Staff the Service Desk to Meet Demand

Our Advice

Critical Insight

• IT managers are stuck with the difficult task of determining the right number of service desk resources to meet demand to executives who perceive the service desk to be already effective.
• Service desk managers often don’t have accurate historical data and metrics to justify their headcount, or don’t know where to start to find the data they need.
• They often then fall prey to the common misperception that there is an industry standard ratio of the ideal number of service desk analysts to users. IT leaders who rely on staffing ratios or industry benchmarks fail to take into account the complexity of their own organization and may make inaccurate resourcing decisions.

Impact and Result

• There’s no magic, one-size-fits-all ratio to tell you how many service desk staff you need based on your user base alone. There are many factors that come into play, including the complexity of your environment, user profiles, ticket volume and trends, and maturity and efficiency of your processes.
• If you don’t have historical data to help inform resourcing needs, start tracking ticket volume trends now so that you can forecast future needs.
• If your data suggests you don’t need more staff, look to other ways to maximize your time and resources to deliver more efficient service.