Hi is there a calendar/zoom link for this event? Would love to attend. Thx!

A2. (part 3) A 2022 ITSM Benchmarking survey, this time with AXELOS, also found that self-service is still an ITSM capability that organizations struggle with:

This data can be filtered to show the percentages based on self-service adoption:

Dipping into the survey detail:

• The largest organizations (5000+ employees) were the most likely to have service catalog/self-service capabilities in place, but they weren’t the most likely to have them “working well”; these were the organizations with 500–999 employees.
• The organizations in Australasia were the most likely to report their service catalog/self-service capabilities as “working well” (please note the small sample size).

*** Self-service is definitely an area for many organizations that have struggled despite having good intentions ***

@Isaac Thomas one of the biggest time savers we recognized was with our employee onboarding process. Using the Service Catalog and workflow automator we took a process that took 30 minutes down to just one or two minutes. With an average of 50 new hires a year (lots of internships) we are saving 25 work hours a year. 

Good Morning from Sydney,

With the time zone difference the event is in the middle of the night, is it going to be recorded and made available to view later?

Regards

Rob

Lets go!

Hello

Joining in for the first time here :)

A1 we have grown quickly and we need to scale and also strengthen the access to knowledge which is why we are now looking at self-service as a general principle across all of our departments and not just limited to IT.

A1. OK, I’m twitching to type. So here’s my starting position on this :)

Self-service offers “better, faster, cheaper” IT service and support capabilities – but the primary motivation matters so much. Aiming to reduce IT costs (by letting end-users help themselves) or reducing ticket volumes through “deflection” (a horrible word that’s still used in IT support) is not the best focus for self-service initiatives.

Instead, “better, faster, cheaper” should be viewed in this order – that the focus on being better (think better employee experiences) means faster service and support experiences that ultimately reduce costs.

I’ll share some usage and success stats later, but I’d be willing to bet your organization’s primary motivation for self-service will have influenced how it has fared so far.

@manns 

A1. We are finding that many of our team members are asking for self service capabilities and they like being able to solve their own requests in terms of getting equipment or approvals. We also found that we can standardize the inputs that we want from our team members which expedites our service request processing. 

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.

Here’s the missing image (hopefully)

Self service is so important! Great topic - I hope I can attend live but otherwise I’ll chime in after seeing all the smart answers.

This is bound to be an exciting event. @manns knows his stuff! I unfortunately won’t be able to make it due to the pursuit of an ITIL 4 certification today. I’ll be in class learning more about ITSM. Enjoy yourselves and I will come back and check out all the amazing content!

Take care!

Here’s my first prompt for the day and @manns will chime in with his expertise. 

Q1: Which challenges and opportunities drove your organization to adopt IT self-service capabilities?

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering the first question Q1, start your answer with A1 and use the Quote option 

A1. It’s not unusual for self-service adoption levels to be far lower than expected/needed. And even if there is a reasonable adoption level, it’s worth considering this: “How much of your self-service use is when the IT service desk is shut?”

A1 : We answer a lot of the same inquiries daily, and we would like to decrease the number of incoming tickets by allowing customers to self-serve and access helpful information without needing an agent to repeat answers and give the same info repeatedly.​​​​​​

@WHeine Welcome to the FreshService Community! One thing I have learned the hard way is to make sure the business process is owned by someone, well understood, documented, and followed before implementing any software platform. People > Process > Technology. It takes a little more time up front, but it will save you loads of time in the end. 

@alyssia.correa I’ve a version of FOMO where I keep checking I’ve not missed something :)

@manns - Those were such detailed and insightful stats on self-service success. Thanks, for sharing them. 

It’s because I sat and prepared some response posts yesterday :)

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

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.

Hi All, 

Coffee Chat with Stephen Mann (@manns) is here.

Please do chime in, share your thoughts and post your questions!!!! 

@keefe.andrews @zachary.king @Alefre @ErikAlmSynerity @GlennA @Sebastian_S @liamjordanmartin @OmerPaz @BrynCYDEF @Nezeki @Jerome.Haynes @Stratto @ggallaway @patricksawyer @ekrasner @michael.fong @m.rieder @IJR @MartinDG @raymondcanilao @Julie @fredddd @JCC @ShawnaJ @alyssia.correa @rashmi.nag @rhea.desouza @annapoorna.v @Arvind Ramamurti 

I’m looking forward to this :)