Literally the best service desk in the world!

Service desk activity in numbers.

Two years since we launched the KLS Hub service desk, this is our latest piece of feedback from a satisfied user. And it makes us very happy. So we thought it was a good time to share a bit more about what we do, and how we can help.

The service desk has been up and running since 11 October 2021. In that time we’ve:

• received 7500 tickets, from 2988 different people
• recruited a dedicated “first line” service desk team to manage and triage tickets
• established processes and escalation procedures to get issues resolved
• created a suite of more than 200 FAQs/knowledge articles
• extended our remit to include OpenAthens queries and regional LMS queries
• opened our service to end users who don’t have a dedicated knowledge and library service so they can get help with OpenAthens queries and trouble-shoot resources
• expanded our distributed team of “second line” enquiry handlers

This is the monthly breakdown of numbers of tickets since we launched:

Some of these peaks and troughs are seasonal, but some represent milestones in our short history:

• November 21: requests to modify individual Hub instances as we prepared for the full launch, plus RefWorks requests while we sorted out OpenAthens access
• July 22: queries for the national OpenAthens admin team started to be routed via the service desk
• August 2022: East of England, Kent, Surrey & Sussex, and London LMS queries added
• January 2023: South West regional OpenAthens queries added
• April 2023: all regional OpenAthens queries routed via the service desk
• May 2023: SWIMS LMS queries added
• June 2023: HELM LMS queries added

So the increase in numbers of tickets isn’t because there are more issues with services, but because we’ve increased the number of services we support.

OpenAthens is the part of the infrastructure that we get most queries about. Most of these tickets come from users, and are requests to re-set passwords, renew accounts, or queries about how to register for an account. Some of these queries are answered by our first line team, but the majority are assigned to one of the regional or national administrators.

The “Hub – user interface” tickets include all requests to modify the way a Hub instance looks (name changes, lists of resources, widget buttons, etc).

75% of the RefWorks tickets are requests for accounts for non-library staff.

Key Performance Indicators

We have some targets set around our first response and resolution times.The times (in business hours) vary according to the urgency of the issue:

Urgency of issue	First response time	Resolution time
Urgent	Within 1 hour	Within 7 hours
High	Within 2 hours	Within 14 hours
Medium	Within 3 hours	Within 21 hours
Low	Within 5 hours	Within 35 hours

Our target is that 95% of all tickets will be responded to and resolved within these times.

The reality is that our first line team respond to 99.5% of all tickets within the stated times. Our resolution rate hasn’t always been quite so high, but is improving.

So of all the tickets resolved within September 2023, 96% of them were resolved within the targets. And the average resolution time was 4 hours and 59 minutes.

Feedback

When a ticket is resolved, an email is automatically sent out, which has a link to a feedback survey. Very few people click on these links, but when they do, the majority are positive in their feedback, commenting on the prompt and efficient service and excellent response times, and appreciating being kept informed of progress.

As a team, we really appreciate the lovely feedback, but also try to make improvements to our service when the response is less positive – so have improved our FAQs as a result of feedback, or have gone back to people to give more explanation about a situation or why a ticket has been closed.

We really want to provide the best service possible, so encourage you to click the feedback link in the emails you receive and let us know how we’re doing, and where you think we could improve our processes.

In summary, the service desk is now the best place to raise queries about any of the nationally provided systems and content. That includes OpenAthens admin queries, as your regional OA admins are all answering queries via the service desk. If in doubt about where to ask, come to us!

Email: [email protected]

Or login to the service support portal (where you can find all our FAQs as well as raise service requests or report issues): https://support.library.hee.nhs.uk/