Our IT department consists of over 120 people, so the work that’s performed on tickets is segmented into various teams (network & infrastructure, support, field service and so on). What I’ve noticed is various managers have different things they focus on - unfortunately some of that is not the quality of the tickets their teams are working.
Our support and field service teams however have more of a heavier emphasis on ticket data. Given our size (nearly 100k students), their input on purchasing decisions for student devices carries a lot of weight, so they focus more on accurately confirming/changing the ticket issues and that resolution actions are accurate as this data gives insight into what models are costing us the most in the longer term (like if they have known issues, etc). It also helps them determine breakage rates from school to school (who are the worst offenders, who are the best, and so on).
The director of that group explained it well to her people when pushing for better data. “If it’s clickable, it’s reportable. If you can type in it, it’s not.” Essentially, anything that’s a box/button/dropdown is a data point that helps with reporting, while open text fields aren’t as helpful. (example: you can’t run a report on the ticket description alone, but if the issues and actions are accurate we can filter on them all day long).
I personally try to drive this point home any chance I get in our district. I worked for a huge consumer electronics service center for a major retailer for almost a decade before coming to work in a school district - the level of accuracy expected on tickets was important as every mistake had a dollar amount attached to it. While as a school district we aren’t in the business of making money here, we’re definitely in the business of not spending anymore than we have to, so it’s important that we get it right.
@jclark, thank you so much for taking the time to provide that insight. It is really helpful and I think it will help advance the discussion on our team.
I agree, the way the director explained it is simple and effective…I’ll be borrowing that line for sure!
We just completed our first full year of having IIQ, and now we’re noticing some usage patterns that are unhelpful…one of which is an overuse/misuse of the “Other” action. We would like the agents to use the appropriate resolution actions, but I think we need to earn their buy-in by helping them understand the value the reliable data provides.
If I could pick your brain once more - I assume the director of your support and field service teams would discourage the use of the “Other” action, too, and prefer that the agents use predefined “clickable” resolution actions. I think we struggle with the instinct to try to have a predefined resolution action for any common issue, but then there’s a sense of overwhelm among the agents when they’re trying to figure out which action to use, and there’s a long list of actions available for them to choose
For your district, is (or was) this a problem, and how did you approach it?
Thanks again for your time and willingness to share!
@MCizdziel 61720c4 friscoisd I may not have quoted her verbatim - but by all means run with it! It’s a simple way to explain what is and isn’t helpful.
The “Other” action is one other thing I actually meant to touch on. It is right up there with selecting “Other Requests > Issue Not Listed”. There’s not a lot we can do with it from a BI standpoint without reading comments/descriptions.
People like to take the path of least resistance - it’s a habitual problem that you may struggle to break with some folks. Essentially, we try to encourage using “Other” or “Issue has been resolved” actions only when there are no other appropriate options, or it’s an uncommon situation in which we likely won’t need to come back to in reporting, however anytime one of these is used we also encourage adding notes to the action for reference later.
That said, I personally try my hardest to convey to folks that if you’ve triaged/resolved an issue more than once and you’ve used a generic resolution action for it, then we need a specific issue/category and resolution actions for it. A regular reminder that we can tweak these actions or add to the list helps, as there’s always someone in the group/department that will go above and beyond to give you some new things to add.
Your lists will continue to grow, but if you’re like us the majority happened in the first year.
