Setting up service desk reports
Compare requests created v resolved
Knowing how many requests come in and how many your team can resolve helps plan and staff your service desk. This is the most common way to measure any service team's health.
Resolution trends show underlying issues in your organization. These trends help answer questions like:
- Was this week's storm of requests a one-time occurrence or the start of a trend?
- Do we support a service that causes more issues than its worth?
- Is our service desk scaling with our organization or do we need to staff up?
Since this report is the quickest way to check the health of your service desk, we include it by default.
View default reports
Here are the other reports we include by default:
Report name | Details |
|---|---|
| Workload | Shows the number of requests assigned to your agents |
| SLA goals | Shows how your team is tracking towards each of the SLA goals you have set |
| Satisfaction | Shows the average customer satisfaction rating for your team |
| Article usage | Shows the number of times your customers viewed knowledge base articles |
| Article effectiveness | Compares knowledge base article viewers with request creators |
| Created v resolved | Compares the number of requests created and resolved over time |
| Time to resolution | Compares the length of time taken to resolve requests of type or priority |
| SLA met v breached | Compares the number of requests that have met or breached an SLA goal |
| Resolution by component | Compares the resolution times for each component (f or basic service desks only) |
| Incidents reports by priority | Compares the priority of incidents your customers have reported (f or IT service desks only) |
Besides the above, you can dig deeper. Why does your performance look like this? Create custom reports for your service desk and explore this question.
Create custom reports
Series make up reports. A series is a set of data points that form a line. For example, the amount of incoming requests on day 1, 2, 3, and so on, for the past week.
Series on their own can point out trends; but, they are more powerful when plotted together. Comparing series can hint at the underlying causes for your service desk's trends.
Create a few custom reports and you'll start to see the value of reporting on your service desk.
To create a custom report:
- Select New report.
- Choose a report name that you and your team will understand. For example, 'High priority issues'.
- Select Add a series.
- Fill in the following details: Series, Label, Color, and, optionally a JQL filter.
- Select Add and save your report.
- Add more series to compare values and create meaning.
Check out the recommended reports below to explore how reports benefit your organization. See examples of what series and their associated JQL filters may be useful to you. Read more about JQL.
See if your customers are satisfied
One of the best measure of your service desk's performance is your customers' happiness. JIRA Service Desk reports on customer satisfaction straight out of the box. But, you may find more use digging into the details. First, be sure to collect customer satisfaction information on your requests. Learn how to enable customer satisfaction feedback.
Use the average rating customer satisfaction series to see how your team performs. For example, you can use issue types to investigate sections of your organization. To see trends in your customer satisfaction, create a report with the following series:
- Series = Average rating
- Label = Bugs
- Filter by (advanced) = issuetype = "Bug"
- Series = Average rating
- Label = Feedback
- Filter by (advanced) = issuetype = "Feedback"
- Series = Average rating
- Label = Support
- Filter by (advanced) = issuetype = "Support"
- Series = Average rating
- Label = New feature
- Filter by (advanced) = issuetype = "New feature"
You might find some interesting results. For example, your response to feature requests may please your customers. But, they aren't happy when they raise requests about billing. Select a data point in the report. You might find these requests feature words like "payment" or "credit card".
Details like these can expose your customers' pain points. Maybe your organization needs an easier form for billing. Maybe you can be clearer about how much your products or services cost or which credit cards you accept.
Track requests created per channel
You may consider monitoring how your customers submit requests. Are you getting more requests from email than from your customer portal? Create a report with the following series helps answer this question:
- Series = Created
- Label = Email
Filter by (advanced) = request-channel-type = email
- Series = Created
- Label = Portal
Filter by (advanced) = request-channel-type = portal
- Series = Created
- Label = Agent on behalf of customer
Filter by (advanced) = request-channel-type = jira
The last series catches issues agents raise outside the portal.
How your customers request help might surprise you. Maybe your agents raise more and more requests on your customers' behalf. If so, you might find ways to direct customers to your portal or email channels. That way your agents have more time to resolve issues, rather than raise them.
View your average resolution time by issue type
JIRA Service Desk tracks requests by time. The time it takes your team to resolve a type of issue can show trends in your teams' efficiency. If you work with a basic service desk, create a report with these series and view the trends that emerge:
- Series = Time to resolution (Avg.)
- Label = General requests
- Filter by (advanced) = "Customer Request Type" = "General requests"
- Series = Time to resolution (Avg.)
- Label = IT help
- Filter by (advanced) = "Customer Request Type" = "IT help"
- Series = Time to resolution (Avg.)
- Label = Requests with approvals
- Filter by (advanced) = "Customer Request Type" = "Request with approval"
You may find that IT help requests take more of your team s' time than general requests. Take into account how many IT help requests come through your service desk. With this info, you can better divide your agents – and their time – to make your customers happier.
Suss out regional trends
If you service more than one location, you can cut out noise by viewing your regional performance. Start by adding labels to requests, identifying and helping to sort them into regions.
For example, suppose your organization operates in New York and Rio de Janeiro. Your service desk agents add a location label to requests from each region. Create a report to see trends in how many requests come from each location using the following series:
- Series = Created
- Label = New York
Filter by (advanced) = labels = ny
- Series = Created
- Label = Rio
Filter by (advanced) = labels = rio
If you see an increasing trend in one location or another, you may have to shuffle around some resources. Maybe you've opened a new location without a dedicated service desk team member. The new location finds it difficult to ramp up operations. Perhaps you need to send someone to provide training. Or, maybe there's a language barrier with your knowledge base. You may consider providing support articles in more than one language.
You might see the opposite – a decline in requests coming from one location. Are people going rouge and abandoning your service desk? Do you need to make it clear that the service desk operates for all locations?