Business audits and financial check ups are an important component of not only corporate life but also law firm operations. Gathering business intelligence about law firm clients, firm profitability, new business oppoortunities and the like is increasingly becoming a legal executive priority. What about as it relates to user support though? Most of the time efficiency starts and stops with your employees and their ability to swiftly and cost effectively serve clients. When is the last time you asked them about the firm's helpdesk (aka service desk) and its ability to minimize technology or workflow-related downtime and get users back up and running and focused on billables? In many scenarios, a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy exists, but in many others it has been 'don't ask, because we don't know'.

Last year, Intelliteach, a legal technology vendor and only dedicated law firm helpdesk outsourcing provider, developed the User Support Guru Guide, a PDF report that takes a close look at legal service desk metrics and key performance indicators that will help law firms, corporate legal, legal technology vendors and anyone in the space operating a helpdesk better manage their operation.

Introducing … the User Support Guru Guide, 2nd Edition 

The data and statistics included in the 2nd edition Guru’s Guide represent over 1.2 million service desk tickets closed across a variety of law firm sizes, locations, and hardware and software configurations during the period of January 1, 2010 – June 30, 2011. The new Guru Guide report includes the following:

Top ticket categories: Over 43% of 1.2 million service desk tickets logged are specific to various versions of Microsoft Office, 22% of those pertain to Microsoft Outlook. 14% of all helpdesk calls are regarding various firm document management systems.

Conversion & upgrade impact on the service/helpdesk: Conversions cause a significant increase in volume and add additional strain to existing resources, systems and service quality. Based on Guru data, ticket volumes increased by 42% during firm-wide upgrades (average tickets per user per month increased from 2 to 2.85 during rollouts) and took an average of 90 days to return to pre-conversion levels.

Live rates: Pre-conversion, the overall live rate is 93%. If staffing is kept the same during conversions, the live rate drops by 25%. On a related note, “average wait time in the queue” jumps from 10 seconds to 81 seconds.

Tickets by origin: How are users reaching out to the service desk? 70% used the phone and 27% sent an email describing their technology issues, however it seems email is far less efficient for both the user and the service desk: 86% of live (phoned-in) service desk tickets are resolved in that first contact whereas only 7% of email tickets can be resolved in one single contact. Data indicates that, on average, tickets created via email have a lifespan 6 times longer than those originated by phone.

Tickets by weekday: Based on 1.2 million analyzed tickets, Tuesday sees the highest call volume (20.52%) and Friday (16.81%) the lowest.

The complete 16-page Guru Guide can be downloaded here and additional service desk specific data and analysis can be accessed on Intelliteach's Guru webpage.