Summary
Our client is an American manufacturer of industrial tools, household hardware and provider of security products. HCLTech enhanced the auditing of its ServiceNow (SNOW) ticket-handling process by implementing rule-based automation. This initiative aims to ensure the accuracy and efficiency of ticket resolution, data analysis for metric reporting, and proactive problem management by focusing on verifying the resolution time and the correctness of 15 key fields within each ticket.
The challenge
High resolution time on ServiceNow tickets
The HCLTech support team faced challenges with ServiceNow ticket information submissions by users submitting incomplete information (incorrect or missing configuration items or details about the issue), leading to incorrect assignment groups. This set the ticket into a pending state for additional information, causing delays and resolution in a timely manner. Ultimately, these challenges impacted user experience and SLA adherence.
To address said challenges, delivery requested rule based automation on 15 key ServiceNow fields to improve the quality of information provided by the user. Additionally, this would enable support leads to improve user experience by tracking (ticket re-open count, hope count > 3, last follow up made on pending tickets a manual audit of certain key fields would leave the KB number incomplete. Tickets were resolved without user confirmation and remained unattended in the ‘pending’ state for extended periods.
A manual audit of 15 mandatory fields was initiated to check the accuracy of the respective SNOW ticket data. However, the manual audit process was time-consuming. To audit the entire ticket data set of approximately 12,000 tickets per month took an average of 15 minutes per ticket for audit, causing the delivery team to cover 25% of audit, resulting in 900 hours/month with low accuracy and low coverage.
The objective
Improve accuracy scores and automate processes to save time
To improve the accuracy of the audit with full ticket coverage, a rule-based automated audit process needed to be implemented to achieve the following:
- Increase accuracy of 15 key fields, including:
- Configuration item
- Resolution notes
- Re-open count
- KB number
- Ensure proper user confirmation:
- Validate the correctness of the "Three chase rule followed score" key field to confirm tickets are resolved with proper user confirmation
- Reduce ticket resolution cycle time:
- Check whether the last ticket follow-up was completed within the previous three days to decrease the ticket resolution cycle time
- Streamline the audit process:
- Implement measures to make the audit process more efficient and accurate
- Improve user satisfaction and feedback scores:
- Enhance overall user satisfaction by improving feedback scores through enhanced ticket handling
The solution
Rule based ServiceNow ticket audit automation
The client turned to the HCLTech team to implement a PowerShell script-based automation to audit the ServiceNow tickets on the basis of defined criteria to achieve the following in order to enhance their user feedback score:
- Key field verification:
- The script checks the correctness of 15 key fields in each ticket to ensure ticket accuracy
- Compliance calculation:
- It calculates the compliance percentage for each ticket based on field accuracy
- Audit report generation:
- An Excel report summarizes the compliance percentages, offering a clear overview of ticket quality
- Actionable insights:
- This report is sent to the process team, enabling them to identify non-compliant tickets and address areas needing improvement promptly
Example:
Closed the ticket without obtaining user confirmation:
If “Three chase rule followed score” field is 0 (non-compliant), it indicates that the support person closed the ticket without obtaining user confirmation
Long-pending ticket:
If “Last follow-up done more than three business days ago score” field is 0 (non-compliant), it indicates that the support person has not updated the ticket in the last three business days, signifying a long-pending ticket
The impact
Automation provided critical insights into ServiceNow ticket management
The automated audit process effectively identifies gaps and issues, such as missing key field values (e.g. configuration item, cause code, resolution notes), thereby reducing manual errors and improving audit accuracy. As a result, all the tickets consistently meet internal quality and compliance standards.
By leveraging automation to audit ServiceNow tickets, the HCLTech project team successfully addressed key issues for our client that were contributing to low user satisfaction. This approach not only improved operational efficiencies but also enhanced user experience and overall service quality for them.
The audit report automation and appropriate follow-up actions resulted in the following for our client:
- Increased positive user experience:
- Timely actions taken based on an automated audit process resulted in reduced ticket resolution times and increased positive user feedback score
- Improved efficiency:
- Automating the auditing process significantly reduced manual effort and time
- Improved data analysis:
- Automating the auditing process for missing customer information
- Ability to publish the cause code of a problem issue to the right application and initiate proactive problem management for ticket reduction and elimination
- Improved ticket logging pattern by users
- Increased accuracy of audit report:
- Automation minimized human error, ensuring consistent and accurate data analysis with significantly increased ticket coverage
- Effort saving:
- 900 person-hours per month have been saved in auditing
Our client is pleased with the positive impact, and all tickets are meeting internal quality and compliance standards, resulting in an overall improvement in user experience.
