IT service management is a term that refers to “implementing, managing, and delivering quality services in the best way possible.” This is to meet the needs of any business and to add value to it.
Take an example of seeing through a computer. A black screen with endless lines of codes and made-up variables. The numbers and variables in different colors may not make a lot of sense for most people without a user-friendly interface to interpret them. Besides, siloing discourages collaboration between employees and teams. Collaboration can be the key to improving the overall business.
An IT service management does exactly this. As a bridge between the employees and the daily digital operations, it serves as a friendly interface. Team members and employees are able to collaborate effectively with support representatives. Digital solutions and technology can be made accessible for employees. It allows them to communicate their needs more effectively by creating a safe and efficient way to run technology-driven business activities.
So, it is clear that IT service desks need to assist promptly and efficiently. Service desks are the primary point of contact between the customer (who can be an internal employee too) and the company. Hence, it is essential for all IT interactions to have a successful conclusion. Unfortunately, most companies’ IT support desks are overburdened due to mishandled and disorganized requests. This mismanagement can create friction between the callers and the brand. It can also compromise the morale of your team and hamper their productivity. In this article, I am going to discuss some trending ways to conquer the daily roadblocks and manage the IT service requests and ticket processes by framing common strategies.
But First, What Exactly Is IT Service Request
When it comes to software upgrades, device enhancements, application access, and so on, IT teams receive a wide range of requests from their customers. These types of requests are called IT service requests. The process through which these requests are handled is called request fulfillment.
Service Request Fulfillment Process
Here is the service request fulfillment process, in brief:
- The brand receives a customer request through the service portal or email.
- The IT team assesses the request with pre-defined approval and qualification processes.
- If needed, they can send the request to other departments for approval.
- An agent who is assigned to the query will work to fulfill the request.
- Agents can forward the request to higher authorities too.
- The agent will close the ticket and consult the customer to ensure that they are satisfied.
Ways To Manage IT Service Requests and Ticket Process Together
Now that we know about IT service requests and request fulfillment, let’s look at some of the best practices to ensure the utmost efficiency. Here are a few ways in which you can improve how brands can handle incidents and requests.
1. The Concept Of “Shift Left”
In order to move out of a chaotic service request mess, one popular solution is to “shift left.” So, what does it mean? It is moving the request fulfillment as close to the customer as possible. It improves the customer experience by speeding up the resolution time, simplifying support activities, and reducing the overall support cost.
Shift Left Concept
For example, a knowledge base with filters and searchable articles can work wonders in deflecting tickets. You can reduce long back-and-forth conversations by customizing your request intake forms. Many brands create a self-service portal only for it to gather (metaphorical) dust. Learn from their mistakes. Your self-service systems are worthless if customers cannot easily find them.
2. Centralization
In many environments, support agents with no set system find themselves in a disorganized flood of questions. End users who’re desperate for help may log service requests through a range of channels (including email, phone, chat, and social media.) Customers may even choose to raise the issue in person.
Customers do not like to jump from one place to another in order to solve their queries. Hence, centralization always works. It is crucial to have effective procedures and centralized service request management. And, with the best IT ticketing system, everything is possible. With the best service desk software, you can channel requests from multiple channels through a single platform.
3. Self-Help Options
Managing IT service requests is sometimes pure math and easy to understand. When the incoming tickets reduce, the satisfaction levels go up. And when you offer self-service solutions, the incoming tickets will surely go down. It’ll be easier for your support reps and end-users if you provide clear instructions and improved visibility. An integrated knowledge base feature will help customers address issues independently without creating a ticket.
A self-service knowledge base enhanced with good UI and UX will empower and attract users more than you can imagine. Some benefits of self-service features include:
- Easily adaptable
- Customers will become self-reliant
- Quick and reliable solutions
- Support cost reduction
- Boosts social engagement
- Increases customer satisfaction & success
4. Collect The Right Metrics
The type of data you collect and analyze says a lot about your business. It can show you the loopholes and problems with your service flows. Plus, it is better to keep an eye on everything. Through metrics, you can determine everything, be it:
- A drop in your service levels
- A drop in the overall customer satisfaction
- If your resolution time is dragging out
- Hold times are creeping upwards
In-depth analytics can help you find out the problem from its crux. It will also help you find out agent performance and will empower you to help them if they lag. Things could be less intense than you thought, or they could be worse than you expected, but it’s a good idea to know exactly where you stand. This way, you can map out a way quickly.
5. Sorting Requests and Incidents
Most of the time, many incidents/requests are repetitive and do not require human attention. Some are of low priority and can be handled later. If you have a system in place to sort the different kinds of queries, it’ll be easier to deal with them productively. Start with prioritizing the most common or popular requests first. You’ll probably have a previous record that provides a successful solution to the query. Save them and use them to send them again to the customers with similar queries.
Following this process will help you tackle multiple queries quickly. It’ll help your agents to focus on more intensive issues that require human input. It’ll help you handle requests and incidents that benefit the customer and companies first before moving on to the less critical queries.
6. Be Ready To Scale Up: Always!
As your brand grows, delivering support becomes increasingly important and increasingly complex. More teams get involved in managing queues of requests. With more need to delegate responsibilities and maintain collaboration, context is often sacrificed. Hence make sure you choose the best IT ticketing system that allows you to scale without any compromise in your current workflow.
Service Requests And Ticket Management: Best Practices
So we went through some trending ways to create efficient service requests management processes. Now let us look at some best practices and do’s and don’ts for service request management and ticket management. Consider these six tips:
- Begin with the most common and simple requests. Once you define them, it’ll provide immediate value to customers and allow the IT team to learn as they build out future processes.
- Document all your requirements for your service requests, be it question fields, approval processes, fulfillment procedures, process owners, SLAs, metrics, reporting, etc. This will allow the support team to best manage the request offerings.
- Capture all the information needed to start the request upon intake, but do not overload the customers with redundant questions.
- Standardize all your processes and automate processes wherever possible.
- Keep reviewing the request fulfillment processes to identify which support employee/team is/are responsible for completing the request. You can also streamline this process with automation.
- Identify what information must be available in the knowledge base. Do not forget that the overall goal of self-service is to give your customers what they want faster and to deflect requests wherever possible.
The Bottomline
The best IT ticketing system caters to all customer support needs from small to large businesses. Here are some must-have features of the best service desk software:
- Smart ticket management
- Faster ticket import
- Collision detection
- Chat within the tickets
- Smart ticket assignment
- Canned responses
- Measure SLA performance
- Omnichannel features (email, FAQs, feedback forms)
- Shared Inbox
- To-do lists with integrated calendar
- Self-service (Knowledge base, FAQs, video tutorials)
- Customization
- Data tracking and analytics
So, are you ready to take your IT service request management to the next level?
