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