It's often not easy to decide. I would say that If a customer simply doesn't know how to do something and is calling for information, then I would classify that as a User Service Request. An Incident is defined as a loss of service or degradation in performance of a service. If a person can't get to their e-mail (while they normally could), then I would classify that as an Incident. On the flip side, if it's because someone changed something, sent out a memo about what the user needed to do, and the user simply didn't bother to read it, I'd still classify that as an Incident, even though they're effectively calling for information. From the user's perspective, the service is not working, so for them it's an Incident.
One thing to keep in mind is that from the user's perspective, it doesn't matter whether you think the service is up or not, if they can't get to it or use it properly for some reason, then it's still an incident. Don't know if that helps any... Lyle -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ron Legters Sent: Friday, June 26, 2009 10:28 AM To: [email protected] Subject: How-to questions - Request or Restoration? Our shop is using Incident Management 7, and we're currently encouraging our IS staff to make better choices in the 'Service Type' field (specifically 'User Service Restoration' vs. 'User Service Request') so we can get more reliable numbers for Mean Time to Repair. We get a fair number of user who contact IS because they don't know how to do something, and we can't decide if we should class these as 'Requests' or 'Restorations'. On the one hand, the service is operating normally, there's nothing we need to fix on our end, so it sounds like a 'Request'. On the other hand, the 'Service Restoration' definition just specifies, in essence, that the service is unavailable, so if we make it available again either by repairing something or showing the user how to use it, it's still a Restoration. I'd be interested to hear how other folks are addressing this, as it seems unlikely we're the only shop that gets calls from users asking for help when nothing's broken. Thanks, Ron Legters Tools Administrator Production and Quality Control Univar USA Inc. 425.889.3952 Office 425.889.4111 Fax www.univarusa.com _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org Platinum Sponsor:[email protected] ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message. _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org Platinum Sponsor:[email protected] ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"
