Recent events have forced many organizations into a state of rapid transformation – particularly in the Service and Support industry. If you are like most service delivery organizations, your front line is now geographically scattered, working from home offices, bedrooms, garages, basements, living rooms, etc. You may be struggling to manage and motivate this newly decentralized workforce. Your team may be challenged with low morale, due at least in part to increasing ticket volumes, inadequate or outdated technology, slow or unreliable internet service, and a host of other issues that accompany an abrupt shift to remote work. The question is, where do you focus your limited time, attention, and resources to get the highest return? To answer this question, we recently surveyed over 200 service delivery professionals – many of whom are customer facing, front line agents. Their wish-list may surprise you… Improved Problem Management – When asked whether their organization would benefit from better Problem Management, more than three quarters of respondents either agree or strongly agree. One respondent had this to say about their current problem management practice “At the moment, we have so many critical issues – even 5 months after COVID – with access to our network and applications from our remote workers who are growing impatient. They call, text, email, and put in tickets and then bother the service desk with instant messages about the tickets they just submitted. People are circumventing the system. My team is truly having a tough time staying organized and on task.” By maturing and automating problem management, service delivery organizations can dramatically reduce incident volume, improve customer and employee satisfaction, and minimize total cost of ownership. Improved Knowledge Management – The answer was very similar when we asked about Knowledge Management. Exactly three quarters of all respondents believe their organization would benefit from better Knowledge Management. According to one respondent, “There’s a huge lag between technological innovations, the knowledge required to troubleshoot issues, and the actual knowledge database. If it were updated, perhaps we wouldn’t have to spend so much time training ourselves.” However, the benefit to the front line was not the only theme that emerged from our research. It turns out that service delivery professionals see immense value in user-facing knowledge improvements. With comments like “I would definitely like to see our company implement a knowledge base that would also be shared with clients. It would significantly decrease the number of non-problem tickets that come in and would give us more time to focus on real issues.” it’s clear that improving knowledge is one area where organizations should be focusing their time and attention. Improved Visibility and Accountability – There is a common misperception in this industry that front line workers do not want to be held accountable for their performance. Our recent survey clearly refutes that, as only 6% disagreed when we asked if their organization would benefit from improved visibility and accountability. One individual went so far as to include it as the #1 item on their wish-list – “What would be most beneficial to us would be a metrics dashboard that we could utilize to track our progress and failures. This would be an excellent tool to help show leadership at–a–glance how we are performing and where issues are occurring. To do this, we would really need solid ticket categorization, open/closure times, and parties accountable for working on each issue.” This list only scratches the surface of what our research uncovered. Front line service delivery professionals are also crying out for artificial intelligence, automation, benchmarking, machine learning, better ticket categorization, and more. To download a complimentary copy of the full ITSM Intelligence report that includes more than 80 verbatim quotes, please click here.
