The Happiness Effect

Arrive & register

Tea, coffee, networking and expo

Welcome address

Welcome to today’s event with SDI’s host John Noctor.

The People Effect: Getting the ServiceDesk Back on Track

Colin Birnie-Campbell, ServiceDesk Lead Support Engineer (Manager), Transport for Greater Manchester

Every contact with a Service Desk affects how someone feels about their working day. Yet Service Desk success is often judged mainly through targets, volumes and response times.

This session tells the story of the TfGM Service Desk from 2021 onwards. When I joined, I found a team with experience, ability and commitment, but also a service that needed clearer direction, greater consistency and renewed confidence.  It is not a story about technology, new fads or quick fixes. It is the story of what happened when we began to improve the conditions in which the team worked.

Through practical examples, I will explore how clearer expectations, better communication, genuine recognition and greater ownership helped the team change the way it worked. I will also look at the leadership behaviours behind that progress, including listening before acting, recognising effort and giving people room to develop.  The journey was not instant or perfect, but it showed that better service does not begin with a dashboard. It begins with people feeling trusted, supported and able to make a difference.

In the end, every good journey comes back to one thing. The people who keep it on track.

Takeaways:

·       Fix broken systems not the people

·       Give people genuine ownership, not just extra tasks

·       Treat development as part of the job

·       Remember that every update shapes the customer’s experience

·       Create the conditions in which people can do good work

·       Happiness follows progress, trust and purpose

It’s Good to Talk: Keeping Your IT Service Desk Happy

Phil Payne, Director of IT Customer Experience, Bidvest Noonan

In a world where hybrid and remote working have become the norm, staying connected as a Service Desk team has never been more important. This session explores how open, consistent communication, and a genuine open‑door, always‑available culture, can transform team morale, strengthen wellbeing, and create a happier, more resilient IT Service Desk.

Phil Payne will share practical ways to support both performanceand health: from meaningful one‑to‑ones and inclusive team meetings, to fostering safe spaces for honest conversations and building everyday habits that help people feel heard, supported, and valued.

You’ll discover simple, human‑centred practices that reduce stress, boost emotional wellbeing, and elevate the customer experience. Because when we talk openly, and when we listen, everyone wins.

There's a Better Way to Run IT. It Starts With Experience

Melissa Warren, Senior Account Executive, Enterprise & Channel, HappySignals

Traditional IT metrics tell us whether services are running, tickets are being resolved and SLAs are being met. But they don’t always tell us whether IT is actually working for the people who depend on it.

In this session, Melissa Warren explores how Experience Intelligence is changing the way Service Delivery teams understand performance and make decisions. By bringing together employee experience, operational data and business context, IT can move beyond dashboards that simply report what happened to understand where friction exists, why it matters and what to do about it.

Attendees will leave the session understanding:

• Why green doesn’t always mean good: How traditional operational metrics and SLAs can miss the friction employees experience when using IT services.
• What Experience Intelligence adds to Service Delivery: How combining experience and operational data creates a more complete picture of service performance.
• How to find what actually needs fixing: Using employee experience and lost productivity to identify and prioritize the issues with the greatest impact.
• How to manage services and suppliers around outcomes: Bringing experience into conversations with internal teams and vendors alongside traditional service metrics.
• How to move from reporting to better decisions: Turning continuous experience signals into actionable intelligence that helps Service Delivery teams focus their time and investment where it matters most.

Because there’s a better way to run IT: start with the people experiencing it, turn their experiences into intelligence, and use that intelligence to make better decisions.

Tea, coffee, networking & expo

How AI agents can give technicians more of the work they enjoy

Sriram K S, Head of Support & Customer Success, UK & EU,  ManageEngine

A happy service desk works more efficiently, and that happiness comes from two places: the relationships technicians build with end users and with each other, and work that challenges them, with time for complex issues instead of repetitive tasks.

Workplaces need to make room for those bonds. But service desk technicians are handling more tickets, requests, issues, and projects than ever, often with fewer resources.

Fortunately, AI agents can ease some of this pressure, as they are now capable enough to take on simple, low-effort work that can be resolved entirely on a screen. This leaves technicians with more time to talk to end users, build camaraderie with their peers, and focus on the complex and challenging issues that need their expertise.

Key takeaways

• What makes a service desk happy, and the two areas, engagement and relationships, where technology can help.

• Four simple questions to decide when a task calls for an AI agent and when a human technician is the better fit.

• Low-effort, high-value use cases where AI agents can start taking work off technicians’ plates.

Roundtable session

Small group discussions on aspects of happy service desks

Lunch, networking & expo

Weaponising the Help in Help Desk

Rosie Anderson, Head of Strategic Solutions, th4ts3cur1ty.company

When cyber criminals target an organisation, instead of breaching a firewall first – a new technique is to simply call the IT service desk. Elite threat groups like Scattered Spider have perfected vishing (voice phishing) techniques, exploiting high-profile organisations like Marks & Spencer and Jaguar Land Rover by weaponising the front-line agent’s natural desire to be fast, empathetic, and helpful. When a service desk agent inadvertently grants access to a threat actor, the resulting psychological fallout – including intense guilt, public shame, and the trauma of managing a live crisis under a barrage of panicked users – can decimate team wellbeing and drive massive burnout. This session shifts the focus from technical defences to the human cost of a breach, exploring how rigid metrics like handle times can accidentally incentivise security bypasses.

Attendees will leave with lessons learned from real life incidents, and social engineering exercises with ideas for how to support your front-line staff before, during, and after a cyber incident. By realigning service desk metrics and training, to prioritise verification over velocity and removing the pressure of human judgment through robust technical guardrails, leadership can transform the service desk from a vulnerable target into an empowered, resilient line of defence.

Making People Feel Good

Roman Zhuravlev, Senior Architect ITIL, PeopleCert

Service desk is one of the critical contributors to digital experience. Great products can be ruined by poor support; imperfect products can be saved by excellent support. How to design, deliver, capture, and measure digital experience – and the service desk role in it? ITIL (Version 5) has an answer. Roman, ITIL Senior architect will explain the ITIL approach to digital experience, share practical tips, and answer your questions.

Tea, coffee, networking & expo

Hiring for Heart, Building for the Long Haul

Andy Vernon, Global Head of IT Services, Pret A Manger

Seen on Track: Why Being Visible Wins the Race

Rachel Rowlandson, Head of Service & Operations, OCU Group

It’s not just a ticket. It’s getting the racing car back on the track. In this session, Rachel Rowlandson, Head of Services & Operations at OCU Group, shares how getting out from behind the queue changed everything.

Being visible has helped our team get to know the users they support and see the value they make. That has made us a happier, prouder crew, and finalists in 2 SDI awards categories. Come and hear how being seen builds happy users and a happy team, and keeps everyone safe while we do it.

Closing address

Closing address with SDI’s John Noctor