A Spotlight on Performance
A Spotlight on Performance
While a dashboard was already in place, it had several limitations. Most notably, it did not aggregate metrics across the three distinct workgroups that made up the Service Desk team; Help Desk, Identity Management, and Asset Management. This forced team leads to run their own queries to prepare for weekly status meetings, often resulting in discrepancies and confusion. The manual effort created friction and wasted valuable time.
After reviewing the dashboard and speaking with leadership, I defined the following goals for the redesign:
To kick off the project, I led a sticky note exercise with my manager to identify and prioritize the most important metrics. I then created a wireframe in Visio to ensure all elements were accounted for and logically arranged.
Given that data accuracy was the most critical aspect, I started with a minimum viable product (MVP) that focused on the top metrics. As reporting criteria were refined, I progressively improved the visual design to support clarity and usability.
Once the first version was functional, I incorporated Alaska Airlines branding and added navigation elements. This ensured the dashboard was not only useful but also presentable to senior leadership and other IT teams.
Alaska was undergoing a rebrand at the time, and there was no standardized design system for internal IT tools. I referenced existing styles from AlaskaAir.com and employee-facing resources.
The final result was a clean, dynamic interface that worked well within the technical constraints of the WYSIWYG drag-and-drop editor used to build dashboards.
The redesigned dashboard delivered measurable improvements across the board. SLA tracking became faster and more reliable, saving leadership an estimated 5–7 hours per week that had previously been spent manually running reports and reconciling metrics. By aligning data with contract definitions, the dashboard eliminated confusion and ensured consistent reporting.
Customer satisfaction insights also improved significantly. Managers and team leads gained real-time visibility into survey completion rates and sentiment scores, both at the team level and per agent. This allowed them to identify service gaps, celebrate top performers, and make data-driven coaching decisions with confidence.
One of the most impactful additions was the Happiness Score, a simplified metric that condensed multi-question survey responses into a single, color-coded indicator of customer sentiment. It provided a quick and actionable view of support quality, helping managers track trends and measure the success of their support efforts.
The dashboard became a trusted tool for leadership and a model for future internal reporting solutions. It not only improved operational efficiency but also elevated the Service Desk’s role in delivering a better customer experience, including our customers within IT.
The difference is night and day. The new dashboard calculates any range of data in a matter of seconds where previously it took me several hours a week to produce reports. Sean made any criteria tweaks I needed quickly, and the whole process was extremely collaborative.
