Comet has cut calls to its IT service desk by 40% following the introduction of an IT service management system from Hornbill.

The IT department is using Supportworks ITSM for incident management and problem management. It is about to go live with change management. The system was chosen last year after an evaluation process that included some of Comet’s end users (Retail Week, November 12, 2008). 

Comet service desk manager Rob Gwatkin said: “Our service level agreement rates now reach 94% consistently and with the measurements we have in place we are able to demonstrate that of the fixes we carry out, 80% are much faster than the service level agreement target.”

Comet plans to introduce a self-service module to deal with simple issues such as password resets, which it expects to take the total call volume reduction to 70%.

Gwatkin explained one way that adoption of the self-service system could be driven: “IT has introduced a nominal departmental cross-charging system that could
be adopted.

“By providing visibility of the cost of service provision, we aim to encourage users to initially look for answers to their questions on the company intranet before calling the service desk.”