Service Desk SLA

2.1.2
– bullet 6 – what is the predefined set of criteria for escalation?
– Suggested criteria:
· Within 1 business day of ticket submission, requestor must receive notification identifying the assigned department (ticket owner)
· The following cycle applies to customer tickets/emails at initiation and at any point after a customer response
-After 3 business days of no response from ticket owner, Help Desk contacts owner for update
-After 3 additional business days of no response, director of owning department contacted by Help Desk for update
-After 6 days of no response, owner and director receive daily reminders from Help Desk to respond to the ticket
-After 7 business days with no response, Incident declared:
— Service Owner contacts ticket owner and owning department director for written response
— Report filed with IT SAC

· Whether by policy or thru the interface, ticket owners must put response at the top of their email (we often receive Help.UNM emails with the request for information at the bottom of a very long thread of Help.UNM responses).
· All responses – ‘Holds,’ ‘Waiting for Response, ‘Fulfilled,’ ‘Closed due to Resolution’ etc., must provide details explaining the status change for the ticket.
6.3 – if customer requests a certain priority, initial ticket response must note actual priority designated, and reason for change from customer request
8 – Billing – is this applicable? If it isn’t, does it need to be included in the SLA?

• This reply was modified 8 years, 9 months ago by ccovey01.

Thanks for the comments Chad. In reading the SLA and the section you’ve pointed out, we are referring to functional escalation. Escalation might not be the right word to convey our meaning. This bullet refers to assigning tasks to teams beyond the Service Desk for resolution or fulfillment.
UNM IT is working hard to provide information to the Service Desk in order that they may resolve issues much faster to minimize functional escalation. We are focused on first contact resolution rates – resolving more at the Service Desk. Obviously there are issues the Service Desk cannot resolve and must be assigned (escalated) to a technical team. We will reword that bullet to better reflect what we are trying to achieve.
As for closing tickets after five days, we attempt to contact the customer multiple times – at a minimum two to three times before the ticket is closed. A majority of the time, the customer calls in and doesn’t have enough information or realizes there is an alternative process. They do not call back to say all is well as they are aware tickets are automatically closed. We send emails to inform them that we need more details or ticket will be closed.
We do provide communication to customers when ticket status or priority changes – there is always room for improvement in this area.

TJ,
Is there another SLA or document that will detail “assigning tasks to teams” ? In particular, expected response times, escalation, and customer notification.

We understand things can happen regarding assigned tasks (someone’s on vacation, tickets gets misrouted), but we have encountered situations where we take pains to use Help.UNM, keep all of our requests or replies in Help.UNM, and do not receive any response from assigned technical teams for weeks.

As customers, we’d like to have some visibility into what we can expect from the assigned technical teams in terms of response. As noted above, we’d be fine if we got a response like ‘we are researching the issue’ or ‘the assigned technician is out, he or she will get back to you next week.’ But our experience with many requests in Help.UNM is no response from the assigned team – no emails, no calls.
And of course thank you for your previous detailed response,
Chad

• This reply was modified 8 years, 9 months ago by ccovey01.

Chad –

In each SLA, you will find response times associated with priorities of Incidents.  I appreciate the struggle of not receiving responses to tickets in a timely manner.  Please know each team reviews aging tasks to either get them completed or provide communication to the customer.  I will share your feedback during our next group review of aging tasks.

As for service requests, we also monitor those for open tasks but we have not established response times.  Each unique service request may take a different amount of time to fulfill.  We have the data and will be establishing and publishing fulfillment times – it is on our roadmap for this year.

I certainly acknowledge that we improvements to make in our communication on individual tickets At any time, you are free to call the Servcie Desk for a status check, call the Customer Service Manager listed on the SLA or contact me when you there are concerns about the amount of time a ticket has been open or you’ve received no communication from us.

thanks.

TJ,
If a customer does not respond to a request for information in 5 business days, it makes sense to close the ticket – an action which is defined in the SLA. Equally, if an assigned technical team does not respond to a customer’s request, then the customer should see an escalation process – that action is not defined in this SLA, but will benefit everyone with its inclusion. Escalation in this case applies only to no-response situations – we understand fulfillment and resolution can often take longer, and fall within their applicable service SLAs.

Because there will likely be many issues/requests that do *not* have SLAs governing them, this SLA could ensure appropriate response times to avoid potentially orphaned requests. Other SLAs may define their notification processes differently, but customers should have some specific baseline communication process to reference when their request does not fall within a particular SLA. And as all of the new standards and SLAs are built upon the Help Desk and Help.UNM as the gateway for ALL communication – it makes sense for this SLA to define specific, minimum notification limits.

This SLA can work best if it defines appropriate notification to customers, and sensible escalation procedures if the assigned technical team does not respond to customer requests. A benefit of escalation – say there’s a technical issue where teams are simply not getting Help.UNM notifications. If the SLA triggers a direct inquiry to the team and Help Desk personnel automatically, the inquiry would reveal a larger issue with Help.UNM’s messaging functionality. The technical glitch behind a communication breakdown is identified and fixed as a result. Along that line, if the SLA automatically defines escalation and intervention, it also safeguards the relationships that customers, Help Desk, and technical teams share – the SLA can be the ‘bad guy.’

We believe that all UNM customers would benefit from better visibility into who they will work with, and how their requests are being processed, so Law offers the following for the Service Desk SLA review committee:

• Within 1 business day of ticket submission, requestor must receive notification identifying the assigned department (ticket owner)

• The following cycle applies to customer tickets/emails at initiation and at any point after a customer response

-After A business days of no response from UNM IT assigned technician/ticket owner, Help Desk contacts UNM IT assigned technician/ticket owner for update
-After B additional business days of no response, director of assigned UNM IT department contacted by Help Desk for update
-After C days of no response, UNM IT assigned technician/ticket owner and director of assigned UNM IT department receive daily reminders from Help Desk to respond to the ticket
-After D total business days with no response, Incident declared:
— SLA Service Owner contacts UNM IT assigned technician/ticket owner and director of assigned UNM IT department for written response
— Report filed with IT SAC

• All responses – ‘Holds,’ ‘Waiting for Response, ‘Fulfilled,’ ‘Closed due to Resolution’ etc., must provide details explaining the status change for the ticket.

• If customer requests a certain priority, initial ticket response must note actual priority designated, and reason for change from customer request

‘A’ ‘B’ ‘C’ and ‘D’ days we would recommend to be some sensible number for responses.

Thank you – Chad

• This reply was modified 8 years, 9 months ago by ccovey01.

Chad –

I certainly appreciate the effort you’ve taken to craft this response. You have identified areas for process improvement which I am always open to incorporating into our efforts.

In regard to customers not responding when details are requested, a great majority either have their problem resolved or there is a separate process followed in their department. For example, only the UH Communications group can submit incidents related to phones for hospital customers. UH Communications tries to solve the issue first before calling UNM IT. I would say escalating to department heads for non responsive customer would not add value. I do agree that is appropriate to escalate when UNM IT is unresponsive. For those types of issues, there is an escalation section in the SLA. Here at UNM IT, we are have conversations about response times and communication to the customers. We understand the importance and strive to improve in those areas. Thanks again for your feedback.