Six Sigma for Help Desks

You've heard the hype about Six Sigma. How companies like GE, Allied Signal, Motorola, and Amazon.com have dramatically improved the quality of their products and services by using it. Did you know that Six Sigma is a perfect fit for Help Desks? If your Help Desk is not meeting your or your customers' expectations, Six Sigma will help you quickly make measurable improvements.

Let's take a look at how to use Six Sigma for improvement projects. The process moves through five stages: 1) Define; 2) Measure; 3) Analyze; 4) Improve; 5) Control. All of the stages have Critical to Quality (CTQ) goals in common. Let's look at how this works in each of the stages:

Define
Here you will define the scope of the project, the problem/opportunity, and the team members. You'll also identify suppliers and customers. Most importantly you will define your CTQs and how you will measure them. These are the most important measurements that you must do well to be successful.

Accessibility

• Abandon rate
• Time to answer

Turn Around

• % First call resolution
• % Resolved within help desk
• Turn around days per request

Courtesy

• Customer satisfaction

Communication

• Customer satisfaction

Now that you have defined your CTQs, your ready to move to the next stage.

Measure
The measure stage builds on the define stage by measuring your current performance against the CTQs. Sometimes this is easy, especially when you have systems like a help desk ticketing system and phone system that routes and logs calls. Sometimes, you will need to create new sources of data, such as data collection worksheets or customer surveys.

Analyze
With the results of your measurements against the CTQs at hand, you are ready to analyze the data to find problem areas. One of the most popular tools in this stage is the problem pareto graph, which shows you the bigest problem areas you need to focus on. You may find that for some of your CTQs, your current performance is fine and no further work is needed.

Improve
For those CTQs that do not meet your standards, you will use brainstorming and prioritization matrices to find improvements specifically related to the CTQ. You will look at parameters like cost, impact on the CTQ, and ease of implementation. By assigning each improvement idea a score, you can focus on the top improvements, which are most likely to succeed quickly.

Control
Your improvement projects are wrapped up, you've seen measurable improvements, but you're not done yet. You need to keep things on track by monitoring your performance against the CTQs as a normal part of operating your Help Desk. If the measurements fall below your goals, you may need to walk it through the Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control phases again.

Now you're an expert in Six Sigma. Well maybe not an expert. Here are two resources to help you along.