2: UK Local Government

AP's universal status set was introduced to enable Consistent Status Management - the backbone of AP.

The Service Catalogue was redesigned by simplification, with relevant categories mapping to the “Urgent” status to minimise the need to phone for support, and manual ticket triage was eliminated through automation.

Upon this foundation, Organisational Change Management brought even more employees to the service portal as the primary channel.

Personal ticket ownership was removed, replaced with four designated Service Desk roles each having responsibility for a set of status queues to produce multipled ticket cover, with everyone responsible for promptly picking-up urgent tickets.

The way of working was keenly and easily adopted by all support teams.

95% portal uptake.

Collective teamwork aligned to support's purpose of providing attentive service.

All ticket updates were promptly reviewed and progressed, for fluid communication.

Tickets sat "With User" were proactively managed.

SLA Breach Prevention.

Consistent 1-day SLA achievement at over 96%, accurately measured.

Ticket backlog could not build.

Zero chases ongoing.

Ease of management.

Highly engaged teams who were in control of service quality.

As is always found, implementation of a basic AP approach is quick and easy to do (in any tool), with teams always looking forward to the enabling way of working.

Shared status queue ownership without Contribution Recognition was a good fit because the Service Desk team size of four meant ownership of outcomes was felt even without personal performance metrics, for job statisfaction. Ticket closure statistics (superseded by Contribution Recognition in a full FM implementation) were not wanted or needed.

Activity sequencing through standard AP would have improved timeliness and SLA achievement further still, but it is not necessary in smaller front-line teams who are dedicated to support all day long.

The importance of enablement from a refined Service Catalogue, cannot be overstated.

The difference in IT employee engagement and work culture by moving to the Digital Channel Service Desk (DCSD) / removing Call Centre reliance, is truly transformational, with service customers benefitting just as much. More on DCSD here.