Help Desk Stats, Tidbits and Solutions

While it’s still a work in progress, I’ve recently dumped all our incoming support request stats into excel for a quick-n-dirty 3yr overview.  The result is thus …

My next task is to sift through the requests to determine what things caused spikes in the data.  For instance – end of August through Sept 2009 we did global password changes and Dec 2009 we did 42 staff office relocations – and hence the spikes for those months.

One of our goals in 2009 was to do a better job of recording support requests.  It’s easy to get stopped in the hallway or get a call and fix an issue and never go back and record that info.  If a fix takes more the 5mins it’s worth recording that info.  Many 5min fixes over a year can add up to a LOT of unaccounted for time.  And isn’t that part of why you use a help desk solution?  I was able to hire both IT staff additions at GCC based in part on help desk stats.  Tracking where your time goes is important … probably more than many geeks realize. 

What is our help desk solution?  We’ve been using ServiceDesk Plus from ManageEngine since Feb ‘07.  Prior to that we had used TrackIT … you can read about why we made the switch here. ServiceDesk isn’t perfect, but it’s worked well for us and a number of other churches.  If you’re in the market, I’d definitely put them on your list to investigate. 

NOTE: Recently Kayako has begun offering their flagship help desk products FREE to non-profits … Kayako is a big name in the industry and FREE is well … FREE!  Hopefully in the very near future we can give Kayako a thorough evaluation.

[update: Got a couple people reminding me that SpiceWorks is another good FREE option. Honestly, I've not looked at them in 4+ yrs, but I hear recent product is way better.  I've added it to my "check 'em out" list :-) ]

What do we track in ServiceDesk?  We track all IT and FellowshipOne support requests.  Maintenance requests go through our CMMS (which is free!).

What to look for in a help desk solution?  Check out this list of questions to ask I compiled several years ago.  You need to know your objectives before you start looking for solutions :-)

Comments

[Nick]

we recently switched from Track-It to SpiceWorks (it's free and can be found at www.spiceworks.com) and are very happy with the switch. It meets all the reqs listed on your prev post too!

[Dan Barber]

What about spiceworks?

[Jason Powell]

There are several good free options ... certainly spiceworks fits that bill. I've not actively looked at it in years (4?), but I will. Several people in CITRT IRC channel say good things about it :-)