No matter what metric you measure against, no matter how you feel about it yourself, if the person you served isn’t satisfied, you haven’t delivered a great experience.”
To close that gap, Nelson’s team runs regular pulse surveys — one question, five-point scale: How satisfied are you with your IT experience? Then, he takes the results and sits down individually with every department head to compare notes.
Most recently, the team built an experience dashboard that pulls from endpoint analytics, Microsoft adoption scores and CSAT data. Everything is compiled into a single score per department, displayed with color-coded smiley faces.
Make metrics engaging for staff
When an audience member asked how to make metrics engaging for frontline staff, Nelson says to make it personal, without it being pointed. They display team dashboards on screens throughout their work area, updated continuously, so the numbers are always visible. Nelson reviews team metrics in group settings, but makes individual performance visible alongside them without calling anyone out directly.
“Nobody wants to be the low man,” Nelson says. “We’re talking about the team’s win, the team’s success or failure, but while I’m talking about that, the individual is looking at their score compared to everyone they work with. It keeps the engagement because you’re making it personal.”