Coffee Chat on May 17 at 11:00 AM EST: Successfully implementing self-service within an organization

Can imagine @akshara.sruthi !! But thats @manns for you - thank you for the insights!

@keefe.andrews I’ve something I wrote previously (elsewhere) to drop in on this for Q4. :)

Well done! Thank you so much for taking the time to work on this. Really appreciate all these insights from you. 

@manns - ha ha ha! Can relate!! I keep pressing the refresh button!

#same 😅

A4. For me, this comes down to a variety of factors. It needs to start with understanding employee wants and needs, such that an employee-centric – rather than IT-centric – self-service capability is created. This can be viewed as part of the required organizational change management investment that’s focused on managing the people-change aspects of introducing self-service capabilities (as per @keefe.andrews’ points).

I’ve copied this “what’s needed” text from something I wrote previously (https://itsm.tools/overview-of-organizational-change-management/) :

1. Communication, including the why, what, and how. Communication is one of the most critical aspects of organizational change management and should be approached as such. The messages, frequency, and delivery methods must be carefully considered, especially for different audiences.
2. Involvement of all who are affected by the change. Importantly, people should be involved from the very beginning. This includes those who’ll be directly affected by the change and everyone who might be impacted. And involvement is not just “the receipt of communications”; it’s also the ability to have personal opinions and feedback heard and considered.
3. Addressing the “fear of the unknown” and minimizing resistance. Resistance to change can be a change killer, with it caused by a variety of factors. For example, a lack of understanding, not seeing the benefits (personally), not feeling prepared, or the fear of the unknown. Rumors caused by a lack of communication are often the cause of fear and resistance.
4. Gaining buy-in. This starts with strong leadership and the visible buy-in at a senior level. Generating interest with effective communications then helps. But ultimately, buy-in is very personal, and individuals will need to be convinced either directly or via the standing of their peers that a change is the right thing for everyone affected. Ultimately, people will need to know the “what’s in it for me?” before embracing change.
5. Education and training. Education is very much about people understanding everything they need to about the change. This includes that the change is coming, and when and the why, what, and how. Training is required to ensure that people are ready for the post-change world. For example, this might be training on how a new system and associated processes work. Also, training (and retraining) needs to be made available long after a change has been affected.

• Not having enough information on topics to be covered
• Articles not presented in an easily consumable format or
• Not writing for the average user in mind
• A lot feedback can be sought but if it’s not organized, it’s quite difficult to track and implement. ​​​

filing this in my “things to watch out for” folder!!!

I can’t post for some reason - might be the image

Must have been

once again constant refreshing and nothing new 😭

A4. Communication - Empathy - Simplicity - Organization
I feel these are core to encourage employees to use the self-service opportunities they have. 

To deep dive:

• Communicate the need, benefits and process behind introducing the self-service portal
• Empathise with the need of your employees and this will help in building and making the self-service portal better - in terms of content, design, steps involved etc. Take feedback and act on it.
• Simplify as much as possible and make it clear to understand so that the resistance to put it into use is also nil or minimal.
• Organizing or structing the contents within the self-service portal is key. We do not want yet another content overwhelm which nobody uses. Categorize them efficiently and feature what’s really required and helpful for your employees.

A4. (part 2) We can also see that, for the HappySignals customers focused on improving the employee experience, self-service portal usage has grown at the expense of email and phone channels…

<<removed the image I wanted to share here - it showed ~38% self-service use>>

Source: https://www.happysignals.com/global-it-experience-benchmark

But this higher usage isn’t everything. Based on 393,425 pieces of feedback over six months, the self-service portal has the:

• Lowest level of happiness (73) – although, as with all “remote” channels, this has risen significantly with the increase in remote working
• Highest level of lost productivity bar email at 3 hours and 51 mins – 78% more than with the telephone channel.

We can see how these customers (a mix of older and new customers) have improved both of these stats over time:

So things are definitely getting better for some organizations even though there’s still more work to be done.

Since we’re running out of time and lot’s more to talk, I’m posting the last two questions together:

Q5: What are some of the good or best practices you’ve adopted to drive your self-service success?

Q6: Have you extended your IT self-service portal to other business functions? If so, what was involved?

Here’s the missing image (hopefully)

A5. These are some standard points I talk to when it comes to winning with self-service:

1. Focus on what’s needed for employee adoption. Importantly, employees won’t automatically use self-service capabilities just because they do in their personal lives. So, corporate self-service capabilities must be as good as consumer-world self-service. Plus…
2. Recognize that self-service is a people-change initiative. It’s a change to the existing way of working, not just introducing new technology. You need to apply organizational change management tools and techniques.
3. Focus self-service on better employee experiences, not cost savings. When self-service capabilities are created based on employee expectations, the higher usage volumes will allow the anticipated benefits to be achieved.
4. Design self-service capabilities with the end-user front of mind. Don’t be swayed by the IT-led view of how self-service should work.
5. Don’t overlook self-help. The real benefits for IT, employees, and the organization’s bottom line come from self-help. This needs effective knowledge management and automation. Increasingly “smart knowledge management” and “intelligent automation” that leverage AI-enabled capabilities.
6. Use the Level Zero Solvable technique (this is a link to an HDI paper). It helps to ensure that self-help knowledge articles are sufficient – in both quantity and quality terms.
7. Still offer a choice of support channel. Self-service will not always be the right channel. So, provide a range of support channels. You can always make self-service the best channel (in the eyes of employees) such that it’s likely chosen.
8. Appreciate that your self-service journey will never end. Expectations will change over time, so regularly assess your self-service capabilities and take the opportunities to improve them further. Measure self-service performance and course-correct as needed.

A6. The aforementioned Freshworks survey found that 44% of organizations had already shared their self-service capabilities with other business functions as follows:

• Human resources (HR) – 30% (this is 68% of the organizations that had shared their IT self-service capabilities)
• Finance – 20%
• Facilities – 19%
• Security – 17%
• Business operations – 15%
• Customer service – 13%
• Procurement – 12%
• Legal – 12%
• Sales and marketing – 12% (this is 27% of the organizations that had shared their IT self-service capabilities)

A6. (part 2) This Freshworks survey level of self-service adoption was echoed in the AXELOS ITSM Benchmarking Survey, which found that 46% of organizations had shared the IT self-service portal with other business functions:

This data was correlated with the reported level of ITSM success – that 83% of the organizations with “great” ITSM success had shared their ITSM tool’s self-service portal capabilities with other business functions. In contrast, the lowest level of self-service portal sharing was for organizations with “we’ve still much to improve upon” at one-third (33%).

In some ways, this aligns with the need to optimize ITSM capabilities before sharing them with other business functions. Self-service is not an exception :)

Amazing coffee chat!! so much good information!

Thank you @manns and the freshworks crew for coordinating 😁

It’s so good to share what works (and what doesn’t) 😀

How wonderfully buzzing this conversation was with stats, information and learnings. Thank you @manns for taking out time to share your knowledge with us and thanks to the rest of the community for actively engaging, listening and sharing to this conversation. Looking forward to the next one :D

Thank you so much for all your amazing data-driven insights, @manns ☕

And really appreciate everyone chiming in with all the lessons learnt over the years - @foxcubmama, @mrsamydavies @rashmi.nag @Isaac Thomas @WHeine @jwicker @keefe.andrews @Josh.Slocum, 

 
It was a great chatting away about implementing self-service within an organization. Feel free to keep the conversation going everyone! 😀

I look forward to hosting another session! Until then, stay safe wherever you are in the world and have a good day/night ahead. 

Thanks @rashmi.nag, this was great fun and entertaining (especially as I’m quarantining due to (finally catching) COVID right now).

Take care and sending you all the healing energy that you need, @manns