kirkland & ellis llp globalized it service desk ellen sittinger, global service desk manager joe...

KIRKLAND & ELLIS LLP

Globalized IT Service DeskEllen Sittinger, Global Service Desk Manager

Joe Fousek, Customer Support Associate Director


The History Six independent Help Desks in our larger offices

• Separate processes

• Self-developed procedures

• Most Help Desks also performing dispatched desk-side work


The History Inability to adjust

• Unable to handle peak “system down” call volume

• 1 vacation + 1 sick = service nightmare

• Off-hours support was an expensive, distributed endeavor

• No vehicle to share lessons learned or best practices


Motivation to Change First and foremost, the MONEY

Inconsistent customer experience

Inability to cover peaks in call volume

After-hours cost and staff burnout

Customer frustration with waiting for call backs


K&E Globalization Project Goals Create a Service Desk where the customer experience is

consistently excellent

To leverage resources with the end-result of reducing expenses and providing a positive, consistent, unified experience for all users of the firm's IT services


K&E Globalization Project Goals Create and maintain Standard Operating Procedures for all

routine operations

Develop metrics and reporting that enables us to review and respond to trends and staff our resources for maximum efficiency and continual service improvement


First Establish the Play Book Get all staff playing from the same play book.

We had to gather the information and start with a baseline.

How do we do what we do?


Prepare the Team to Be a Team First and foremost, entire group needs to be in synch with

their methodologies and access to knowledge• How analysts answer the phone

• How escalations are handled

• Resources available to them

• No difference in answers dependent on analyst reached


PSPG Framework Standardization Project• Policies

• Policies are rules that the department imposes on others• Blessed by upper management• Exceptions only be executive approval

• Standards• Rules governing departmental operations• Standard configurations, standard service offerings, standard technologies• Exceptions by management approval

• Procedures• Area requiring the greatest effort• Every process done by group• Designed to make operational expectations clear to staff• SOP manual is the deliverable

• Guidelines• Loose rules like Operating Principles• Code of conduct, etc


Was it Easy? Differing opinions on the ease of building consensus

Most just delighted to have a standard.

Some offices believed the new standards were a step backward

Office culture/politics can make standards difficult


How Did We Create Buy-in? We engaged local supervisors and managers to be part of

the project team

We broke the project down into smaller pieces, and assigned sub-projects so that people felt a sense of ownership. However, everyone involved reviewed and provided feedback


How Did We Create Buy-in? We made it clear from the beginning that this wasn’t going

to be a home-office dictatorship.

We reinforced the idea that this was a globalization and that we wanted to learn how each office did things and come up with best practices based on our findings.


The Globalization Process Rolled one office in at a time

We held training courses on the Standard Operating Procedures and on the new phone/ACD systems

Mock calls – to give staff the chance to get to know each other and assure readiness, and practice new escalation procedures


We’ve Finished the Globalization In July, we finished our globalization when we added our

Hong Kong and Munich offices to our Service Desk phone system.

It took us approximately two months to consolidate all of the offices (after many months of planning).


Workflow: Requests Received Via Telephone

When you place a call to the Service Desk, the automatic call distribution (ACD) system first checks the availability of the Service Desk staff.

If a Service Desk representative in the local office is available to receive a call, then the call will be routed to them.

If no Service Desk staff member in the local office is available, then call is then routed to the first available agent in any of the other offices.


Requests Received Via E-mail We consolidated our local email request routing and created

a new, central IT Service Desk inbox.

Any e-mails sent to a former local office email address are automatically routed to the globalized IT Service Desk inbox.

The IT Service Desk mailbox is monitored during all business hours for the Service Desk (user benefits from extended email coverage).


What if a User Requires Desk Side Assistance?

In cases when a user’s issue requires desk side or emergency assistance, the technician taking the call (or responding to the email) will escalate the ticket to the user’s home office Customer Care team.

The issue queues are monitored by the local office supervisor and are addressed promptly by local office (Customer Care – feet on the street people) staff.


How Do We Know if We’re Successful? Metrics drawn from:

• Automatic Call Distribution’s Call Management System

• HEAT - Incident Tracking System

• Surveys


Key Performance Indicators We use weekly and monthly reports to communicate to the

staff and management and measure our progress

We will analyze trends and adapt strategy based on data

We are monitoring and measuring• Call/Email volume

• Percent of call answered live

• Average speed of answering calls

• Abandoned call patterns (people that hang up)

• The following slide shows total calls and emails processed for each office for the week


Personal Performance Indicators – How Do We Manage People Globally How many calls each analyst handled

What each analyst’s average time was spent on a call

Individual After Call Work time (this is time spent either entering a HEAT ticket or continuing to work on a problem without keeping the customer on the phone)

How many calls were directed to each analyst but went unanswered (and rolled over to another analyst) - RONA


The “Aux” Report - Choosing Your Codes When an agent is not engaged in taking calls, how are they

spending their time?• Lunch time

• Break time

• Helping coworkers

• Going to meetings

• Working on projects

• Monitoring incoming Email

• Attending training

Ensuring time spent away from phone duty is appropriate


Managing the Big Picture Looking at 30 minute increments, throughout the day, what

are our customers experiencing?

What adjustments might we need to make in scheduling?

Plotting• Our call volume

• Staffing levels

• Maximum wait time of any call

• Abandoned calls (hang-ups)


Coming Soon – More Metrics to be Published

Percent of calls closed on first contact

Average time to close tickets (SLA’s and OLA’s)

Re-opened tickets

Reports outlining each group’s escalation management (OLA’s)• Number of tickets open longer than 2, 7, and 30 days

• Re-opened tickets

• Mean time to acknowledge tickets

• Mean time to resolve tickets


Reaping the Benefits 20% reduction in User Support head-count

• Promotional Opportunities

• Some trimming of head-count

Knowledge sharing across the team

Standardized services and processes

Metrics driven results• Staff understanding definition of success

• Ability to compare performance across offices


Lessons Learned Communicate early and often. Many of our users seemed

surprised when their call was answered by a voice they weren’t familiar with, or someone not located in their office. While we did communicate this, it probably wasn’t enough.

Expect some users will not accept change (hearing an unfamiliar voice/accent)


Lessons Learned Expect that there will be processes that vary office to office

which may not have come out in the discovery phase. For us, it was offices vary on what kind of approval is required for accessing another user’s mailfile (calendar, address book).


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kirkland & ellis llp globalized it service desk ellen sittinger, global service desk manager joe...

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