Strategizing IT incident management in a hybrid work environment

1. A complicated IT landscape:

Employees often use personal devices in their role, and organizations frequently enable access to critical files through VPN from unsecured networks, which increases the probability of IT incidents.

2. Lack of a hybrid-ready self-service:

Without adequate information, such as knowledge articles on frequently used services, VPN, and security best practices, end users might not resolve common incidents themselves, raising a flood of L1 (Level1) tickets which are routine in nature.

3. Absence of an omni-channel service desk:

Incidents reported by end users might slip under the radar if the service desk is unfamiliar with select platforms or applications.

4. A burned out IT workforce:

Service desks, lacking efficient workload distribution, might end up overburdening their IT technicians, leading to burnout.

5. Working in silos inhibits collaborative approach:

As dispersed IT teams work in silos, they can lose track of incident tickets assigned to each other, resulting in a duplication of efforts.

Strategize your incident response for a hybrid future

As your IT service desk aligns itself with the future of work, you can strategize your IT incident response tailor-fit to your organization by leveraging remote monitoring tools, curated self-service portals, delivering an omni-channel experience, employing resource planning, and encouraging collaborative approach.

1. Monitoring the IT landscape remotely:

As organizations handle a complex IT landscape under a hybrid work model, they can adopt a proactive incident management strategy by integrating their ITSM software with remote monitoring tools.

For example, when threat actors gain access to end-user workstations, monitoring tools trigger alerts. These alerts can be automatically converted to incident tickets, assigned a high priority, and routed to specialist support groups. By configuring condition-based automations, IT teams can tackle major incidents head-on, ensuring their hybrid workforce faces no service downtimes.

2. Furnishing adequate information using curated self-service portals:

Organizations can tackle the information crunch that end users experience by curating a self-service portal that helps reduce IT service desk tickets for both the on-site and remote workforce. Incident templates and quick-action widgets can help end users report data security incidents faster with accurate information collection. This helps IT service desks accelerate incident resolution and mitigate the risks of data breaches and ransomware attacks.

Knowledge articles addressing common incidents, like VPN and account lockouts, can empower users to resolve incidents by themselves. IT service desks can leverage AI to intelligently suggest relevant knowledge base articles for end users when they submit a ticket. This can also help ensure the ticket is channeled, if needed, to the appropriate IT service technician, and can help avoid the need to escalate it. This way, IT teams can focus on high-priority incidents and ensure service uptime.

3. Delivering an omni-channel experience:

IT teams can integrate remote collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack with their service desk solutions to capture incidents reported on these channels. Users can raise tickets, access the self-service portal, browse the knowledge base, and more without switching windows.

IT service desks can also enable end users to chat with technicians in real time, ensuring rapid ticket resolution or escalations if required.

Building an omni-channel service desk solution helps IT teams stay on top of all incidents reported across disparate channels.

4. Embracing resource planning for elevated service desk productivity:

Organizations can prevent IT service desk technician burnout by employing efficient resource planning strategies.

Optimal scheduling algorithms and AI can direct incident tickets to specialist support technicians based on their availability and expertise. Analytical tools, like Zoho Analytics, can help IT admins discern attendance and absence patterns for these support technicians.

Organizations can then set up automations to delegate tasks and tickets to backup technicians, ensuring the around-the-clock availability of IT and organizational support.

5. Breaking the silos by encouraging collaborative approach:

Organizations can embrace a collaborative approach to break the silos and streamline their incident resolution process while overcoming the challenges posed by a hybrid IT support workforce.

Ticket collision warnings can help prevent duplication of efforts when multiple technicians work on the same ticket.

Technicians can also collaborate to resolve major incidents by adding internal notes, sharing the incident ticket, delegating tasks to different specialists or groups, or using integrations with collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack.

Service desks can also broadcast critical information on such incidents, providing a heads-up to IT technicians handling the incoming wave of tickets. Similarly, the service desk can reassure end users by making periodic announcements during major incidents.

Stay ahead of the curve with a responsive service desk:

As organizations adapt to a hybrid future, IT teams might face several challenges while managing incidents that threaten their technological infrastructure. A flexible ITSM solution like ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus can go a long way in helping an organization stay agile and resilient.

As ManageEngine's flagship ITSM platform, ServiceDesk Plus helps organizations achieve a 3-year ROI of up to 352% on their ITSM investments.