Shift-Left-Left

What is shift Left left

Shift left Left is a strategy employed by service delivery managers with the aim of pushing as many incidents as possible to be solved by First Call Resolution or better still by the end user themselves. This is done by consistantly and methodically reviewing and optimising processes and by educating end users and First line support. Ultimately removing recurring issues and redirecting high volume simple requests to self service. This improves customer experience by reducing wait time and removes the cost of downtime by the delay of escalation. It also reduces the cost of incident resolution by moving the incident from the more expensive levels of support to level 1 and ultimately self service. It also frees up valuable upper level support resourses to focus on project work and business improvement.

Implementing Shift Left

Implementing Shift Left involves moving an incident to the most cost effective level of support. It requires investigating the repeat calls and standard activities in each tier regularly. Finding and providing a fix/resolution and passing it down to the tier below. Using and regularly updating a knowledgebase will also increase team efficiency. It also would look at the simple tasks that level one perform repeatedly and educating end users on how to perform these tasks themselves. Password resets take up a huge percentage of support calls. A service desk can easily provide the ability for end users to reset their own passwords. Mapping network drives is another example of a simple task that end users could easily be shown how to do.

Benefits of the Shift Left Strategy

• Faster Resolution Time

Faster resolution time leads to happier customers. It’s as simple as that. Even the simplest of issues can be a pebble in the shoe of someone trying to get a days work done. Self service or first line resolution saves the delay of escalation leaving the customer able to get back to the business of doing business.

• Cost Savings

Say an incident resolved by first line support cost is €10, second line €50 and third line €100-250. Not to mention the astronomical costs of an unsupported vendor call. It makes absolute business sense to try and push the incident resolution as close to the front line as possible, or better still by some means of zero cost self service.

• Freeing Up Resourses

Project and infrastructure work is alway work that requires undivided 100% concentration. Too ofter we hear tier 2 and 3 complaining about being dragged away from something they were working on to resolve an escalated ticket. This sets the work back as the interruption to train of thought requires twice as long to get back to where they were. In the business we refer to this as firefighting and it is counter productive to business building and improvement.

To learn more about the Shift Left Strategy please contact Westbourne today and we will arrange for one of our consultants to assist you