The concept of self-service has never made more sense in the ITSM industry than right now. The combination of digital transformation bringing new technology to service desks, and the increased tech-savviness of end users, presents a unique opportunity to create more capable self-service systems. This is a good time to take advantage of self-service to make your organization's service desk better and improve end users' experience in getting their issues resolved or raising a request.
We now know that self-service helps end users get their issues resolved faster since they don't have to depend on a technician. But how does it bring value to technicians and the service desk?
Service desks see hundreds to thousands of new tickets each day, depending on the size of the organization. Most of these tickets are the usual suspects, then I forgot my password or The internet's down type of tickets. These are basic, frequently reported issues that could be solved by end users themselves if it weren't for the lack of self-service. Self-service spares technicians from these routine tickets, enabling them to focus on business-critical IT projects.
As you can see, self-service brings value to both sides of the service desk. Let's take a look at all the ways a service desk can benefit from self-service:
Increased technician productivity due to reduced ticket volume
By empowering end users to help themselves, the number of trivial tickets will come down, reducing the service desk's ticket volume. This frees up technicians' time and enables them to work on more important tickets, ultimately increasing technician productivity.
Higher end-user satisfaction levels
With effective self-service, end users' issues are resolved faster; they also get around-the-clock support in the form of a chatbot and knowledge base articles, improving their satisfaction.
Reduced costs
According to HDI, the average cost of a help desk ticket is $15.56, and the average cost per minute of handling time by the service desk is $1.60. A large number of trivial tickets can quickly add up and cost your service desk a significant amount of money. Self-service encourages end users to rely less on the service desk to resolve simple issues, which reduces the ticket volume, in turn reducing the cost of service desk operations.
Better service desk adoption
A self-service portal reduces the need for end users to walk up to technicians or email the service desk to raise tickets. This helps increase the service desk adoption rate, leading to a more efficient incident and request management process.
IT self-service workflow
Key features of ServiceDesk Plus that enable effective
self-service for end users
Empower end users with a robust self-service portal
Self-service portals aren't just an interface for end users to raise tickets. ServiceDesk Plus' self-service portal enables end users to view and select services that are available to them, browse common incident templates and raise them, read announcements, access knowledge base articles, track the status of their tickets from creation all the way till closure, and more.
The self-service portal interface is completely customizable with different themes, fonts, and colors, as well as many functional widgets, to bring consistency across your organization.
Set up multiple channels to enable effective communication
Create effective channels of communication between end users and technicians using ServiceDesk Plus' in-product live chat, which enables end users to explain their issues clearly and get their questions answered in real time. End users can initiate a live chat session to raise a new ticket or follow up on an existing one, and share files, screenshots, or other relevant resources as attachments within the conversation.
Make the right information available with knowledge base articles
End users can use the self-service portal to access knowledge base articles that have solutions to common issues. Using ServiceDesk Plus' knowledge base, your service desk team can create articles categorized based on the type of issue, or even make specific articles viewable to only a select group of users, like technicians. Maintain the highest standard for articles by implementing an approval mechanism for any solution that is added to the knowledge base.
Make the self-service portal easily accessible with customized domains
Create a custom URL within your organization's domain to make your service desk's self-service portal easily accessible to end users and ensure the portal fits your organization's identity.
Extend self-service beyond your service desk
Don't limit the scope of self-service activities to just the self-service portal. Allow users to perform a variety of service desk tasks, like create tickets or view ticket information, through Zoho Cliq, a collaboration tool.
Free your service desk from password reset tickets
Resetting forgotten passwords is one of the most common support tasks for modern IT systems. ServiceDesk Plus' integration with ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus enables end users to reset their passwords without having to depend on technicians; this reduces the number of password reset tickets that bog down your service desk. Two-factor authentication ensures that the highest levels of security protocols are adhered to.
No access to your computer? The ServiceDesk Plus mobile apps have you covered
Get all service desk services on the go with ServiceDesk Plus' iOS and Android mobile apps, and enable end users to get support anytime and anywhere. End users can create tickets, view available services, access the knowledge base, and converse with technicians all from within the mobile app