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Coffee Chat: Building a Self-Service Portal  ☕

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J
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A2. One of the challenge we have right now is dealing with multilingual issues.
Service Requests aren’t really supporting multiple languages.

A
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We are almost half-way folks :custard:

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Q3. What are the common mistakes you see while people implement self-service



 

A3: Outdated information in the FAQs

No links to reach support directly from the portal

akshara.sruthi
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Q3. What are the common mistakes you see while people implement self-service

In my own organization, I see article writers use lots of acronyms and jargon, which isn’t helpful to the end user. I always tell people to write with language they’d use to communicate something technical to their grandmother.

Love this. I’m going to keep this in mind whenever I’m tempted to use jargons or complicated words. Sometimes, it’s just easy to put out all those words and publish the article. I guess writing in simple language which our grandma can understand takes time. And I think we should invest in that.

Warden Brown
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A3: I personally made the mistake of not organizing articles well. Every tiny feature was meant to be an article. IRL it should be this way: Features that are similar should be covered/addressed in one article. I also wish I spoke to my support team to know what those FAQ are. 

 

That’s interesting that you would say that, Akshara. Why do you think that 1 article should cover similar features? Doesn’t that make it harder for an article to be accurately suggested as “relevant article”?

manns
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A3. Another mistake is introducing self-service capabilities too soon. For example, without sufficient employee/customer-facing knowledge available. It means the capability is tried but it fails to deliver, with the user likely never to return. 

For this issue, there’s a technique called Level Zero Solvable which is worth reading up on if you want to ensure that your knowledge base is road-ready. 

Cheers, Stephen || https://ITSM.tools
L
Rank

Q3. What are the common mistakes you see while people implement self-service

A3. The most common mistakes we see in people implementing an self-service. They forget to look at the customer journey. What does the customer need or wants? What kind of questions do they ask? What kind of knowledge articles do they need. What kind of questions need to be answered by agent and which you don't. You need a strategy for your self-service portal. :)

rashmi.nag
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We are almost half-way folks :custard:

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Q3. What are the common mistakes you see while people implement self-service

A3. A few things I have seen are:

  • Adopting a clear, simple and less complicated way of delivering self-service, in a way that the users are comfortable with and can access it with ease
  • Assuming that users will automatically use your self-service portal for all their needs. If the portal isn’t allowing them to get what they want in just few click, it’s going to deter their usage
  • Not taking into account views and suggestions from users while customising self-service. It is the ultimately going to be used by your customers/ employees, so as well get their views into consideration, whenever possible.
  • Restricting self-service to only one medium rather than offering multiple ways of getting access to self-service. Giving more than one option gives room for more people to make use of it.
Cheers, Rashmi || Team Refresh Community
Warden Brown
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A3. Another mistake is introducing self-service capabilities too soon. For example, without sufficient employee/customer-facing knowledge available. It means the capability is tried but it fails to deliver, with the user likely never to return. 

For this issue, there’s a technique called Level Zero Solvable which is worth reading up on if you want to ensure that your knowledge base is road-ready. 

Great to know, @manns ! I’ll be sure to check that out.

akshara.sruthi
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Could you please define “self-service portal?” I tend to think of it as knowledge base articles, chat-bots, message boards, and any other way a user can find their own answers. Is my definition too narrow?

The term portal is generally used to denote a digital place that you go to access the capabilities - self-service capabilities in this case. So, it will include some or all of the things you mentioned plus potentially others. Perhaps the ability to book a walk-up support appointment, say.

Thanks, @manns. I love when community members help each other.

@Warden Brown - I’ll make sure to mention this going forward: Self Service Portal aka Knowledge Base

manns
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Q3. What are the common mistakes you see while people implement self-service

In my own organization, I see article writers use lots of acronyms and jargon, which isn’t helpful to the end user. I always tell people to write with language they’d use to communicate something technical to their grandmother.

A3. As an extension of this great point, there’s also the writers that like to show how much that know over creating KAs that consistently help people. I’ve heard the term “knowledge bites” and similar to express the need to keep KAs short and easy to consume (successfully).

Cheers, Stephen || https://ITSM.tools
Bex
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Q3. What are the common mistakes you see while people implement self-service

In my own organization, I see article writers use lots of acronyms and jargon, which isn’t helpful to the end user. I always tell people to write with language they’d use to communicate something technical to their grandmother.

Nothing worse than letting techie loose on the articles, and solution documentation.  Yes they know their job and they know what they are saying, but they need to be customer centric.  Thankfully we have a knowledge management team that is able to understand the technical information, and be able to convert that into user friendly reading.  We also don’t allow them to publish the articles etc, without going through a QA session first.

Warden Brown
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Q3. I’ve also seen people organize their articles into categories that are similar to their company’s organizational structure, instead of grouping them into categories that will make sense to the user. Customers do not necessarily know which department at your organization takes care of XYZ issue, and so won’t know where to look for the answer.

A
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Fourth question is up :coffee:

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering this question Q4, start your answer with A4 and use the Quote option :) 

Q4 How do you measure the effectiveness of your self-service portal

  • Actively monitoring the responses to feedback questions posed to users (along the lines of “How easy was it to solve your query today”)
  • Ticket deflection rates

 

Warden Brown
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Q4 How do you measure the effectiveness of your self-service portal

 

 

I’ll be curious to see responses to this. Our self-service portal is scheduled to go live on Monday.

akshara.sruthi
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Last question for today is here :coffee:

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering this question Q5, start your answer with A5 and use the Quote option :) 
 

Q5: What do you think is the future of self-service?

I’m really happy that so many of you took the time to join us here. I’m taking the time to read every post to make sure I don’t miss out any of the valuable information. I’ll reply to you folks shortly. 

P.S. In a couple of days, I’ll post the summary here to make sure it serves as a recap or TLDR for those who couldn’t make it. 

A
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A3. Another mistake is introducing self-service capabilities too soon. For example, without sufficient employee/customer-facing knowledge available. It means the capability is tried but it fails to deliver, with the user likely never to return. 

For this issue, there’s a technique called Level Zero Solvable which is worth reading up on if you want to ensure that your knowledge base is road-ready. 


Definitely going to check this out- thank you, @manns  :)

manns
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Fourth question is up :coffee:

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering this question Q4, start your answer with A4 and use the Quote option :) 

Q4 How do you measure the effectiveness of your self-service portal

A4. It’s definitely not as easy as measuring the success of the more traditional IT support channels. For me, the important thing is to measure what’s most important in terms of the people you’re trying to assist. So while the number of visitors might be interesting, it doesn’t mean that all these people were helped (and will return). The use of KA feedback features such as thumbs-up/down help. Or looking at it differently, and this falls into the territory of Level Zero Solvable, assessing the number of tickets that could have been self-solved via self-service as a reflection of success.

Employee experience measurement is a good one – I’ll go find some data on this.

Cheers, Stephen || https://ITSM.tools
A
Userlevel 5
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Q4 How do you measure the effectiveness of your self-service portal

 

 

I’ll be curious to see responses to this. Our self-service portal is scheduled to go live on Monday.


@Warden Brown That’s exciting! Would love to hear how the launch goes :-) All the best for that. 

Warden Brown
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Q5. Self-service can only continue to grow in the future. And as AI gets more sophisticated, I expect to see  more use of chat-bots 

vishnu.selvaraj
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Could you please define “self-service portal?” I tend to think of it as knowledge base articles, chat-bots, message boards, and any other way a user can find their own answers. Is my definition too narrow?

A self-service portal is everything you just mentioned, bundled together in a single interface. So, in essence, your definition is right.

I see self service portals as a space where a business can curate information, documentation and automated capabilities specifically to an audience with unique needs. Essentially, it consists of a knowledge base, a help centre and a place to raise and manage tickets.
They are primarily used for two reasons: ticket creation and knowledge base consumption.

manns
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A4. That employee experience data (and this is for companies proactively improving their EX):

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

Cheers, Stephen || https://ITSM.tools
akshara.sruthi
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Userlevel 7
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A2. One of the challenge we have right now is dealing with multilingual issues.
Service Requests aren’t really supporting multiple languages.

I get it. Global support is usually challenging but I think it should be done to make sure a business is inclusive. 

Bex
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Userlevel 3
Badge +1

Last question for today is here :coffee:

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering this question Q5, start your answer with A5 and use the Quote option :) 
 

Q5: What do you think is the future of self-service?

I’m really happy that so many of you took the time to join us here. I’m taking the time to read every post to make sure I don’t miss out any of the valuable information. I’ll reply to you folks shortly. 

P.S. In a couple of days, I’ll post the summary here to make sure it serves as a recap or TLDR for those who couldn’t make it. 

Thank you for organising this, and for everyone’s input, it has been nice to see ideas and guidance from other community members as well as administrators.

akshara.sruthi
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Userlevel 7
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Q4 How do you measure the effectiveness of your self-service portal

 

 

I’ll be curious to see responses to this. Our self-service portal is scheduled to go live on Monday.

Wow. Congratulations to new beginnings. Keep us posted about your portal and would love to a few it up and running :champagne::champagne_glass:

manns
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Userlevel 7
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Last question for today is here :coffee:

To answer a question, tag the answer with the corresponding number. For example, if you are answering this question Q5, start your answer with A5 and use the Quote option :) 
 

Q5: What do you think is the future of self-service?
 

A5. I expect to see a move away from portals, where people have to go to find help. With help instead made available in the context of the work they’re doing (at that moment in time). Machine learning will be leveraged more too, making it easier to get to the help that’s needed. Hopefully, it’s still related – the use of self-healing too, even if based on the end user being alerted that an issue is imminent and needing to press a button to self-apply a preventative resolution.

Cheers, Stephen || https://ITSM.tools

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