5 Self-service challenges and how to solve them
Self-service as a function has become ubiquitous, whether employed to improve customer satisfaction, employee engagement or both. With the slow but sure transition to a hybrid working model, customers (and employees) have begun to demand a better experience when it comes to servicing and issue resolution. According to The Hackett Group 2022 Key Issues Study, self-service automation has seen the most common shift in technology function workload for three years in a row. This is true for both the hybrid workforce and the engage-from-anywhere model. This is backed by data for the virtual assistant and chatbot deployments of today (at 67%) with the 2020 study (at 48%).
With many companies looking to accelerate the digital transformation of their businesses, self-service will serve as one of the catalysts. Let’s take a look at some challenges in implementing self-service for your employees and how to solve them.
1. Creating awareness of the solution
Surprisingly enough, employees do not know where to look when they have an issue. The preferred approach is to message an IT agent or raise a ticket. This simply boils down to the failure in communicating, clearly and consistently, about the existence of a solution. Most employees would rather reach out to someone personally instead of browsing a self-service portal. Even though it has the answers to the most common problems.
How do you solve this?
It is not only important to provide an elegant solution to solve employees’ problems but also to put them where they can see them. An internal campaign that markets the existence of a self-service solution is a no-brainer tactic. Live sessions with a Q&A section or even demo recordings help users appreciate the usefulness of the self-service model. Self-service portals should be designed to empower end-users. They should learn to raise tickets on their own and also track the progress. Getting some of your own employees, spread across business units, to be internal change champions helps in bringing about trust in the process and improves user adoption rate among their peers.
2. Reaching users where they are
Self-service today is a lot more personalized compared to just a few years back. Thanks to a lot more awareness and diligence in consumer self-service, employees also demand the same level of satisfaction at work. Employees also don’t want to spend a lot of time poring over pages of support articles. It can result in a drop in productivity and overall morale.
How do you solve this?
One of the easiest ways to get employees to adopt the self-service model is to take the solution to them. That means making self-service information accessible wherever the users are. For example, any internal communication platform like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Deploying a virtual agent dealing with your employees frees up your agents’ time from mundane tasks. If raising a ticket is as easy as sending a direct message, it creates a sense of familiarity. A custom self-service portal that is designed according to your branding guidelines also helps immensely.
3. Catering to your target audience
A bad representation creates a bad impression. A poorly designed portal erodes employees’ trust in the self-service model and can result in the neglect of the portal entirely. Additionally, it can have a detrimental effect and lead to an explosion in the number of tickets raised through agents directly. Overall, this can also result in dissatisfaction.
According to a Harvard Business Review study sponsored by Freshworks, 82% say employees’ happiness on the job is significantly impacted by how well their workplace technology performs.
How do you solve this?
Start from the bottom and build it up. Analyse the most frequent queries or issues that employees have and put them up first. Create categories in your self-service portal that are geared to how your different business teams function across the organization. For example, design separate sections for marketing, product and sales ask. This saves time and makes it easier for users to navigate to the right service item.
4. Updating your knowledge base
A knowledge base is one of the most important pillars of a self-service portal. There is often a thin line between having a good knowledge base and information overload. It is important to keep in mind that your knowledge base articles are helping solve problems for folks like you and me. As your business grows, the complexity of the problems end-users face will inevitably grow. Therefore, your self-service portal becomes a living document rather than a one-and-done deal. It should also be designed for scale and usability.
How do you solve this?
Update your knowledge base at regular intervals. Especially before important events like a major product update. Also, when updating keep in mind the requirements of the user. It has to offer quick solutions for an end-user looking to solve a specific problem. Use the activity of updating information to also weed out unnecessary or outdated support articles. For better execution, having a knowledge manager who can run this program can be of immense help.
5. Monitoring and Reporting
Building a self-service portal is not an independent activity. It actually ties in with the overall mandate of improving IT agent productivity as well as helping create a habit of self-service for your end-users. According to the Hackett Group Study mentioned above, Enabling digital workplaces is one of the top 5 key issues for executives in 2022. Having a user-friendly portal helps in achieving that priority.
How do you solve this?
As with any software, your self-service portal generates tons of data on user behaviour. This includes important information like the top search queries in your portal, the actual number of tickets raised over a specific time period (week, month etc.), average resolution times of your IT team…you get the idea. This is the best feedback you can get from your end-users. Use these insights to figure out how to improve your portal and gear it for a better user experience. Compile monthly reports using the data to track usage and improvement in key metrics for your portal.
Interested in reading more about how to design your self-service portal? Check out how you can re-imagine IT self-service for the best employee experience.
