Self Service Automation is one of the key trends that is being adopted to automate IT Service Desk. World is closer to technology than it was ever before and the importance of self service automation is no more argued. Who would mind using it if it reduces time to wait, and resolve your problems. Consider these facts –

• 75% of respondent said self service is convenient way to address customer service issues
• 67% of respondents said they preferred self-service over speaking to a company representative.
• 40% of respondents contact a call center have first looked for answers to their questions via self-service.

However optimistic self service automation may look unless done properly it does not work. Consider below facts and opinions –

• 91% of respondents said they would use and online knowledge base if it was tailored to their needs.
• Users do not like to read verbose pages. If the steps looks complicated they would rather call service desk. This is one of the common reason people hate self service.
• Users do not have technical know how to fix things if they are not domain experts. They are afraid to try out.
• If a technical expert is phone call away they would rather call.

How should you implement your self service automation platform to avoid common pitfalls, to stay relevant and reduce IT Service Desk Tickets.

Your self service automation platform should help you to –

1 – Users should love the page –

Users are exposed to plethora of portals. They should should not feel they are going to a legacy system. It should have sections for relevant content that they expect. It should be intuitive modeled based on corporate theme. It should be divided into categories, frequently used sections and social features like comment.

2 – Easy way to search

Different people will search for same content in different way. Go beyond just keyword search and bring in intelligence. Data suggest that 40% of people find content by searching. So look out for what people are searching for and keep improving the results. For example – “outlook is not working”, “mail is not working”, “mail issues” could mean same things to users in corporate environment.

3 – Keep your content relevant

Analyse various data sources like ticket dumps, your chat logs, user search pattern, environment changes, solution search patterns to constantly update the content. Because leave usual volume drivers other issues keep on changing. Your system should generate relevant data in order to relevant content

4 – Know how users are behaving

The self service platform should generate data to understand how users are behaving. Data like which articles they are viewing, time spent, whether their problem was resolved, what they did after that, what other articles they searched for and viewed could give lot of clues for improvement

5 – Know what users are saying

Feedback is one of the important piece of information. Collect , analyze and act promptly. One happy user would bring in others.

6 – Allow users to contribute

Let users also contribute to content. Solicit feedback continuously for changes.

7 – Make it a living site

Let website auto adjust based on usage, feed backs, success ratios. For example – it sorts articles automatically based on usage, most frequently used articles are moved automatically to relevant high visibility sections. It gives user feeling that it is not a legacy system which is not updating. Every day he will come back.

8 – Provide instant gratification

Comments and feedback can be auto published on portal with user profile pics. It motivate users to be engaged.

9 – Provide business specific insights

The portal should understand business jargon and their processes. For example integrate it with their location terminologies by integrating with AD, ip based location. This helps to pinpoint responsibilities and promote usage.

10 – Integrate with legacy systems

Integrate with AD to fetch user information, single sign on systems to make it secure and easy to use, ticketing tools so that they can be deflected before they log a ticket, chat systems so that can be redirected to existing support mechanism and if nothing works log a ticket automatically.

11 – Self Service Automation

Users do not like to read. So bring automation to your self service platform by mechanisms such as Anakage cobots which reduces users effort to resolve complicated day to day IT issues.

Sample scenario – how do we help-

Outlook is not working and user is redirected to a traditional self service article like this.

Most probably it will look daunting to him.

If he is brave enough he will start but probably give in mid way.

If it goes to a technical support person he will take 20-30 min to resolve it.

Had it been Anakage Self Service Automation platform user would solve it in as less click as possible. In most of the cases – just 1 click.

We at Anakage give you everything that is discussed above and lot more for self service automation platform and reduce IT Service Desk tickets. Read more details here. Use this form to schedule a demo to see it in action.