Job Brief

The Service Desk Operations Manager (SDOM) is arguably one of the most critical and challenging roles and requires a high degree of skills and experience.

Job Overview:

The SDOM will manage people, budgets, schedules, and business relationships. Due to the high-stress nature of the position, management maturity is essential.

Ability to work well with people:
Managing escalations and critical incidents creates an environment of great tension, which can impact the interpersonal dynamics between agents, technicians, and service desk customers. The SDOM must be able to help staff work through high-stress situations in a professional manner.

Applying conflict-management skills:
Service desk tickets are often escalated when users are frustrated with the response they are receiving from the agent assigned to the issue. The SDOM uses conflict-resolution skills to address user frustration and de-escalate tense situations.

Prioritizing the work of others:
Business rules and automation are typically used to prioritize incidents and service requests; however, the SDOM is responsible for balancing workloads across teams and agents to maximize productivity, minimize costs, and ensure SLA compliance.

Assessing the impact of a situation:
Responsible for assessing potentially critical incidents and making triage decisions about business impact, urgency, and criticality. Impact-assessment skills and experience are essential.

Managing multiple priorities:
During a shift, the SDOM will be managing a wide variety of activities that compete for his or her time and attention. It is imperative that the SDOM is able to multitask and provide focused attention on high-priority issues to ensure all important activities are addressed.

Working in a high-stress environment:
The ESD is a high-paced, high-stress environment. The SDOM must be able to manage stress effectively and coach staff on stress-management techniques.

Communicating with DOL leadership and stakeholders:
The SDOM is the face of service desk operations to management and stakeholders. Effective verbal and written communication skills are critical to keep stakeholders informed, influence decisions, and develop healthy business relationships.

Data-driven decision-making:
Data is the lifeblood of the ESD. The SDOM must be versed in operational data analysis and skilled in using data to make informed decisions.

Minimum Required Experience:

• 10+ years of experience within the Information Technology field.
• 5+ years of successful and consecutive commensurate experience managing a 24/7/365 customer support center or service desk with 50+ staff members and supporting 15,000+ end users.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite products.
• Proficient with enterprise ITSM tools (ServiceNow is preferred).
• Strong understanding and practical experience of ITIL best practices, service desk metrics, service desk benchmarks, service catalog, reporting and dashboards, ticket management, and root cause analysis.

Minimum Required Education and Certifications:

Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology, Information Systems, or Computer Science preferred. 8-10 years of experience can be substituted for a degree.

The Service Desk Operations Manager must have attained two out of three of the following certifications:

• ITIL 4 Managing Professional; or ITIL 4 Strategic Leader; or ITIL v3 Expert Certification - IT Service Management, and must upgrade to ITIL 4 Managing Professional or ITIL 4 Strategic Leader within 9 months of contract award.
• Help Desk Institute (HDI) Support Center Manager; and/or
• At least two (2) industry-related certifications. For example: CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+, Microsoft Office Specialist, Windows 10 Operating System, Kanban Management Professional, Microsoft 365 Certified: Modern Desktop Administrator Associate.

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