DWS Service Desk Rescue Series: Why the Dispatch Rate from the Service Desk Matters and What You Can Do About It

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The dispatch rate from the service desk to other teams is crucial since it indicates the efficiency of the desk. When the approximate cost to process a ticket at the service desk is between 8-10 dollars, @25 dollars at Level 1.5, @50 dollars at Deskside, and greater when transferred to other higher level groups, it can become fairly pricey if the dispatch rate is high. Additionally, if a problem has to be transferred from one team to another, the user may experience extended downtime. In this blog article, we'll look at why the dispatch rate is important and what you can do to improve it.

The dispatch rate is a measure of how many issues are not closed by the service desk and are instead escalated to another team. A high dispatch rate shows that the service desk is unable to efficiently address the majority of the issues that are reported to them. This is significant since it leads in increased costs for the organisation as a whole. When a ticket is escalated to another team, the anticipated cost of addressing the problem increases to @25 dollars at Level 1.50, @50 dollars at Deskside, and higher. As you can see, if the dispatch rate is high, it may soon add up to a significant financial burden for the business.

In addition to increasing the expense to the company, rising issues causes users to experience extended periods of outage. For the simple reason that escalating a problem up the chain of command and having each team act on it takes time. This may easily be avoided if the service desk is able to handle the issue quickly and efficiently.

So what is the impact of a high dispatch rate? Let's take a look at some examples:

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• Prolonged downtime for the End User if the issue cannot be resolved at the Service Desk and has to be dispatched to other teams
• Increased costs as cost per ticket rates are much higher for teams above the service desk
• Negative Client Experience and impact to Customer Satisfaction

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So, what can you do to decrease the number of dispatches you make? First and foremost, ensure that you have a suitable number of employees working at the service desk. This will guarantee that there are enough staff available to deal with the influx of tickets that come in. Second, train your service desk staff so that they are prepared to deal with a wide range of situations. In addition, quality tools and systems should be purchased to assist the service desk employees in resolving difficulties more quickly and efficiently.

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Let's take a look at the Operational Management Reference Framework to see what impact the dispatch rate and what actions can be taken.

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Process Objective:

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The objective of the Dispatch Rate reduction process is to define how to report, measure, track, trend, and harvest insights about the dispatch rate so that the Service Desk efficiency can increase, costs can be lowered and client satisfaction can be increased.

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Sample List of Benefits:

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• Reduced costs
• More efficient Service Desk Agents
• Implementation of Shift Left Strategy
• More productive clients
• Improved CSAT

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Sample List of Observations:

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• OM3 – Growth Management
• OM5 - Skills/Training Management
• OM6 – Resource Management
• OM7 – Quality Management
• OM8 – Knowledge Management
• OM9 – Technology & Tools Management
• OM13 – Service Level Management
• OM14 – Service Performance Management (Reporting & Analytics)
• OM15 – Continual Service Improvement Management
• OM17 – Issues/Escalations Management
• OM19 – Queue Management

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Sample List of Recommendations:

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• Understand the impact of growth/increased workloads is having on the dispatch rate. Are the agents feeling pressure to send the ticket to deskside to answer the calls waiting in the queue? (OM3)
• Understand the impact of skills/training on the dispatch rate. Is the dispatch rate high because agents do not have the skills or have not be adequately trained? Are skill gaps across the board or confined to a group of agents, day of the week, hour of the day, a specific application, etc.? (OM5)
• Understand the impact staffing levels are having on the dispatch rate. If there are staffing gaps, are agents being forced to cut the call short and send the tickets to deskside so they can take the next available call and avoid ASA and ABDN impact? (OM6)
• Implement a quality management program (quality ticket monitoring and quality telemonitoring) to assess for ticket handling gaps. (OM7)
• Understand the impact of the knowledgebase on the dispatch rate. Are tickets being dispatched to deskside and other teams because the knowledge does not exist, is not clear or is not being used? (OM8)
• Understand the impact of technology and tools on the dispatch rate. Are tickets being dispatched because the agents do not have access to a working or reliable remote takeover tool? Do they not have access to remotely install SW? Do they lack admin rights to perform certain functions? (OM9)
• Understand the impact of Service Levels on the dispatch rate. Are the call SLAs so aggressive that, agents are being forced to cut the calls short and dispatch tickets to deskside to avoid SLA miss? (OM13)
• Understand the impact of Service Performance Management on the dispatch rate. Are adequate reports and measurements lacking to understand the behaviour of the dispatch rate? Is there an adequate analytics process in place to understand where the gaps are and how to close the gaps. Are agent utilization reports and targets in place to ensure consistency in handling tickets? (OM14)
• Understand the impact of a lack of continual service improvement program on the dispatch rate. Are the observations and recommendations being made by the skills, quality, knowledge, reporting and measurements and analytics teams being acted on? (OM15)
• Are issues raised to address challenges with being unable to resolve higher number of tickets at the service desk being addressed by management? (OM17)
• Is there queue management in place to track and trend dispatch rates in real time?

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By following these recommendations, you may decrease your dispatch rate while also saving money for your business in the long term. Any other suggestions for decreasing the dispatch rate that you would want to share? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below!

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