Consumerize Your Portal for IT Self-Service Success

One of the key IT service management (ITSM) capabilities available to IT service desks during the COVID-19 crisis is self-service. When functioning well, it’ll take the pressure off overworked service desk staff, especially when employees can help themselves to immediate solutions. Which, of course, is a win-win for both IT support and the people they serve – with fewer tickets hitting the service desk and a better employee experience respectively.

If you’re like 80% of IT departments, then you’ve already implemented some form of self-service technology. However, you’ve also likely struggled with employee adoption. There are many reasons as to why, but the bottom line is that your organization’s investment in self-service technology has likely failed to deliver the anticipated benefits including the expected return on investment (ROI).

So that’s the bad news. The good news is that much has been learned in the last five years or so of IT self-service portal initiatives. In this blog, I’ll explain how to avoid the many obstacles to self-service success – ranging from having the wrong objective, a lack of organizational change management activity, to the quality and the suitability of the self-service portal technology.

Importantly, many of the eight offered tips point to the need to consumerize your IT self-service portal capabilities to achieve the expected, and required, level of success. Please bear this in mind when trying to up the adoption of your existing or new self-service portal to help with the increased ticket volumes resulting from the COVID-19 crisis.

Where did it all go wrong?

Where do I start?

A good place is a great piece of research from the Service Desk Institute (SDI) from mid-2017 – “Realizing ROI from Self-Service Technologies” it’s free to download – which shone a very bright light on the state of IT self-service and the key causes of the low levels of employee adoption. It’s sadly now over three years old but is still applicable to the plight of many IT departments.

The report’s top-line message is very clear – we’re investing in self-service technology but not in self-service capabilities that our employees want to, and do, use. As a result, these investments fail:

“The increase in the adoption of self-service tools is undoubtedly due to the range of associated benefits that comes with the implementation of such a solution, most commonly reduced support costs, increased customer satisfaction, and an around-the-clock support channel. However, the number of organizations that have realized these benefits and have achieved the anticipated ROI are few, less than 12% …”

This research finally allowed individual IT departments to realize that they were not alone in struggling with IT self-service success. It also pinpointed issues related to the motivations for self-service introduction. These are covered in the following eight tips for IT self-service success.

Success tip #1 – Start with the right motivation(s)

The SDI report found that self-service initiatives needed to be value-focused to succeed:

“A uniting factor for organizations in the more successful categories is a greater degree of focus on specific motivations, the ones that provide the most value to them.”

Put simply, we’re motivated by the things that are important to us.

Success tip #2 – Don’t make cost reduction your primary motivation

In some ways, the introduction of self-service technology was a victim of the times – with many IT departments under pressure to reduce costs and living under the mantra of “doing more with less.” This is reflected in report findings such as:

“It seems reducing cost alone is not enough to realize business value from a self-service solution. In comparison, organizations in the higher ROI categories have achieved other motivations and, in the process, have reduced cost.”

Put simply, telling employees – or acting as though – self-service is being introduced to save money is not going to inspire many of them to use it. In fact, it’s more likely to increase resistance as employees think that they’re going to get an inferior service and support experience and possibly also lose out personally.

Success tip #3 – Stay focused on, and committed to, your agreed motivations for self-service

It makes so much sense – the right motivations drive the right behaviors in terms of successfully managing organizational change and engendering a high degree of employee adoption and thus the anticipated benefits/ROI:

 “A uniting factor for organizations in the more successful categories is a greater degree of focus on specific motivations, the ones that provide the most value to them.”

Put simply, focus on your desired outcomes over the mechanics of the technology implementation.

Success tip #4 – Focus on user demand

There’s nothing smart or surprising about this, but sometimes “the obvious” needs to be stated – if your motivations are aimed at creating employee demand for self-service, then you’ve more chance of achieving it:

“Of all the motivations analyzed, the most consistent with the success of an organization supported, influenced and increased user demand.”

Put simply, you can’t afford to take a “build it and they will come” approach to self-service.

Success tip #5 – Design with the customer at the heart

There’s very little more to say for this tip than to repeat the SDI advice:

“The most successful organizations were those who benefited from a self-service solution designed with the customer at the heart of the service and realized higher customer preference rates.”

Put simply, if you want your employees to use your IT self-service capabilities, then you need to create these capabilities based on what employees want, need, and expect. The word “expect” is very important here, with expectations and experiences returning in the following tips.

Success tip #6 – Provide support channels that improve the employee experience

Again, this should be a no-brainer. If using self-service is harder, less pleasurable, and ultimately less effective than using the telephone channel, then employees will simply continue to do what they’ve previously done – call or email the IT service desk.

This is still borne out by current HappySignals’ employee experience management data:

This HappySignals data shows that, based on over 331 thousand pieces of employee feedback between September 2019 and February 2020, the IT self-service portal channel provides the worst employee experience:

• In terms of happiness, it’s rock bottom, along with chat, at +61
• It causes the highest level of employee lost productivity at close to 4 hours and is even slower than the email channel.

The self-service portal has though finally passed both the email and telephone channels in terms of use.

Put simply, if you create an inferior support channel, don’t expect people to like and then use it.

Success tip #7 – Self-service success needs organizational change management

This is touched on in the SDI report, and in some of my earlier tips, but it requires its own tip.

The introduction of IT self-service capabilities is a change to the current way of working and thus involves people change. And people change requires the use of organizational change management tools and techniques.

To quote Joe the IT Guy:

“Even when the change is highly favorable to the people affected, it can’t be assumed that buy-in will be automatic, or that there will not be resistance to change often caused by fear of the unknown.”

Put simply, treating the introduction of self-service capabilities as a technology project will deliver just that – self-service technology, rather than self-service capabilities that are proactively used and liked by employees.

Success tip #8 – Your self-service capabilities/technology will need to be consumer-world-like

This is again going beyond the advice in the SDI report.

Consumerization has meant – and continues to mean – that employees expect more from corporate service and support capabilities as they bring their consumer-world experiences and expectations into the workplace. And self-service is no exception.

Put simply, if your self-service portal technology – while “enterprise-grade” – is adversely affecting the ability of employees to easily do what they need to do, then they aren’t going to use it. Again, with them taking the path of least resistance – either calling or emailing the IT service desk. Leaving your self-service portal with limited use and lacking the expected ROI.

It’s why SysAid is improving its Self-Service Portal making it what we call “consumer-grade.” Such that employees, especially millennials, get the self-service experience they want and expect at work – with capabilities that match their personal-life, consumer-world experiences. Quite frankly, anything “in work” that’s inferior to employees’ “outside of work” service and support experiences is going to struggle with adoption.

What do you think of the SDI findings and my eight tips? And how are your organization’s self-service capabilities? What works for you and your colleagues, and what doesn’t? Please let me know in the comments.

In need of a new self-service tool? Take a look at what SysAid has to offer