Are you capturing the correct metrics?
Defining the correct metrics is critical. The service desk sees all of the issues on the front line— all incidents that are submitted to your service desk—hardware, software, or any other area within your technical environment. This puts Health IT leaders in a unique position to gain insight regarding the health of your environment.
The metrics you focus on should be indicators of the following:
Defining what you truly need your metrics to indicate, and then using the proper metrics can help drive continuous process improvement, find cost savings, and resolve issues proactively so clinicians can focus on patient care.
The Tale of Two FCRs
Experience shows that First Contact Resolution (FCR) is the primary metric for productivity, However, it is important to understand the tale of two FCRs: Actual versus In-Scope FCR.
Actual FCR is calculated with a simple calculation of Total Contacts Resolved/Total Contacts Received. It is a true indicator of how many incidents your service desk is resolving on the first contact at the first level. Actual FCR provides Healthcare IT Management with an understanding of the ROI they are getting on a service desk solution. Management can see the actual number of incidents handled at level 1 without engaging a more expensive resource, which demonstrates cost savings within the organization as well as higher productivity on optimization/enhancement projects that transform the business versus “keep-the-lights-on” work.
In-scope FCR measures the resolution rate of incidents that are deemed resolvable through an agreement between the service provider and the healthcare entity. For example, let’s say there’s a broken phone. This incident will require a second-level user to either replace that phone or troubleshoot, which would be factored completely out of your in-scope metric. However, in-scope resolution indicates how efficiently your service desk is operating given the knowledge and access provided to resolve issues.
Both FCRs are useful in finding gaps for process improvement. A common example of in-scope FCR incidents is active directory password resets. Taking a look at measuring the resolution on just these expected tickets, the result would typically indicate a high resolution. If you’re only measuring all tickets and factoring in all different issues, including the ones that the service desk cannot resolve, you will be unable to see the gaps between the two and determine opportunities for improvement.
Actual and in-scope metrics together provide meaningful data to drive actionable items that improve the service desk experience attained by your IT organization. Additionally, each metric can be a check on the other to ensure your organization’s needs are met. It is recommended that both metrics are used in contracting. Based on our years of service experience, 60% actual FCR and 90% inscope FCR are good starting points for contract discussions.