IT professionals responsible for support activities are constantly seeking to improve their processes and optimize their daily actions. We can imagine that even while sleeping, these information managers dream about the perfect tools and solutions fully adapted to their problems. How to make this dream a reality they say? How to provide the best service to my clients while facilitating the process of working for my employees?
Among the core process of service management essential to the proper conduct of a support department, there is the inclusion of a self-service portal. This web portal proves a key on the timely resolution of incidents as well as to document and provide tools to resources concerned.
This portal should include some features that would make it a self-serve dreamed.
Immediacy
Today, we are promised heaven and earth in terms of speed. The process of self-service is no exception to this pledge. However, a virtual portal can be fast without being specific. The basic process suggest that the client may submit an application through a web portal and, at any time. But what about the status of this request? Can the customer see and track the requests in real time?
Few tools will allow this interaction, allowing a transparent two-way process. In an ideal situation, the client may also be able to contact the resource and inform him of changes or comments. The concept of immediacy is therefore closely linked to:
- the transparency of the process
- the real-time visualization of the progress of the claim
- a bi-directional communication between the client and the resource
Ease of use and optimize the user experience
The portal should also be simple and effective to use. The categorization of queries and many other parameters, allow adequate resources to meet the needs and expectations of the client. Maximize this setting aims to optimize both the availability and the integration of your customer service.
The portal must be easily integrated into the business environment, minimize processing times and provide the user with a personalized treatment, listening to users and oriented according to their experience.
In an ideal self-service online portal, a fund of information resources should be available to not spend time dealing with frequent and repetitive queries. This allows universal resolution for common problems and let the resources to focus on difficult queries or problem management.
The online portal and the catalog
The ticket must be able to establish a complete record of information captured and entered by the user, thereby initiating a particular action upon submission of an application, or integrate the web portal in another IT infrastructure of the company.
That said, considering the latest market trends in IT service management, the portal must not only be accessible at any time, but it must also build bridges with the service catalog. The portal becomes a real shopping cart where the customer can purchase a service derived from the service catalog. This process reduces the number of requests for services and increases the degree of customer satisfaction.
Focus on support
The main reason for a web self-service portal is primarily to offer 24/7 support to customers while optimizing resources time on incidents without any interruption. Resource or end users independance is a definite asset.
In sum, the dremed self-serve portal is an essential tool to reduce the number of calls to customer service and fits into your chain of service as a entry point, always open to an unlimited number of client access.