Many of our Service Desk projects come from the need to improve service delivery, so can be preceded by Consulting – to rejuvenate or revitalise your Service Desk. We can provide Consulting which goes hand-in-hand with resources on the Service Desk to complement your own staff and assist with the improvement programme.Alternatively can provide the complete managed service, providing all staff required for the IT Support function. Including SD Analysts, Team Leaders, 2nd and 3rd Line Technical Support, Desk-side support, Network Analysts etc, Process Analysts and Managers – i.e. Problem/ Change Analyst and Problem/ Change Managers.Quote the TechData example. TechData called us in to talk about ITIL training for their Service Desk staff – however through the conversation, it wasn’t really a lack of understanding of ITSM that was the problem (although that was a requirement). All the staff were contractors from a number of different agencies. The agencies weren’t prepared to pay for training for them and TechData were also a bit reluctant. The agencies basically provided Techdata with a ‘body’ and weren’t interested what happened so long as they got their monthly fees. The SD staff felt abandoned, without any management or guidance from the agencies, without any career progression plans, and without any opportunities for further training. One or two were looking for other work. We offered a Managed Service solution where we employed all the SD staff – providing them with all the things they didn’t get from an agency.
Why do organisations call us in?Go through all the above.Many projects come as a result of being called in to fix a ‘perceived’ training problem.
How is IT Services perceived by your customers?More importantly how are YOU perceived by your customers.Talk about the Service Desk as being the window through which your customers build up a picture of IT Services.Are you seen as the devil himself controlling all his minions in Hades?Or do they paint a completely different picture?
This is how we benefit organisationsWhen talking about Tools, mention PinkVerify – all the major tool vendors have come to Pink Elephant to ensure their tool is aligned with ITIL.
Critical to us supplying good staff is the recruitment process.We look for three things: 1. A good service attitude, 2. A good service attitude, and 3. A good service Attitude.By selecting graduates – they usually have good IT skills – they are easily trained in more specific technologies.
All our staff attend our Induction Course where we imprint the Pink factor, and make sure they have a good understanding of our Values and Culture.We run through our IT Service Management simulation where we show them the impact their actions and poor process can have on company performance – both ours and yours. This also gives them a better understanding of ITSM (ITIL) and where their rols fits into the wider context of delivering and supporting IT Service.We also show them how their attitudes, behavious and culture can affect their capability to deliver a world class service.And finally they will come out of the Induction with the ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management.
We promise all our employees a three year charter – a sort of ITSM Apprenticeship.This slide simply depicts a framework – each employee will have their own charter, depending on their career aspirations, the Client’s requirements, and Pink Elephant’s requirements.
For every 25 staff we have a Field Manager.He or she will be responsible for the well-being of our analysts, conducting regular appraisals.They will deal with all first-line HR Issues, attendance and performance issues. In a recent SDI survey a clear majority identified people management as their biggest drain on time, which meant that actually managing the people on the service desk took up more time than any other of their activities.We’ll take away this burden.The Field Manager will also liaise with the client to monitor SLA’s and KPI’s.
Everybody goes through this curve.When someone starts a new job they are full of enthusiasm and excitement. It takes a period of time to ‘learn’ the job – this curve will depend on how complex the job is. If it’s a easy job the time taken to learn it will be relatively short – conversely, the more complex it is, the longer it will take to learn it.But at some point you know how to do the job, and it may start to become a ‘9 till 5’ – just put in the hours and pay me my salary.Having people on the Service Desk with this attitude will damage your reputation.Through our Field Management we monitor this situation, and when the time is right, rotate the analyst to either a more complex role within the incumbent company, or replace and transfer to another company. The people who have just moved will start the Motivation curve all over again.The client will get a fresh, motivated, energetic analyst, and the analyst will get a new challenge. All this is done of course with the full co-operation and involvement of the client.
When we first talk to you about providing a Service Desk Managed Service we will discuss the number of staff you need.If that number is 8 or above we will provide, free of charge, and additional person.THIS IS PROVIDED THAT THERE ARE NO DISCOUNTS IN PLACE.This provides an in-built contingency for absence.Short notice/ term sickness is always a problem – if someone phones in sick at 09.00 am in the morning we cannot guarantee a replacement. Planned holidays on the other hand are easier to cover.
Our staff come with the best back-up in the business.They have access to ATLAS, our Knowledge Base – this is our Consultant’s tool kit.They also have access to our Consultants – so for example if there was a particular problem or issue on the Service Desk they have access to a wealth of information to enable them to correct it.
This is an option available for Pink Elephant.If required the whole Service Desk facility can be off-shored – however you don’t have to worry about ‘poor spoken English’. We have a model in place where we place some of our Graduates on secondment to our office in South Africa, where they have a complete off-site Service Desk facility. So when you ring up the Service Desk, the likelihood is that you’ll be speaking to an English Graduate.Some organisations use our off-shore facility as a contingency, for example: if you had 8 lines coming into the desk, and the ninth caller came in, instead of waiting this call would be re-routed to our South African desk, where they would receive exactly the same service as if they had called into the local desk. We can patch into your Service Management tool, so no information would be lost.For your interest you could have 4 South African analysts for the price you pay for one in the UK.
A review of the benefits.Client Management time is a big one – it frees them up to do more strategic/ interesting/ productive/ proactive work.Play on the fact that their reputation is in the hands of the people on the service desk – are they willing to risk that to a bunch of contractors (if this is the case).
You can skip through these last three slides – this is what we hammer home in the Induction course. But it’s interesting for the audience to see.
This slide puts into context the Service you are discussing.This shows the complete lifecycle of our SD offering.
