Quality Management in Service Desk

How Does Service Desk Managers Define and Measure Quality

Maiju Hjelt

and Nestori Syynimaa

1,2,3

Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

Gerenios Ltd, Tampere, Finland

Sovelto Plc, Helsinki, Finland

Keywords: IT Service Management, ITIL, Quality, Quality Management, Measurement.

Abstract: Many public and private sector organisations are depending on IT services provided by external service

providers. The quality of the service affects the customer satisfaction and consequently the customer

behaviour. The concept of quality has many meanings in the literature. In this paper, we study how service

desk managers perceive the concept of quality and how to manage it in an organisation which has adopted

ITIL. Our findings indicate that the quality is seen only in terms of how the agreed service levels are achieved.

This view excludes the quality of the processes used to deliver IT services. Quality measurements are

reflecting the perception of the concept of quality.

1 INTRODUCTION

Public and private sector organisations are currently

depending more and more on information technology

(IT). Currently, many IT needs are delivered and

consumed in the form of services. Some of these IT

services are acquired from external suppliers for

various reasons, such as the lack of required IT-skills

and knowledge, low-risk attitude, and costs

associated with the ownership of IT service.

The traditional way to satisfy IT needs is to build

or develop IT systems in-house. Building IT systems

have three phases: design, implementation, and use.

From the customer point-of-view, the use phase is the

most important, as that is the phase where the

customer actually receives value from IT. With IT

services the process is similar, but if a customer

subscribes to an existing service, the design and

implementation phases are skipped. Also, if

customers are not satisfied with the IT service, they

can easily change the supplier.

For service providers, it is crucial to keep their

customers satisfied. Service Desk is in a key position

as it is the single-point-of-contact for the customers.

Delivering a high-quality service has been found to

be crucial to customer satisfaction. Thus the Service

Desk ought to provide high-quality services. But what

does the high-quality mean in Service Desk?

The purpose of this paper is to study how service desk

managers perceive the concept of quality and how

they manage it in an organisation which has adopted

ITIL.

2 IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT

IT service can be defined as a means of delivering

value to customers to help them to achieve their goals

without ownership of IT costs and risks (Axelos,

2011). IT service management (ITSM) is a set of

capabilities for providing value to customers in the

form of IT services (Axelos, 2011). The most widely

adopted framework used to implement ITSM is

Information Technology Infrastructure Library

(ITIL).

ITIL has five lifecycle phases; Service Strategy,

Service Design, Service Transition, Service

Operation, and Continual Service Improvement

(Axelos, 2011). From a customer point-of-view, the

most important lifecycle phase is the Service

Operation (SO), as in that phase customer uses the

service and consequently, receives the value.

ITSM terminology has been found to be

confusing. For instance, according to a study

conducted in the US among 300 organisation, 40% of

organisations were not familiar with basic ITSM

314

Hjelt, M. and Syynimaa, N.

Quality Management in Service Desk.

DOI: 10.5220/0006779903140319

In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2018), pages 314-319

ISBN: 978-989-758-298-1

terminology (Winniford et al., 2009). Due to the de

facto status of ITIL, many organisations have adopted

it. However, adopting ITIL per se does not guarantee

success. This is a common misunderstanding and has

led to situations where results are uncertain and

expectations are unfulfilled (Hochstein et al., 2005).

It this paper we are focusing on a small part of

ITIL, namely Service Desk. Therefore we will next

introduce a key terminology related to Service Desk.

2.1 Service Desk

Service Desk is one of the functions of Service

Operation phase of the service lifecycle. Service Desk

is “the single point of contact between the service

provider and the users” (Axelos, 2011, p. 53).

Typically Service Desk handles incidents and service

request and communicates with the users (Axelos,

2011). Incidents are unplanned interruptions to IT

services or a reduction of the quality of the IT service

(Axelos, 2011). Therefore, the Service Desk is crucial

to the customer satisfaction.

Service Desk is managed by the Service Desk

Manager (SDM). SDM is responsible for (Axelos,

2017):

 Managing daily operation of the service desk

 Monitoring response times and user

satisfaction levels

 Issuing technical bulletins to inform

customers of problems and instructing them in

taking necessary action

 Consulting with experts to ensure integrated

actions plans

 Monitoring issue resolution and liaise with

stakeholders

 Improving techniques and practices for

managing client queries, troubleshooting and

problem resolution and prioritization.

2.2 Service Level Agreement

Service Level Agreement (SLA) is an agreement

between an IT service provider and customer. It

should be noted that ITIL makes a distinction

between a user and a customer: the customer is the

party which pays for the service, and the user is the

one who consumes the service. The SLA contains at

least the description of the service, service level

targets, and responsibilities (Axelos, 2011).

SLA for Service Desk typically contains service

targets such as response time, resolution time, and

customer satisfaction.

3 QUALITY MANAGEMENT

The purpose of quality management is to increase

organisation’s effectiveness and utilisation of its

resources (Porter and Parker, 1993). From service

provider point of view, service quality can create

favourable or unfavourable behavioural intentions to

customers (Zeithaml et al., 1996). If a service

provider wants to improve the quality of their

services, the customers are likely not able to provide

means how to do that (Lepmets et al., 2012). Thus,

the service provider can only rely on data they can

gather.

The concept of quality is not clear, and it has

many definitions in the literature. Reeves and Bednar

(1994) identified four different definitions of quality;

excellence, value, conformance to specifications, and

meeting or exceeding expectations. In the following,

we will walk through each of them individually and

discuss how to measure quality.

3.1 Definition of Quality

Quality as excellence refers to the view that quality is

something more than commonly defined or accepted

standard (Reeves and Bednar, 1994). In other words,

the quality of the product is defined by its relation to

some standard or ordinal product. Hence the quality

is relative and changing over time as the standards

evolve.

Quality as value refers to the view that quality is

defined by its value to the customer (Reeves and

Bednar, 1994). As such, quality can mean different

things to different people. Hence the quality is

relative and defined individually by each customer.

Quality as conformance to specifications refers to

the view that quality is defined by product’s ability to

meet its specification (Reeves and Bednar, 1994). The

logic behind this view is that products should be inter-

exchangeable. Thus, if they are not produced as

specified, they are not quality products. From the

design point-of-view, all customer requirements need

to be translated to physical, quantitatively measurable

characteristics (Reeves and Bednar, 1994). Hence, in

this view, the quality is objective.

Quality as meeting or exceeding expectations

refers to the view where quality is defined by how the

product meets or exceeds customers’ expectations

(Feigenbaum, 1983; Reeves and Bednar, 1994). In

other words, the “quality is whatever the customers

say it is, and the quality of a particular product or

service is whatever the customer perceives it to be”

(p. 111, Buzzell and Gale, 1987). Hence, the same

way as the quality as value, quality is subjective.

Quality Management in Service Desk

315

3.2 Measuring Quality

A famous quote, often wrongly attributed to W.E.

Deming, says that “If you can’t measure it, you can’t

manage it”. This suggests that to manage quality one

must measure it.

The easiest way to measure product quality is

quality as conformance to specifications and most

difficult quality as excellence (Reeves and Bednar,

1994). Service quality is even more difficult to

measure because service quality is defined as meeting

or exceeding expectations, and the measurement

includes both processes and service outcomes

(Parasuraman et al., 1985).

In ITIL, Critical Success Factors (CSFs) are

defined for each IT service. CSF is something that

must be achieved for an IT service to be successful

(Axelos, 2016). Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is

used to measure whether the CSF is achieved or not

(Axelos, 2011). Although KPIs can be used to

demonstrate achievement of CSF, it does not prove it

(Axelos, 2016). Each KPI should be Specific,

Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound

(commonly referred as SMART). KPIs should be

defined carefully so that they will guide to intended

results. When people are measured “they will always

do whatever they can to ensure that the figures look

good.” (Axelos, 2016, p. 54). Examples of CSFs and

associated KPIs are presented in

Table 1.

Table 1: Examples of CSFs and associated KPIs (Axelos,

2016, p. 53).

CSF Associated KPIs

The new IT service

enables sales people

to spend more time

with clients

 Increase in the number

of customer visits per

day per sales person

 Sales people

satisfaction survey

score increased by 0.5

within 6 months

Failures of the IT

service do not have a

significant impact on

the customer’s

business process



Maximum of four

service outages in any

year

 Maximum downtime

of 30 minutes for any

service outa

The company website

is protected from

attacks by hackers



Critical patches are

installed on all web

servers within 12 hours

of notification

 Website penetration

testing happens every

6 months

4 METHOD

The purpose of this paper is to study how SDMs

perceive the concept of quality and how they manage

it. To achieve this purpose, we selected a qualitative

research approach. We interviewed eight SDMs of a

multinational IT service provider during the May and

June 2017. The service provider has 14000

employees in 20 countries, and its annual turnover is

1.5 billion euros. Interviewed SDMs were working in

the same country organisation of the service provider.

The interviews were conducted using semi-

structured interview script build under five themes.

The themes and questions are presented in

Table 2.

Table 2: Interview script.

Question

Definition of quality

 How is

quality shown on IT-service

organization´s performance?

 What kind is a quality service desk in IT-

service or

anization?

Critical success factors of quality management

 What are the critical success factors of

service desk quality management?

 How do you manage service desk in order

to achieve critical success factors?

Quality measurement

 Which measurements (quality indicators)

are used to measure the service desk

quality?

 What kind of methods/processes are used

to maintain and improve the quality of a

service desk?

Service desk manager core competencies

 What skills are needed for service desk

manager?

 What methods/processes are used in

service desk qualit

leadership?

Quality management challenges

 What are the challenges of service desk

quality management?

 What methods/processes are used, if

service desk doesn´t fill the defined

qualit

criteria or service level a

reement?

All interviews were recorded and transcribed for the

analysis. Answers were analysed per theme by

identifying categories.

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5 RESULTS

In this section, the results are presented by themes

used in interviews.

5.1 Definition of Quality

Almost all respondents defined the quality in the

same way; quality equals the achievement of the

agreed service levels defined in SLA.

“For me the definition of the quality is also to be

able to deliver the expected or contracted service

level within the agreed costs.”

The logic behind this is that if the SLA is

achieved, customers are satisfied. One respondent

stated that quality refers to the consistency of the

service.

“So basically, quality for me is a service that is

provided in a unified way. So if the customer contacts

us, and he or she can talk to any of our customer

service specialists, they know that they will get

similar service every time.”

As a summary, respondents see the service quality

as the outcome of the service. Thus they do not see

that the process used to deliver the service, such as

request fulfilment or incident management,

contributes to quality.

5.2 Critical Success Factors of Quality

Management

The critical success factors of quality management

are clearly linked to how the SDMs perceive the

quality. Quality management is focused on managing

the service outcomes through resources.

“First you have to have ability to actually to

receive the customers issue, which means that you

have to have resources to answer to the phone or

answer to the tickets coming in. That´s the first primal

step. If you don’t have recourses, then you are not

answering to customers’ requests.”

Besides the number of the resources, also their

skills need to be managed.

“I would say it is also a critical factor that you

have personal mentoring. So every agent is different

and needs different type of coaching.”

As a summary, respondents see that critical

success factors are those that help them to achieve the

SLA. If compared to CSF presented in

Table 1, these

CSFs are very different in their nature. This suggests

that the concept of CSF is not clearly understood by

SDMs.

5.3 Quality Measurement

Quality measurements are linked to the definition of

quality.

“We have to compensate the customer, so it is also

shown on economic figures, as quality costs. But I

think it is important to understand that the definition

of the quality needs to be what we are also

measuring.”

Because quality is seen as an achievement of the

SLA, the measurements are focused on SLA.

“Resolution and response SLA and user

feedback, that’s are our main tools at the moment. Of

course, personal feedback and observation from my

side, escalation from customer etc. Escalations and

complains from customer, because normally

customers don’t tell us when we do the good job, they

mostly tell us when we are doing bad job.”

SLA can be seen as a collection of KPIs which can

be used to demonstrate achievement of CSF. As

mentioned earlier, KPIs should be developed

carefully so that they will guide to the right direction.

Some respondents did not see SLA as a good way of

measurement.

“SLAs are a good tool to view overall, but it’s not

very specific, it’s not very detailed and has nothing to

do with what kind of service you deliver to customer.”

Although the measurements are performed and

results collected, some respondents felt that they are

not used for managing the quality.

“…I can see quality follow up but I don’t see

proactive quality work to increase the quality more

than just on the management level to be on the back

off on the agents and motivate them and remind them

etc. I don’t see any processes where we are actually

taking quality issues or quality problems and putting

them into corrective actions and applying new

processes, I don’t see that loop.”

As a summary, quality measurement is focused

only on following the SLA achievement. This

suggests that quality of the processes is ignored.

5.4 Service Desk Manager Core

Competencies

The respondents see that their core competencies are

mainly soft-skills related to managing people.

“First of all, I think you need to be people’s

person. You need to be able trust people that they are

actually doing their job and without staring over their

shoulders seven hours a day because that wouldn’t

create very work friendly environment.”

Another core competency mentioned by many

respondents was the knowledge of the used tools.

Quality Management in Service Desk

317

“I think second is the people management part, to

have the possibility and ability to be interested the

people which are individuals. And of course,

understanding of the tools, tools and reporting are

available.”

As a summary, core competencies are related to

managing people and tools used to deliver the

services. When compared to the SDM’s

responsibilities presented earlier, the competencies

are limited. For instance, the respondents did not see

the monitoring of response times or user satisfaction

as their core competency.

5.5 Quality Management Challenges

Quality management challenges are reflecting how

the SDMs see the quality. Therefore, the challenges

are seen mainly as the question about capacity and

tools.

“Finding enough people to deliver service,

resources. That it absolutely a challenge. Then you

have internal conflicts.”

“Tools we have, some are really good, some are

really crappy. If the tool is crappy, it’s a challenge,

because it makes it harder to work.”

Some respondents recognised that although the

measurements are collected, there is no official

quality management to handle the improvements.

“There is a culture and processes for quality

follow up but not for quality work or quality

improvements. Where is our quality manager? Who

is driving processes?”

“The biggest challenge is that lack of centralized

quality management. We don’t have dedicated person

for quality management at all in our company. And

we only have one person who is a trainer, who is

doing instructor trainings and that’s it. So we train

our people first for two weeks, and after that service

managers are on their own.”

As a summary, SDMs see that quality

management challenges are related issues preventing

them from achieving SLAs. The organisation is

lacking the official quality management process.

6 DISCUSSION

6.1 Conclusions

In this paper, we studied how service desk managers

(SDMs) see the concept of quality, and how they

manage it. As the results revealed, SDMs see the

quality in terms of how the service outcomes relate to

the agreed service levels. This limited view to quality

excludes the processes used to deliver IT services.

Reasons for this were not discovered during the

research. One candidate could be how the

organisation understands ITIL. Is it misunderstood or

only partially adopted? This may have an effect on

the quality and consequently to customer behaviour.

The limited perception of quality also drives the

measurements to focus plainly on service levels. As

mentioned earlier, people have a tendency to focus on

to those things they are measured of. This takes the

focus away from KSFs and may lead to sub-

optimisation as the quality improvements focus only

on capacity and people skills. Although this may

improve the outcomes of the service, the consistency

of services may be lacking.

6.2 Limitations

This study is conducted by interviewing SDMs of one

a country organisation of a multinational service

provider. As such, the results may not be

generalizable to other contexts. However, as the

organisation is one of the leading organisations in the

industry, its practices can be assumed to represent the

status of the industry.

6.3 Directions for Future Research

As the data for this study is collected from a single

organisation, a survey for multiple IT service

providers could help to draw a better picture of

quality management in service desks.

Another interesting research area would be to

study which kind of organisational culture

strengthens the quality management, or are they

related at all.

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