Increasing push for Self-service
Consumers,
companies, partners, suppliers, public administration and many other industry
players & stakeholders are embracing the benefits of self-service.
Top drivers
of Self-service are budgetary, staffing
and 24/7 support demands plus many other advantages (user empowerment,
additional service channel, transparency, analytics into user behavior, service
desk freed from mundane task to up-skill and provide quality service on key
issues).
Over 80
percent of all companies across industries have started or planning to start
self-service initiatives and programs. With nearly every company of a
particular size benefiting from self-service, there is a huge market and
business opportunity for vendors, consultancies and systems & application
integrators.
Mobility, in-depth
consumer insight, global fierce completion with alternative offerings and ease
to switch, and high service standards set by top digital leaders are consumers
to expect increasingly better service.
Service
desks will need to adapt and change to meet those user expectations and
requirement through innovative service offerings and delivery. Self-service is on part of the solution.
Users are
increasingly tech savvy, IT able and willing to initiate their own service
request, undertake self-diagnosis and look to self-help to provide them with
solutions to their problems. Some research indicates that a large percentage of
consumers already considers self-service as the preferred channel to gather
information, conduct transactions and solve problems. This is particularly true
for mobile users and young people who grow up in the digital age.
Self-service
can lead to a faster and better user support in key areas and can help increase
overall user/ customer satisfaction.
Definitions
Self-service
refers to the process by which customers or users can help themselves. The
customers or users deliver their own service without the need for help or
intervention. Self-services is useful as it reduces the number of calls to
Service Desks (increasing productivity, efficiency and cost savings), empowers
users to initiate requests (helping to customize services to real needs) and
helps overall streamline operations and make them more agile.
Self-help
offer users the ability to diagnose/ troubleshoot their own problems and find/
administer their own solutions. FAQs or wikis are the most basic self-help functions.
A
Self-service portal is a Website that enables users to perform to gather
information, resolve issues and conduct transactions.
Web
self-service is a type of electronic support that allows customers and
employees access information and perform routine tasks over the Internet
without requiring any interaction with a representative of an enterprise. WSS
is widely used in CRM and employee relationship management (ERM).
Overall challenges
In many
cases self-support is still immature in many companies, due to a number of
challenges
- Lack of
time, resources, knowledge & IT literacy, budget and demand from users.
- Company
culture (users accustomed to phone up the Service desk; up to 40 percent of
employees do not want to use self-help tools)
-
Reluctance to change
- Correct
processes & procedures have not yet been formalized.
- Lack of
ownership to drive and manage the self-support function.
- End users
are not involved enough.
- Difficult
to up-keep knowledge and content
- Different
user devices (BYOD), number of channels and expectation of individualization
increases complexity and costs
Technical challenges
Many
users need to connect now with backend systems that have never been designed
for more than a limited number of users.
Self-service
must integrate with SharePoint, social media, federated knowledge sourcing
while supporting personalization, dynamic mapping to multiple information
sources (wikis, knowledge articles, document stores and multiple websites)
Old
systems with lack of scalability and modularity lead to performance problems.
It
is a complex task to create a robust and effective self-support solution.
It
requires input from many stakeholders and department across the organization
(management, HR, finance, compliance & legal, IT, etc.)
Common Mistakes with Self-Publishing tools
Some
companies believe that a self-service desk is a one-time investment/ effort
Neglected,
insufficient or misapplied use of metrics
Content
and knowledge are not up-to-date, poorly structured, too overwhelming or
lacking important pieces
Data
and knowledge are not in sink/ integrated across the different channels,
functions and databases
Ignorance
about key numbers
total
costs of service desks, total costs of self-service, cost savings and other
value generated to support an ongoing business case
Inability
to demonstrate savings & value will undermine management confidence and
undermine overall support
Keys to success
Develop
an easy logical tree structure for the self-service content
Focus
on the important. Ensure good readability. Do not put up all information.
Focus
on adding true, tangible value to the users
Establish
sound metrics to cover all key areas
Monitor
progress through metrics and Analytics
Continuously
fine-tune, improve and adapt
Identify
the people/ groups that do not use self-help and investigate root causes
Identify
the issues that generate most of the requests to the service desks and offer
self-service mechanisms
Automatize
or offer self-service mechanisms for mundane tasks
Create
service catalog and measure/ track cost of service provision and cost of
contact
Try
to establish costs of users’ work time spent on solving their own issues
(productivity cost)
Deploy
the marketing function to raise awareness about self-service tools and
encourage people to use it.
Build
and support community groups where users help each other on issues.
A 10 Step implementation process for
Self-Service
Determine the overall need &
opportunity
Identify best to serve user and
customer segments/ groups
Define the service with specific value
contributions
Develop and present a sound business
case including…
Situation analysis, goals and
expected benefits
Calculate cost components
(development, implementation, run costs, etc.) and TCO
Propose solution with expected quantified
cost savings
Assemble team end develop plan
Form a cross functional team of
subject matter experts
Use
marketing for key communication & culture change support
Appoint driver of self-service
transformation & program
Ensure full executive support
Design portal with excellent user
experience
Determine and prepare key
information and search mechanisms
Define suitable solution
architecture
Modularity, Integration with overall
platforms, systems, databases, connections & bandwidth, personalization, etc.
Align with organization and
corporate website
Select suitable technology
Must support current and foreseeable
future user needs
Develop roadmap, release plan and
roll out in stages
Keep content, applications and
platform current
Drive progress
Take advantage of “low hanging
fruits”
Follow your roadmap
Communicate successes across the
organization
Engage users, form and support
self-service communities
Proactively gather feedback and
improve upon your efforts upon it
Establish and monitor key metrics
Track ROI of individual and overall
efforts
Conclusion
Almost
every company needs to offer self-service functionality for employees,
customers, partners, suppliers and other counterparts. It is a huge market for
vendors, consultancies and system integrators.
This
article has shared with you advantages as well as business, technical and other
challenges. It also offered an approach to help companies develop and implement
self-service in their organizations.
For further
discussion, questions or mutual sharing of best practices, please contact me
directly at alexwsteinberg@gmail.com