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I have a question and I hope it fits under this topic. I am a new IT manager who oversees Help Desk, Desktop Support and Server Support teams. I am trying to identify some ways to increase visibility and highlight my teams (and individuals) efforts and to enhance their role within the organization. The audience would be primarily management and executive level personnel.

We currently have a real-time dashboard that displays very high level data on things such as system availability, number of high priority incidents in queue, total number of open and resolved calls and how they align with our SLA’s.

These are all well and good, but as I said is very high level and doesn’t really allow us to highlight our achievements. So I am thinking of doing a weekly or bi-weekly summary either in a report or newsletter format. This would allow us to update or highlight projects, give detailed team statistics (first call resolution, call abandonment rate or speed to answer) and acknowledge individual or team achievements.

Has anyone done anything like this? Anyone have any ideas, suggestions or opinions? I am open to all feedback!

jhack's picture

What is important to the executives and managers to whom you're targeting this PR campaign? More specifically, what's important to your boss?

Their metrics should be yours.

Report on what what makes them successful, rather than on your metrics.

Internally to your team, you can focus on the accomplishments that led to the success.

John

BJ_Marshall's picture
Licensee BadgeTraining Badge

If you want to find out what's important to your executives and managers and what metrics they're using to judge you, then ask them. Check out the Jumpstarting Internal Relations ([url=http://www.manager-tools.com/2006/11/jump-starting-internal-customer-rel... 1[/url] and [url=http://www.manager-tools.com/2006/12/jump-starting-internal-customer-rel... 2[/url]) podcasts to find out how.

BJ

lazerus's picture

I agree with jhack and wmarsha1. Ask and you shall receive. It is possible (likely) that your direct boss will want you to measure something you hadn't thought of. When you deliver the results, again, the report must be calibrated to the boss' communication style, like DiSC. The reward you will receive for going to all this effort is that you will have a bullet point on your resume.

kmhebert77's picture

Thank you all for your replies, definitely food for thought.

My boss called me this morning and we began discussing this idea a little bit more in-depth. We talked about metrics and we are clear on what we want to report there. Again this morning he stressed he wanted much more than statistics because we always do well there, he wants us to "advertise!".

We are an outsourced service and he feels our client might very well be able to move our services in house and still meet the numbers. He would like us to show where we go above and beyond the numbers and highlight our personal commitment to this client. Does that make sense?

AManagerTool's picture

It makes absolute sense to me!

Your customers care about their problems. Your managers care about different things. Talk to each of them in language they understand.

This list is not comprehensive but here are a few things that my customers care about:
1. How long my machine will be broke - Downtime
2. How long until you can fix it - Turn Around Time
3. How much will it cost - Monthly cost savings estimates
4. How long till I get to speak to a human being - Hold Time, Menu Navigation Times
6. Is the person you send to fix my machine smart enough to fix my problem - Customer Service Survey
7. Is the person you send to fix my machine nice - Customer Service Survey

This list is not comprehensive but here are the things that my managers care about:
1. Are they getting complaints or praise from your customers - Net Promoter Score (NPS) - They could care less about downtime etc as long as nobody tears their heads off. I have found that they will stress the system by cutting budgets and staff until the chickens begin to squawk! NPS is the measure of how much the chickens are squawking!
2. Can you do the same work with less people - # of Tickets Resolved / # of Staff with some scaling factors for Tier 1, 2 etc
3. Can you do the same work with less money - # of Tickets Resolved / Expense

jhack's picture

How about emails or letters from customers lauding your service?

One excerpt with each status report would do wonders.

John

kmhebert77's picture

Those are fantastic ideas!! Thank you both.

aniinl's picture

Hi kmhebert77,

my boss used to request this at the end of each week in my previous job. It was initially all about numbers and product shipping performance etc.
But since my boss was travelling more than she was actually in the office, I started to include other things as well, because I wanted her to be updated on the performance or the highlights of individuals in the team as well. Plus, I wanted to make it a bit more personal, rather than just statistics, so I would mention any outstanding achievements or highlights of individuals of the team, or if we had a particular challenge that week and who solved it, etc. This way my boss was just as informed as if she would have been in the office that week.
I would cc the whole team on it, so they could all see the summary of the week and the recognitions.
Later, I also made a rota and let the team take turns in sending this update to our boss, to grow them and increase their visibility too.

Anja

lazerus's picture

[quote="aniinl"]Later, I also made a rota and let the team take turns in sending this update to our boss, to grow them and increase their visibility too. [/quote]
:?: Sorry- what is a "rota"? :?:

hyubdoo23's picture

A rota is a rotating schedule, so in this case people would take turns sending the info to the boss.

thaGUma's picture

Jhack is spot on as usual. Email an update. Summarise the dashboard and pick out those worthy of praise.
Properly worded updates are the godsend to busy managers.

bteachman's picture
Training Badge

[quote="AManagerTool"]It makes absolute sense to me!

Your customers care about their problems. Your managers care about different things. Talk to each of them in language they understand.

This list is not comprehensive but here are a few things that my customers care about:
1. How long my machine will be broke - Downtime
2. How long until you can fix it - Turn Around Time
3. How much will it cost - Monthly cost savings estimates
4. How long till I get to speak to a human being - Hold Time, Menu Navigation Times
6. Is the person you send to fix my machine smart enough to fix my problem - Customer Service Survey
7. Is the person you send to fix my machine nice - Customer Service Survey

This list is not comprehensive but here are the things that my managers care about:
1. Are they getting complaints or praise from your customers - Net Promoter Score (NPS) - They could care less about downtime etc as long as nobody tears their heads off. I have found that they will stress the system by cutting budgets and staff until the chickens begin to squawk! NPS is the measure of how much the chickens are squawking!
2. Can you do the same work with less people - # of Tickets Resolved / # of Staff with some scaling factors for Tier 1, 2 etc
3. Can you do the same work with less money - # of Tickets Resolved / Expense[/quote]

This seams so obvious looking back, but all the info i send out was always so general and info that was related to the department as a whole. Where i should have been doing it doing it based on our clients. I don't think one client wants to know we completed 20 work orders for them in a year and 20 a week for another.

Thanks for helping me see the light.

IanPratt's picture

The first thing I would like to say is that I have great respect for you, if I read this right you are a manager who wants to promote the good work of your people within the business, this is great – many managers just want to talk about themselves.

I can tell you what I do, I just brag about the people who are doing good stuff, sometimes I tell the CEO about someone who has gone above and beyond and ask the CEO to ring them personally to discuss the achievement. I also use a monthly news letter and get all managers to highlight achievements within their team that are aligned to our strategy.

Initially I was the only one bragging; now all of the managers are raving about their good people.

Everyone loves a good news story