More technical considerations for Self-Service (part 2)

This blog part 2 continues the discussion on technical considerations for Self-Service and lists additional key aspects to successfully deploy Self-Service.

• Assure Personalization
  • Tailors content, site pages, layout, look & feel, components for the individual user when logging in.
  • Identity and authorization is important for sensitive user information & interaction.
  • Two kinds of personalization
    • Explicit personalization is driven fixed & static rules, user attributes, profile information & demographics, …
    • Implicit personalization is driven by dynamic rules and attributes such as type of device accessed from, existing customer status, products & services owned, previous clicks…
• Integrate with Identity management technologies
  • Assure connections and availability with authentication & authorization for securing user sessions
  • At minimum directory services (LDAP) and access management - Single Sign On (SSO)  and Federation Management - integration are required
  • Better are more sophisticated access control policies with integration of specialized tools for security auditing, compliance, role management, and policy administration
• Assure application-level security
  • Grant appropriate access for administrators and developers to pages/ components within the site
  • Assure Application integration to translate transactional functionality into experience
• Application Component Development
  • Component development
    • Component development allows for authorizing and deployment of independent micro-applications surfaced within the self-service pages.
    • These components are often referred to as portlets if they are built as standard JSR168/ 286 applications.
    • Widgets and Gadgets are another common component type.
  • Enable Inter-component Communication/ Events
    • Allows page components to interact with each other to create a unified user experience. A user click or entered data within one component triggers an event with another component or backend applications.
• Drive Content Integration
  • Allow for content publishing and management (articles, descriptions, documents,…) within the context of the site.
  • Cross Site Search searches within context of the portal application.
  • Use of search crawlers can be more difficult with custom application components.

The graphic as well as content from Oracle white papers has been incorporated into this article.

Key technical considerations for Self-Service (part 1)

In my previous blog I had already defined Self-Service and discussed its advantages. This blog focuses more on the technical challenges with Self-Service and offers practical guidance and action steps.

Self-Service poses a number of complex difficulties that must be examined across systems, architecture and applications. Companies need to think about issues holistically and in detail:

1. Mind overall thoughts
1. Deliver a composite/ aggregated view and unified user experience
2. Identify necessary capabilities and examine their dependencies
3. Understand complexities and risks of overall efforts
2. Define Development Framework to deliver a rich consistent experience across the Website
1. Provides developers with core libraries used for accessing data, building visualizations and session management
3. Develop roadmap
1. Self-service Websites – with their investments and efforts – tend to live for many years beyond development frameworks
2. Companies need a clear vision and plan to support and evolve the site through new features
3. Outdated frameworks create complex and costly hindrance to efforts
4. Create and manage content right
1. Content is the key driver and core unifying technology.
2. Most self-service scenarios have demanding requirements for editorial control of Web content that is being added or modified on the site.
3. Large volume of documents are to be linked off of the site, which typically requires Enterprise Content Management (ECM) capabilities for creating, maintaining and publishing those documents
5. Manage your data wisely
1. decide where customer data resides (CRM application, mainframe,…) and how the data will be integrated
6. Guarantee access to multiple back-end applications
1. Support Self-service application with necessary data from multiple application sources
2. Application functions need to be made scalable from a small number of key individuals (internal support group, HR, accounts receivable, etc.) to support a large user base that access directly the back-end applications
3. Security of the applications must be beefed up
4. Assure that existing APIs are accessible and layers/ adapters are integrated
5. Utilize SOA technologies for orchestration, scaling and data integration of backend applications
7. Reduce custom development of the core platform where the site is running on.
1. The seemingly quick implementation approach makes maintenance later cumbersome and costly
2. Use off-the shelve software where possible
8. Select a suitable platform that meets most of the core technology requirements
1. Needed capabilities include personalization, application user experience management, user access control, component development, site control & navigation, and integration of Applications, Content and Identity?
2. Portal server products & technology provide the above for self-service projects
3. Move away from providing traditional purpose-built transactional Web applications to a more rich, dynamic and streamlined user experience

The graphic as well as content has been incorporated from Oracle white papers.

Step-by-step process and practical advice to build Self-Service

There is power in simplicity. The Kiss principle (Keep it simple, Smart!) helps to make the Self-Service Journey a success.

In this article I leverage thoughts from a white paper issued by FreshService (a customer support solution provider) and propose 8 practical steps for building Self-Service.

1. Design
   1. Know your users – cannot design something for people before you know them first.
   2. Understand the unique requirements of your work force – diversity, culture, international particularities, individual requirements
   3. Observe the 4Cs of marketing – consumer, communication, convenience and communication
2. Deploy
   1. Create a concrete launch plan for your new self-service processes.
   2. Employ user portals, forums, newsletters, posters to get the word out:
      1. Educate users on deployments
      2. Establish value delivered by new processes and ability to take the concepts further
   3. Establish an early adopter user group to understand strengths & weaknesses of your offer and preemptively fix problems based on informed, constructive feedback.
3. Sustain
   1. Service management projects requires people to go the extra mile.
   2. Observe the three E’s: Engage, evaluate and evolve:
      1. Engage users in meaningful conversations through internal communities and social networks.
      2. Engaged users are the first step on the road to permanence.
      3. Encourage and truly value feedback regardless whether positive or negative.
         1. Be aware if you are not getting enough feedback. This is the biggest warning sign that you may have lost some engaged users.
4. Measure and improve
   1. Establish meaningful, right metrics. Choose carefully – rather focus on the key metrics. Avoid getting lost in too much information.
   2. Analyze how users interact with the portal. Investigate which information, content and knowledge articles are mostly requested out of the service catalog and databases.
   3. Understand and drill down on problems that plague users.
   4. Use advanced analytics. Even Google Analytics can generate valuable insight when using an ITSM cloud software.
5. Cross Sell
   1. In large organizations, especially new hires, are often not aware of services that they are entitled to.
   2. Employees often then find their own work around ways to get things accomplished, resulting in poor business efficiency or facilitating shadow IT.
   3. The self-service portal is an excellent way to start fixing communication problems.
6. Leverage
   1. The self-service portal can perform an abundance of functions across the organization:
      1. Make announcements and inform users of exact services that they are eligible.
      2. Offers platform for different business & support functions to showcase/ offer their services
   2. The service catalog is ideal when it starts to function more like an online shopping website.
      1. Learn from e-commerce vendors to boost functionality and utility of company’s service catalog.
         1. Use cross-selling techniques to suggest related services and solutions.
7. Empower your users
   1. Best IT and other support happens are empowered to solve problems on their own.
   2. It reduces load on service desk, cuts costs and exponentially increases service desk efficiency.
8. Optimize
   1. Drive standardization of self-service processes and eliminate inconsistencies.
   2. Streamline the design, deployment and management of your self-service processes.

Step-by-step process and practical advice to build Self-Service

Advances and innovations in both service management and communication technologies now offer service desks the opportunity to quickly and cost-effectively streamline their customer & user support.

This article incorporates best practices from the Service Desk Institute (SDI) and proposes 10 key enablers for organizations to build a better service desk with self-service.

1. Shift Left
   1. Move support structure as close to the customer as possible.
   2. Reduces costs and meets user & customer needs more readily.
   3. Eliminate/ reduce calls to help desk through self-service, live chat, email and community support.
   4. Shift from highly expensive interaction to cheapest forms of resolving issues.
   5. Validate the success through performance data and metrics such as
      1. First contact resolution, knowledge base utilization, customer satisfaction and call volume.
2. Constructive Call avoidance
   1. Focus on technologies and processes that remove the need for end users to contact the service desk.
   2. Minimize the most time consuming and expensive communication channels, especially telephone contact.
   3. Ensure that this approach does not detract from relationships; user satisfaction remains a central consideration.
3. Lean IT
   1. Focus on customer centricity and value recognition. Value is only what the user thinks it is.
   2. Reduce/ eliminate any activity that does not add value across the entire value chain.
   3. Maximize relationships, processes, practices, activities between IT and the rest of the business as well within the IT organization.
   4. Avoid large transformation projects, but rather focus on short data-driven, incremental improvements
   5. Ideally focus on satisfying fully the needs of a particular user group, then scale.
4. Use live chat rather than phone conversations
   1. Live chat today is an established support communication channel and part of the customer service journey.
   2. It is popular with customers and significantly reduces costs compared to phone activities.
      1. Indicative industry feedback suggests a 33% time saving of support analyst’s time.
   3. Depending on the purpose of the user, chat enjoys high adoption rates in remote support, linking to and from the service desk, etc.
5. Self-service
   1. Use of self-service facilities has spiked from 50% in 2007 to 70% in 2013.
   2. Nuance Technologies’ research reveals that 75% of surveyed believed that self-service to be a convenient way to resolve customer issues.
   3. The Better Connected SOCITM report published in 2012 estimated the average channel cost as follow: face-to-face £8.63, telephone £2.83 and £0.15 via the Web
   4. However, corporate IT service desks do not achieve the same rates of self-service utilization.
   5. True measure of self-service success is the call avoidance
   6. Some companies take radical steps and make self-service the only channel on particular days.
   7. Important to gain top-level management engaged in self-service and then cascade down.
   8. It also requires a comprehensive marketing program to support self-service efforts.
   9. Consider and try different innovative ways to increase self-service use.
6. Self-Help
   1. Self-help follows a similar trend as self-service
   2. Different kinds of self-help
      1. Provision of knowledge through blogs, FAQs, forums, shared documents
      2. Tasks that the user wants to accomplish (password reset, Allowing Users to log a call and see the status of their call, etc.)
   3. It is not about the technology, but what comes from the productive use of the technology.
   4. It is the end user that ultimate decides on the value.
7. Super users
   1. Their role is broader than that of a technology user expert:
      1. The Technology user expert adds to the support structure, influences strategic decisions for service desk, filters requests and issues on behalf of the user community, provides business knowledge & insight on evaluation of processes and services.
8. Social IT
   1. Through community based support companies have been able to shift their support structure and put peer-to-peer support at the center.
   2. The impact of social media is staggering. Facebook and Twitter have had massive impact on how people communicate as a starting point.
   3. Social media has removed the need for telephone calls and emails especially for young people.
   4. Unfortunately Social Media has not been adopted much by IT service desk industry.
   5. The adoption rate between 2009 and 2013 has only experienced a few percent rise, except of Twitter (which is due to higher uptake of higher education organizations and their service desks).
9. Use of knowledge
   1. The ROI on knowledge articles and other efforts is difficult to measure.
   2. Knowledge can be explicit (written down or tangible) or tacit (intangible, gleaned through experience and interaction, thus unseen until shared).
   3. Xerox claims that through it Eureka database and communicating copier repair tips among technicians it could cut costs by about 10%.
   4. Knowledge to be effective must carry a number of key attributes.
      1. Accessible
         1. It is all about the search function. Without good search function people will not be able to locate information in reasonable time frame.
      2. Concise
         1. Articles are to be brief and focused.
         2. Important points must not be buried inside a long report.
      3. Up to date
         1. Update articles as technology, processes or other factors change.
      4. Trustworthy
         1. Accuracy must protect the reputation of the KM system.
         2. Establish a virtual team of moderators to review articles and ensure consistently high quality.
10. Integrate and automate technologies & systems
    1. Technology based challenges with systems struggling to communicate with each other require unnecessary manual intervention and processing. It adversely affects the service desk’s ability to innovate and streamline operations.
    2. Overcoming these challenges helps the integration of systems and automation of processes.
    3. Leverage APIs to integrate tools and technologies.
    4. Move step by step. Integrate specific technology groups or work toward a defined outcome.
    5. Focus on all tasks that are highly manual labor intensive and time consuming. Automatize as much as feasible.
       1. Set up systems to automatically assign priorities based on SLAs.

 

For more insight and best practices for service desk and self-service/ self-help, please refer to my other related blogs

Self-Service an important function & channel to improve user experience and reap other company benefits

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
  • Instead it is an ongoing process of adaptation and improvement
  • Poor Self-service can result in even a higher burden to the service desk!
• 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.
  • 20 percent of areas/ content cover 80 percent of user needs.
• 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
  • Typically at least 20 percent (or more) of people in companies do not want to use self-help
• Identify the issues that generate most of the requests to the service desks and offer self-service mechanisms
  • Examples of high volume requests: Password resets
• Automatize or offer self-service mechanisms for mundane tasks
  • helps personnel focus on more interesting work and develop more 2^nd level support abilities; will reduce staff turnover
• 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.
  • Incentivize key contributors through honor badges and other forms of recognition.

A 10 Step implementation process for Self-Service

1. Determine the overall need & opportunity
   1. Identify best to serve user and customer segments/ groups
2. Define the service with specific value contributions
3. Develop and present a sound business case including…
   1. Situation analysis, goals and expected benefits
   2. Calculate cost components (development, implementation, run costs, etc.) and TCO
   3. Propose solution with expected quantified cost savings
4. Assemble team end develop plan
   1. Form a cross functional team of subject matter experts
      1. Use marketing for key communication & culture change support
   2. Appoint driver of self-service transformation & program
   3. Ensure full executive support
5. Design portal with excellent user experience
   1. Determine and prepare key information and search mechanisms
6. Define suitable solution architecture
   1. Modularity, Integration with overall platforms, systems, databases, connections & bandwidth, personalization, etc.
   2. Align with organization and corporate website
7. Select suitable technology
   1. Must support current and foreseeable future user needs
8. Develop roadmap, release plan and roll out in stages
   1. Keep content, applications and platform current
9. Drive progress
   1. Take advantage of “low hanging fruits”
   2. Follow your roadmap
   3. Communicate successes across the organization
   4. Engage users, form and support self-service communities
10. Proactively gather feedback and improve upon your efforts upon it
    1. Establish and monitor key metrics
    2. 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