How to get better at Service Desk Process Documentation

Processes are rarely documented consistently. Unambiguous, up to date documentation is often nowhere to be found. How can you contribute to better process documentation, and better organization?

1. Put someone in charge

Say you are aiming for calls with users to last a maximum of five minutes. Is that really possible? To make sure you find out how to get there, you will need clear process documentation. And for that, you will need some sort of process coordinator to draw up standardized processes, keep track of these process and make sure everything is followed. This could be the Service Desk Manager, a team leader or whoever best fits your organisation.

Just don’t be stern about it. Perhaps five minutes is too short, or training is required so analysts can handle and register calls faster. On top of that, sometimes it’s good to be a bit pragmatic about processes. In any case, colleagues on the service desk work in a more structured way with the right guidance. Control prevents confusion.

2. Communicate

In an ideal world, there is a good a consultation structure between all parties involved in the process. The application manager, for example, is responsible for the service management software (if one is in place) and can see the opportunities and bottlenecks within the processes. If anything can be done better this should be communicated, and the process coordinator must be open to the possibility of change.

(Speaking of, have a read of why we think Agile works so well for the modern service desk here)

3. Split the tasks up

In practice, the consultation structure is not always that well developed. We’ve found that in almost 75% of cases, the process coordinators are also the team leaders. This simply means they do not have time for steering, consulting, and updating the process documentation. If this is the case, it’s possible to let someone like the application manager perform part of the documentation.

Sharing the workload a bit when it comes to process documentation is great for getting more done. Just make sure that everyone that’s on board uses the same system and terminology.

4. Simplify

Simplify as much as you can. This means having a standardized system in place for how the documentation is phrased and updated, in terms of terminology, clarity and consistency between processes.

One good example of this – if you share a portal with other Service Departments (IT or HR for example) it’s likely that there are two process documentation processes. One is for IT one if for HR. This is not logical because they work in the same tool and per the same processes. It is more convenient to merge these documents and to use the same terminology as much as possible.