Provance ITSM: Why Implement a Self-Service Portal? I'll give you 5 Big Reasons

As technology has made our lives easier; expectations about customer service have risen. This increase in expectations and demands will impact how IT must respond and support their colleagues across the entire organization. A self-service portal will help IT to meet these new expectations. Here are 5 reasons why:

1) A Self-Service Portal Lets Us Solve Our Own Problems Whenever Possible: Can you imagine if you had to make a phone call and wait on hold every time you wanted to change a password? Or modify your address? Human beings put people on the moon and so we should be able to follow 9 steps outlined in an article without speaking to someone. There are so many times when we just need to know how to do something minor and if we can just quickly read how, we’re much happier. According to Forbes (and several other sources if you just search online) millennials want “digital, streamlined, mobile-friendly assistance whenever it makes the most sense, and they want the best of human assistance wherever that digital support is lacking…the last thing millennials want is for human employees to gum up the works where technology can be more efficient.” A self-service portal lets people solve their own problems quickly, without having to speak to someone. You should provide people with what they want whenever possible (especially since it benefits you too, read the other reasons why).

2) A Self-Service Portal Can Let You Reduce the Number of Tickets Received: Obviously, by giving people the right answer to their problems, allowing them to fix it on their own, they won’t request help from you. Consequently, the clearer your instructions and the easier the resolution is, the better off you’ll be, which is why you should also adopt a knowledge management program. Additionally, a self-service portal, like ServiceTeam ITSM, can also notify people of known issues, thereby preventing tickets being created and your team being overwhelmed whenever they’re in the process of fixing an issue that impacts multiple users.

3) A Self-Service Portal Can Help People Efficiently Communicate and Resolve Issues: Certainly, having one place where employees can go to easily look up and fix a problem, log an issue or request a change is more efficient than searching for a resolution or contact info or trawling through endless email threads. If an issue, change or service request comes to the Service Desk, it can also be triaged so that it can be easily managed or routed to the most effective problem solvers or the approval team, which contributes to an efficient resolution. Finally, the Service Desk can therefore go to one place to ask questions or update employees regarding the status of the issue. A good ITSM solution, like ServiceTeam ITSM, would track all conversations and approvals and allow for notes taken, which can then go towards the creation of a knowledgebase article. If your ITSM solution has ticket templating (whereby an end user is asked for specific information or a series of questions before the ticket is submitted) or automation capabilities that can be triggered based on a ticket being submitted (for issues or repetitive queries), then issues are even more efficiently resolved. Additionally, you can also set up a bot that can provide some questions and elicit answers or provide information (for example, simple questions such as who are you and what’s your issue and then recommend knowledge articles via a chat session), again, helping to efficiently resolve issues. At the end of the day, a self-service portal can efficiently support and inform both agents and end users.

4) A Great Self-Service Portal Reduces Costs: People cost money. People who make mistakes cost even more money. People are rarely able to go through a day without making any mistakes. What can I say—we’re all human. So, the more you can get people to help themselves, and have a self-service portal that handles frequent and repetitive tasks, the more you’ll reduce your costs because there will be little interaction with your Service Desk. And if you also leverage automation and ticket templating, you’ll save even more.

5) A Self-Service Portal is Always Working: Many companies now span the world and people need assistance all hours of the day, all days of the week. They often expect immediate resolution and if it’s not given, they see it as an example of poor customer service. A self-service portal lets them try to figure out their problem, log their issue, request a change, or request service no matter the time or the day. A self-service portal will let you be open for business even when you’re not.

So there you have it. Want to learn more about ServiceTeam ITSM Self-Service-Portal? Book a demo today!