Managing the ADM Service Desk
Today, I would like to share some insights into the day-to-day operations of ADM Computing’s service desk. As someone who has been with ADM for almost 12 years, I have watched the team grow and evolve, while the IT industry continues to develop at a rapid pace. So, how does ADM stay ahead of the game and maintain a high level of customer service?
Our Overall Ticket Feedback
Before we delve deeper into the topic, it’s worth mentioning a few accreditations and regulations that have shaped ADM’s approach to business. While I won’t go into all of them, I would like to highlight the importance of ISO9001 / ISO27001, Cyber Essentials, and GDPR. These accreditations and standards have helped us establish a strong foundation and develop policies and procedures that are documented, standardised, and continually improved through enforced change management.
Day to day running
Let’s talk about the day-to-day operations of ADM’s service desk. Our attendance system is the foundation of everything we do, and our dedicated bookings team ensures that all our engineers’ calendars are up-to-date. This helps them know what tasks they have upcoming and where they need to be. Management, leadership, and other engineers can see what everyone is booked for, whether it’s answering phones and resolving tickets on the service desk or working on-site for a client’s project or scheduled visit. Without an accurate and intuitive attendance system, we would struggle to organise our team of over 55 engineers.
Once everything is in line with attendance, we are ready for the week ahead. With staff now working in a hybrid model, our first task each day is to ensure that everyone is where they are supposed to be. We have multiple teams, each with a Service Delivery Manager and Team Leader. As tickets come in through various channels, such as phone, email, and monitoring systems, our Team Leaders ensure that tickets are assigned to suitable engineers, matching their skillset to the requirements, and ensuring that their workload allows them to meet the agreed-upon response time.
Throughout the day, we keep a close eye on key metrics to ensure that we are delivering a high standard of service. Each ticket raised has a pre-agreed response time based on the urgency of the issue, and in 2023, we met 92.49% of SLA’s with over 82% of tickets being resolved within 30 minutes, which we are very proud of.
Our SLA Report from the Last 12 Months
Although some of our team members work different hours, the majority of our service team starts their working day at 8:30 am and finishes at 5:30 pm. Every ticket is given a specific response time of 15 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, or 4 hours, depending on its priority. An engineer will be in touch and working on the issue within that timeframe. We also offer a chargeable out-of-hours service, ensuring that we can support customers beyond our normal working hours. This covers our clients from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm, seven days a week, with our engineers on a rota to ensure that any contact between those hours will be responded to within 30 minutes.
Some tickets are harder to resolve than others, so managers and leaders regularly review engineer ticket queues to prioritise the resolution of tickets. If a ticket is not nearing resolution within our desired response and resolution times, the assigned engineer or their managers can escalate it. We believe in sharing knowledge as it strengthens our team and is one of our core values. Therefore, we encourage our engineers to help their peers and allow junior colleagues to shadow their work. This is an excellent way of teaching and developing young talents.
Last year, we made some changes to our department’s structure. We created a triage team whose primary responsibility is to answer phone calls, monitor incoming emails, log tickets, and resolve issues that can be fixed within 30 minutes. This change has further improved our first-time fix rate , and as a result, the quality of service our customers receive. We use the first-time fix rate as a key performance indicator to track the number of tickets, incidents, or requests we can resolve during the initial contact with the client.
ADM is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and we still believe in some traditional values. One of them is the importance of picking up the phone. In today’s world, written communication and messaging apps have become the norm, but we believe that verbal communication is a better way to provide service. We don’t like long email chains, nor do we want our customers to feel like they’re talking to a robot. Therefore, we encourage our engineers to make phone calls.
That’s why we use Microsoft Teams for our telephony, which allows us to easily monitor phone statistics and aid our hybrid working environment. Our phone stats screen clearly displays metrics such as the average time it takes to answer a call and the number of calls that each engineer has picked up. If an engineer is struggling to achieve their target, we provide them with a friendly nudge in the right direction.
We do however understand that different clients have different communication preferences, and some information is better delivered via email. Preferences are often noted against a client record – ensuring that all ADM staff are aware of how best to communicate with the client, and any unique requirements they may have.
Developing and improving
At ADM, we are proud supporters of Microsoft’s apprenticeship scheme, which we see as an excellent way for young and enthusiastic individuals to transition from education to the workplace. Our team of engineers is always available to assist and guide apprentices throughout their journey, while our leadership remains connected with the pathway planners to ensure everything is on track.
We provide a mentoring system to help apprentices along the way, and they find it particularly useful to have access to staff who have recently completed the apprenticeship program. We have recently taken on our first T-Level apprenticeship student who will attend ADM once a week, and we frequently offer work experience placements for school, college, and university students.
Over the years, we have had many apprenticeship success stories, with 27 of our service desk staff being products of this scheme! Our commitment to training doesn’t stop there; we offer training opportunities for all of our staff to upskill, which helps us maintain our numerous accreditations.
We are proud to allow our engineers to train during their work hours, via courses we pay for, and we also cover the cost of their exams and even give them a bonus upon passing. This upskilling has allowed those who started on the apprenticeship team to work their way up through the ranks to become 2nd and 3rd line engineers or take on a leadership role within the company.
Once a month, we conduct Wednesday evening training sessions (WETS) for our staff. These sessions provide an opportunity for our team to learn about new products and services, increase their knowledge, and stay up to date with emerging cyber threats. Since this training takes place during the engineers’ own time, we allow them to expense their preferred takeout or a healthier supermarket shop.
We believe in having well-rounded engineers, so we avoid compartmentalising our service staff. Unlike what many consider to be the industry standard, we do not separate service desk and field engineers, nor do we pigeonhole engineers into limited specialisations. Our engineers have their areas of expertise, but we ensure that they gain experience on the service desk and with clients, both for callouts and projects. Some of our clients also opt for regular site visits, allowing us to keep a closer eye on their environments. We make sure that our visiting engineers are capable of handling all aspects of a client’s setup, including servers, infrastructure, security, and hosted services. This helps us deliver high-quality services and improve our processes.
To maintain the quality of our services and continuously improve our processes, we have Linda, our customer services director, oversee non-conformances. We encourage everyone at ADM to report non-conformances, which we investigate to tighten up our processes and provide training opportunities. In the rare event of a customer complaint, Linda will manage the issue with assistance from our Service Director, Jolene, and our Service Delivery Managers and Team Leaders. We see non-conformances and complaints as opportunities to grow.
Our Service Delivery Managers work closely with our Service Director and oversee their team’s engineers and clients. They often schedule meetings with clients on-site or via Teams to discuss various topics. During these meetings, we assess their usage and identify trends of overuse or underutilisation of their contract. We offer ways to address these issues, such as using up any shortfall or discussing a contract reduction. Our contracts are flexible, and we customise our services per client to meet their needs. We present interactive charts of usage during review meetings and delegate access to some of our systems, if necessary.
Charity and Environmental efforts
Our directors are committed to supporting charities and being environmentally friendly. We securely wipe and re-purpose our customers’ old devices for charities. To date, we have supplied and shipped hundreds, if not thousands, of devices to Africa. We also support local charities by replacing computers for coding clubs and organizing cake sales to raise funds. The environment is a top priority for us, and we schedule meetings to minimise waste and reduce our carbon footprint. We have installed solar panels on our roof and have an increasing number of electric vehicles. We take waste segregation seriously and ensure that all waste is disposed of correctly.
Under the hood
We believe in transparency with our clients, so we welcome them to our office to meet our team, share a meal, and get to know each other better. Sometimes, our clients join us to help set up the equipment we’re installing at their site. Additionally, we regularly host seminars at our Canterbury office and Microsoft’s headquarters in Paddington. These events allow our clients to network with like-minded individuals and learn about the latest trends, products, and services in cybersecurity.
ADM has an internal IT team known as ADM IT. ADM IT team is responsible for managing all the work assets and providing day-to-day support to the internal users while maintaining high-level security. The team also manages ADM’s data centres, such as hosted server solutions and backup services. ADM IT regularly reviews and assesses industry-leading services to ensure that the vendors and solutions they offer to customers are the same as those used internally and are regularly reviewed.
ADM has several departments that ensure high-quality service delivery. The Admin team manages tasks such as purchasing, invoicing, and payroll. The workshop team handles physical preparation of equipment and repairs, while the datacomms team delivers structured cabling and wireless solutions to buildings. The Account Managers meet with clients and recommend tailored IT solutions and services, with the help of the service department team. ADM’s sales team is unique in that they are not commission-based, which reassures clients that they are not motivated by targets but instead deliver trusted solutions with value, reliability, and security in mind. All projects are overseen by the Project Management team, led by Martin.
ADM believes in giving everyone a voice and listening to everyone’s opinion. They train, promote, and aim to give individuals a ‘job for life’ to ensure staff retention. Adrian, ADM’s Managing Director, established the company in 1984 and instilled core values into the company, which has ensured that ADM’s average tenure is 13 years of service. Adrian is keen to arrange social events to strengthen communication between departments and is always approachable for business-related or personal matters. ADM is committed to delivering clients with the most robust systems to work efficiently and securely.
We hope you have found this article useful, and that it re-enforces our company values – bolstering your confidence in ADM as your trusted IT service partner. For more information, just give us a call on 01227 473 500 or email sales@adm-computing.co.uk
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About ADM
Founded in 1984, ADM Computing is Kent’s largest and longest established IT services company specialising in IT support services that help to reduce IT costs as well as improve network efficiency. We have a long history of charity work and won’t be slowing down any time soon!
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Blog Author
Jamie Pert – Team Leader & 3rd Line Engineer | ADM Computing – Established in 1984.
Jamie has been with ADM for over 10 years, and thanks to his desire to challenge the ‘we’ve always done it this way’ mentality, he has been instrumental in driving forward the development of our service desk. When not busy leading his team and thinking of ways to improve our processes, Jamie’s focus is on the implementation of automation that instils secure best practice.
In his free time, Jamie enjoys playing and watching his son play football.
