Service Desk Effectiveness In 5 Steps – Part 4

This is part 4 of a 5-part series on increasing service desk effectiveness.

Over the last few weeks, we have posted 3 out of 5 steps to improve service desk effectiveness. Let’s charge on to Part #4...horn down!

STEP#4: Allow Self-Service

The Fact of the Matter

The modern labor force requires information on demand, using methods of their choosing. If a self-service portal does not offer a smooth experience, or there is no portal, it has consequences. The customers become irritated because they are unable to resolve their own problems. They have little choice but to call on the 1st level support techs to resolve simple problems. This leaves techs mired in simple support problems.

Still, this problem exists. Many self-service portals fall short on customer experience. If a self-service portal is poor in design, knowledge base, and catalog of services, it is bad. Customers can’t resolve issues themselves. The outcome of this is the lower productivity of service desk personnel and customers.

The Clever Solution: Create a Self-Service Portal Users Love

Employees need to have self-sufficiency. Give it to them! Use a “shift left” mentality to the service desk.

In an Agile world, teams are being asked to move faster — reducing the length of time to delivery while continuing to improve the quality of each release. At the same time, they are faced with increased pressure to reduce testing costs.
What The Shift Left in Testing Means - SmartBear.com

Have a best-practice self-service portal. Enable customers to resolve their own problems, check ticket status, and service requests. When you empower customers to help themselves you free up IT labor. Your people are now able to put all their effort into initiatives that move the business forward.

Personnel

Engage user experience experts. These experts can come from inside or external to your business. They will help you improve your customer experience. In turn, they can make sure the portal is customer friendly.
Ask customers for feedback and put yourself in their position.
Offer a great deal of user education.
Support portal acceptance and promote self-sufficiency.
Provide email, phone, chat, walk-up, and desk-side service. This allows connection with users wherever and however they prefer. As portal usage grows, the dependence on such methods should decline.

Processes

Identify a straightforward service catalog. It should be in two parts. One part for internal technical personnel and the other for customers. The catalog needs to contain important facts. Facts like estimated cost and delivery time for service.
Make automation a priority. Focus on the most common requests like password resets for example. This decreases the touch time and turnaround time.
Provide reports of service status, such as known service outages and interruptions. Provide these on the portal and as a recorded phone message when they call the service desk. This will decrease contacts and increase customer satisfaction.
Perform periodic customer satisfaction surveys. This is for the measurement and continuous improvement of the customer experience.
Draw Up KPIs that matter. Metrics like reduction in call volume, ticket volume, and customer satisfaction. Measure these against the self-service portal and find areas that need improvement.

Tech

Make sure your service portal, including the service catalog, adapt for separate roles. If required, other languages.
Construct an extensive knowledge base with smart search and share. Allow customers to comment and vote on the knowledge and suggest new entries.
Provide a peer-to-peer forum for discussion and collaboration. Empower customers to assist each other. Have your service desk team moderate and contribute to the forum. You can receive valuable information from the everyday stumbling blocks of the customer.

Conclusion
of Part #3 on Increasing Service Desk Effectiveness

Stay tuned for the final post in this series. You should see it in about 3 days.

Do you have different ideas and thoughts about increasing service desk effectiveness? Then please share them here. You can leave your comments, questions, or anything below or Contact Us.

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