User self-service measures the percentage of incidents that are self-resolved by the user, without the assistance of a live analyst. For example, the analysts on a particular service desk handle 4,000 incidents per month through voice, chat, and email. Another 1,000 incidents per month are resolved through user self-service (that is, through a self-help portal that includes a password reset tool). For this hypothetical service desk, the self-service rate is 1,000 self-service incidents ÷ 5,000 total incidents = 20% user self-service. Why is this important? Last year, the average cost of resolving an incident at level 1 in North America was about $22. If some of these incidents can be deflected to self-service, that reduces the headcount requirements and hence the cost of the service desk. One final thought… You don’t want your users spending a lot of time searching for solutions to their IT problems. At MetricNet our rule-of-thumb is that a user should not spend more than 10 minutes at a time trying to self-resolve an incident. Any more time than that in the self-help portal is probably costing the enterprise more in lost user productivity than it is saving. Learn more in the HDI Metric of the Month!
