IT professionals responsible for support activities constantly seek to improve their processes and optimize their daily actions. Even while sleeping, we can imagine these information managers dreaming 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 is the inclusion of a self-service portal. This web portal proves key to the timely resolution of incidents and to document and provide tools to the resources concerned. This portal should include some features that would make it a self-serve dream.
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 suggests that the client may submit an application through a web portal anytime. 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 can also 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. Maximizing this setting aims to optimize both your customer service's availability and integration.
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 being oriented according to their experience.
In an ideal self-service online portal, a fund of information resources should be available not to spend time dealing with frequent and repetitive queries. This allows universal resolution for common problems and lets the resources focus on difficult queries or problem management.
The online portal and the catalogue
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 integrating 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 catalogue. The portal becomes a real shopping cart where the customer can purchase a service derived from the service catalogue. 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' independence is a definite asset.
In sum, the dreamed self-serve portal is an essential tool to reduce the number of calls to customer service and fits into your chain of service as an entry point, always open to unlimited client access.
