I'm starting to move my support services from outsourced support over to inhouse tech support.

So what I'm going to is start fresh with a new help desk software(DeskPro)

My question is, how do you handle ticket routing when you have multiple technicians working the help desk area?
It's not possible to route tickets based on the time of day, so what would one do? Route them to one big pool and when the tech is on shift he/she just answers the tickets? What if the user replies to the ticket he/she creates when the orginal answering tech's shift is over?

Any ideas are appreciated!!

what most outsourcing companies do is have two shifts, night shift & day shift...
all the tickets in the day shift period would go to the day shift pool and all the ones in the night shift to the night shift pool..

this way you achieve 24/7 support with little delay,

this does cost A LOT more, thus you have outsourcing companies in countries like India, its cheaper but has ALMOST the same quality (the reason i say ALMOST is because of the language barrier, not all Indians speak english)...

Originally posted by jubinrr
what most outsourcing companies do is have two shifts, night shift & day shift...
all the tickets in the day shift period would go to the day shift pool and all the ones in the night shift to the night shift pool..

this way you achieve 24/7 support with little delay,

this does cost A LOT more, thus you have outsourcing companies in countries like India, its cheaper but has ALMOST the same quality (the reason i say ALMOST is because of the language barrier, not all Indians speak english)...

Yeah, thats true, costs of living in India are a lot cheaper, thus pay checks there aren't as much, so you don't pay much.
The best way to test how they speak, is talk to them over live support. Or email them.

Any other suggestions on how to setup ticketing for 3 8 hour shifts?

Hi,

Let me answer the dbbrock1 then I would like to clear few more doubts.

If you are willing to give 24x7 support you have to have 4 admin’s working 8 hrs each, the 4th admin would be the filler for each of the 3 admin on their week day off.

Now best way to provide 24x7 support is to route all the tickets at one place and let each admin answer the ticket on his shift (till this it’s a normal process) but the trick is that each time when admin leaves the help desk after his shift he has to “submit the help desk” to the next admin i.e. he will explain how many tickets are there? How many have been replied? How many have been closed? and what he has done in whole shift. You can design a reporting format to reduce any ambiguity.

what most outsourcing companies do is have two shifts, night shift & day shift...
all the tickets in the day shift period would go to the day shift pool and all the ones in the night shift to the night shift pool.. this way you achieve 24/7 support with little delay

In this case admin in the day shift will not know what admin in the night shift is doing or has done, common ticket in the both shifts will create more confusion and you end up giving two answer that may conflict to each other OR thickets that are open in the morning shift will be answered next morning shift and same goes for night shift …..in such case it can never be called TRUE 24x7 Support.

Now coming back to clear few things:


because of the language barrier, not all Indians speak english....

TRUE, not all Indian speak good English but 90% of Indians who are involved in IT related activities are very good in English. In India English is THE MOST USED LANGUAGE for business and professionals. The fact is if one is not good in English he/she can’t enter into any company who is working on outsourcing model.

Yeah, thats true, costs of living in India are a lot cheaper

AGREED !! the cost of living in India is lower then US or EUROP but on the same time its not so cheep that one can live normal life in $1 per hrs working 40 hrs a week , if I am not wrong $5 per hr. is a minimum wages in US.

No offence to anyone just thought I should share my views that there is a difference between “dirt cheep” and “cost effective” … Indian should be known for cost effectiveness not cheep labors as long as you want a quality service and skilled manpower.

The best way I have found is to use a system like Kayako that allows employees to begin working on the ticket and then informs others that its being viewed by that employee. Then reward employees using an incentive system to encourage them to be the first to jump in and help :)

Kayako's eSupport works beautifully for 1 or 30 technicians.

On a side note, UDS mentioned having 4 people cover 8 hour shifts; Someone please tell me if my math is incorrect:

4 people x 8 hours x 5 days = 160 hours
1 week = 168 hours

Am I confused or with that model do we have to Schedule overtime?

Originally posted by TS-Dave
Kayako's eSupport works beautifully for 1 or 30 technicians.

On a side note, UDS mentioned having 4 people cover 8 hour shifts; Someone please tell me if my math is incorrect:

4 people x 8 hours x 5 days = 160 hours
1 week = 168 hours

Am I confused or with that model do we have to Schedule overtime?

don't be a lazy admin and answer tickets 8h/week!
j/k
don't know the math, but you can give them 2 days off except for one, who would have just 1 day off... then you can do something like:

day 1 - X B C
day 2 - X B C
day 3 - A X C
day 4 - A X C
day 5 - A B X
day 6 - A B X
day 7 - A B C

A B and C works 5 days
X works 6 days

On a side note, UDS mentioned having 4 people cover 8 hour shifts; Someone please tell me if my math is incorrect:

4 people x 8 hours x 5 days = 160 hours
1 week = 168 hours

Am I confused or with that model do we have to Schedule overtime?


If we are talking about true 24x7 support that means help desk should not be empty even for a single minute, the way TS-Dave have calculated, it’s only for 5 days a week and we are talking about 24x7 support.

8 hrs x 3 shifts x 7days = 168hrs a week

You have to give one day off to each admin as they can work for 6 days a week max.

Now the problem With the model that Lem0nHead has suggested is that its not at all a true 24x7 support as you can see only 7th day is 24hrs support other 6 days its only 16 hrs of support (provided one admin is working for 12hrs)

One should do it like this:

day 1 - A B C
day 2 - A B C
day 3 - A B C
day 4 - A D C
day 5 - A B D
day 6 - D B X
day 7 - A B C

This way everyone is getting one day off and you are giving TRUE 24x7 support. You have to have 4th admin to do it, this is what I do with all my clients who are signed up for 24x7 support , and it works pretty good :)