Why omnichannel ticketing is critical to incident management

Organizations implement incident management solutions to help their technicians manage service desk tickets efficiently and to ensure the business isn't impacted adversely by incidents. But more often than not, achieving the desired results, including improved resolution times and increased user satisfaction, is more challenging than it seems. This is because organizations overlook small details that hinder their service desk strategy.

In this blog, we discuss how the lack of proper channels to raise tickets negatively impacts the incident management process.

The primary goal of incident management is to resolve reported incidents as quickly as possible. However, the incident management process is only effective when there are enough channels for end users to report incidents. The absence of available channels can cause incidents to go unreported, resulting in difficulties for end users and more disruptions to the organization.

Below are some tips to help you fix areas where you could be having issues.

• No self-service portal

  Self-service portals enable end users to create tickets directly, keep track of their requests, access the knowledge base, and converse with technicians and chatbots to make the incident management process a seamless experience.

  Not having a self-service portal can create challenges for technicians and end users. Incidents may go undocumented, thus defeating the primary purpose of incident management. It also means that your organization isn't leveraging technologies such as chatbots and live chat effectively.

• No integrations with collaboration platforms

  Solutions like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoho Cliq have turned into virtual workspaces and collaboration zones for employees worldwide. If the IT service desk remains siloed and disconnected from these channels, IT teams may miss out on engaging with end users in their preferred modes of workplace communication. Moreover, these channels play a critical role in bringing together diverse talent and disseminating knowledge swiftly when responding to major incidents.

  Embedding the IT service desk within Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoho Cliq, and other collaboration tools provides employees with quick options to report incidents and communicate with IT technicians. Incident response teams also benefit from the ease of collaboration during major incidents by not having to juggle multiple windows; instead, they work through an incident form within a chat channel.

• A lack of required templates

  An incident can be resolved immediately by the technician only if all the relevant details are captured when the ticket is logged. However, due to missing or misconfigured templates and inadequate or incorrect tickets details, resolutions may be delayed, or incorrect actions may be applied to tickets.

  Preconfigured templates ensure that end users have no difficulty creating tickets for a particular issue, helping them fill out only the relevant, mandatory details required to resolve the ticket.

• No way to convert emails into tickets

  Email continues to be the most common form of communication in enterprises, which is why you need a feature for automatically converting emails into tickets as part of your incident management solution. This way, reports received via email won't slip under the service desk team's radar. Without this feature, your service desk team will likely be looking at repeated calls and unnecessary visits from coworkers seeking resolutions for their issues.

• The absence of live chat or a chatbot to create tickets

  AI-driven chatbots are the next stage of evolution for communication between business users. Chatbots in ITSM solutions reduce the service desk's workload by creating tickets, suggesting solutions, and resolving many level 1 incident tickets without a technician's intervention. This frees up technicians to work on other business-critical aspects of ITSM.

  Live chat enables end users to directly communicate with technicians to resolve incidents swiftly. Features like creating a ticket within the chat box help technicians save time by not requiring them to fill out a web form ticket.

Today's digital enterprises rely on a host of service touchpoints for employee collaboration and organizational productivity. Each of these touchpoints also doubles up as a ticketing channel through which employees can report incidents to the IT service desk. The tips discussed above can help you take the first step towards omnichannel ticketing in your IT service desk.

ServiceDesk Plus: An ITSM platform with omnichannel
ticketing capabilities

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus combines ITSM essentials, IT asset management, and a CMDB with ESM capabilities, providing a comprehensive platform for designing, managing, and delivering IT and business services. ServiceDesk Plus supports omnichannel ticketing through email to ticket conversion; a built-in self-service portal; a mobile application; an AI-powered virtual chatbot; live chat; and integrations with Microsoft Teams, Zoho Cliq, and Slack.

Available as both an on-premises and SaaS solution, ServiceDesk Plus is the ideal choice for organizations looking for a value-oriented ESM and ITSM platform that is secure and scalable.