ANALYSIS OF FACTORS THAT AFFECT THE PERFORMANCE OF QUEUING SYSTEM IN ETHIO TELECOM: THE CASE OF IT SERVICE DESK SYSTEM

Abstract

The study investigated the factors affecting the performance of queueing system of Ethio telecom IT service desk. It studied the current performance of the IT service desk and how it was affected by number of support staff working, the response speed to customer calls, the time taken to handle customer's call, agent occupancy, and the number of calls dropped per day. The study was geared towards helping the manager of the IT service desk to make reasonable decision regarding the first contact resolution rate. The researcher collected relevant data directly from the actual daily traffic reporting platform for 30 consecutive weeks. A sample of 167 daily records from all population Ethio telecom was randomly selected from which 121 (72.5%) of them were refined and used for analysis. Secondary data sources were also used to obtain the system design of IT service as queuing management system and description of every reporting parameters. Correlations and multiple regression analyses were performed using the pre-existing and refined data set. Erlang C calculator was used to predict the required staff for hotline channel. The researcher identified the top ten problem types that were not solved by first level and passed to next level support team. The main finding of this study showed that the average first contact resolution rate was about 72% which was better than the lower bestcase benchmark (25%), but it was lower than the best-case benchmark of the industry (95%). The empirical outcome of the study shows number of support staff working, the time taken to respond to customer's calls within 40 seconds and agent occupancy positively influenced the first contact resolution rate of queuing system of Ethio telecom IT service desk. Time taken to handle customer problem while on telephone and number of calls drop negatively influenced to the first contact resolution rate of queuing system of Ethio telecom IT service desk. It is recommended that the IT service desk manager should take a proactive measure on the top ten problem types empowering IT service desk staff to solve at first contact.