Service Desk Best Practices - Maximizing First Level Resolution: The Key to Minimizing End-User TCO
Introduction
First Level Resolution (FLR) is a critical cost metric that every service desk should track and trend. In fact, FLR is the key to minimizing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for end-user support. Few organizations understand the concept of defects when it comes to tickets that are needlessly escalated beyond Level 1. Fewer still understand the huge costs associated with these defects. MetricNet's research and benchmarking experience, however, shows that the cost of escalation defects - tickets that should have been resolved at Level 1, but were not - sometimes approaches, or even exceeds the entire operating cost of the Level 1 service desk!
In this article, MetricNet, a pioneer in Service Desk, Desktop Support, and Call Center Benchmarking, provides a working definition of First Level Resolution, illustrates how costly escalation defects can be, and provides four very specific recommendations for maximizing First Level Resolution.
First Level Resolution Defined
In its simplest form, First Level Resolution is a measure of a service desk's ability to resolve tickets at Level 1, without having to escalate the ticket to Level 2 (Desktop Support), Level 3 (internal IT professionals in applications, networking, the data center, or elsewhere), Field Support, or vendor support. First Level Resolution is not to be confused with its close cousin, First Contact Resolution. Let me provide an example to illustrate the difference.
Take the situation where a Level 1 agent accepts a call, logs a ticket, but fails to provide a solution to the caller on the initial contact. But rather than escalate the ticket, the Level 1 agent researches the user's issue, identifies an appropriate solution, calls the user back, delivers the solution, and closes out the ticket. Although the ticket was not resolved on first contact, it was resolved at Level 1. Now let's take the situation where the Level 1 agent accepts a call, logs a ticket, and warm transfers the caller to a Level 3 IT professional who works in the NOC. The Level 3 professional takes over the call, and provides a solution for the ticket before the user hangs up. This ticket was resolved on First Contact, but was not resolved at First Level.
It is also helpful to note that First Contact Resolution is a quality metric. It strongly impacts Customer Satisfaction. First Level Resolution, by contrast, is a cost metric that strongly influences Total Cost of Ownership for end-user support.
First Level Resolution and Total Cost of Ownership
The average fully-loaded cost per ticket at Level 1 in North America is $22. However, when a support ticket is escalated, and resolution moves further away from the Level 1 service desk, the cost of resolution increases. Furthermore, these costs are cumulative. If a ticket is logged at Level 1, and then escalated to Level 2 (Desktop Support) for resolution, the average cost of resolution is not just $62 (the North American average cost of resolution for desktop support), but $62 plus $22, for a total of $84.
The cost of resolution increases at each successive level for a number of reasons, including longer handle times, and higher salaries beyond Level 1. So, for example, a ticket that might be resolved in 10 minutes at Level 1, could take 30 minutes or more to resolve at Level 2 because it requires a visit to the site of the user. The same ticket, when resolved at Level 3, involves personnel that are more highly paid than Level 1 agents, and who are (frankly) slower to resolve tickets because they are not full-time support professionals. The clear implication is that any ticket that can be resolved at Level 1, should be resolved at Level 1.
Maximizing FLR
Hopefully you are now convinced that FLR is an important metric, and that every effort should be made to maximize this number. So how do we go about doing that? There are four specific recommendations that can be implemented to increase, and ultimately maximize FLR:
- Ensure that agents at Level 1 are adequately trained to maximize FLR
- Adopt and implement a remote diagnostic tool at Level 1
- Develop and maintain a knowledgebase at the Level 1 service desk
- Establish a performance goal for FLR
First Level Resolution is largely about empowerment. It is about equipping your Level 1 agents with the tools and training necessary to achieve a high First Level Resolution Rate. Perhaps it is cliché to state that more and better agent training can lead to higher Level 1 resolution rates, but the evidence to support this assertion is irrefutable.
The second tried and tested method for improving First Level Resolution is through the adoption of a good remote diagnostic tool that enables Level 1 agents to remotely proxy into a user's desktop or laptop computer to conduct diagnostics and troubleshooting. Until recently, these tools were quite expensive, which made it difficult for smaller service desks to justify the investment. However, the cost of these tools has come down substantially, and there is at least one service that requires no up-front investment in infrastructure, yet delivers all the advantages of a remote diagnostic tool by hosting the application remotely and delivering the functionality as a service (SaaS).
Effective Knowledge Management can also have a dramatic impact on an agent's ability to resolve tickets at Level 1. A good knowledge base is, unfortunately, one of those tools that can be quite costly to implement and maintain. For smaller service desks (< 10 agents), it is unrealistic to have anything but a rudimentary knowledge management tool. For these desks, the investment is simply too high to justify a full-blown knowledge management discipline. There are, however, knowledge packs, and other off-the-shelf knowledge management products that can and should be implemented, even by smaller desks.
For larger desks that can justify the time and expense required to maintain a comprehensive knowledgebase, the benefits are numerous. In addition to higher First Level Resolution Rates, a comprehensive knowledgebase will yield higher First Contact Resolution Rates, lower handle times, and higher customer satisfaction.
Finally, and somewhat remarkably, simply establishing a goal for FLR has the effect of increasing this metric. By holding individual agents, and the service desk overall, accountable for achieving a performance target for FLR, this number will improve over time!
Conclusion
First Level Resolution is a critically important metric for any service desk to track and trend. It is a proxy for end-user Total Cost of Ownership. Effective management of this metric can reduce TCO by hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars per year.
The path to maximizing FLR is fairly straightforward. Increased agent training hours, the adoption of remote diagnostic and knowledge management tools, and establishing a target for FLR, all have the effect of increasing this metric. A World-Class Performance target for First Level Resolution is 95% or better. What this means is that fewer than 5% of all tickets escalated beyond Level 1 for resolution could have been resolved at Level 1.
Due to space limitations, this article barely begins to scratch the surface on the topic of First Level Resolution in the Service Desk. For a more detailed treatment of this topic, the complete whitepaper can be downloaded from MetricNet's website.
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