7 ways to build a better service desk
The recipe for a delightful employee experience is all about adding heaps and heaps of delightful service desk experiences. Think about it, what good is a service desk if it doesn’t solve your employees’ day-to-day tech issues?
According to Forrester’s The State Of The Service Desk, 2022 report, only 66% of employees contact their service desk more than once a year. While 67% of employees who contact the service desk report being satisfied with their service desk, a third of employees state systematic tech issues make them avoid using the service desk and instead live with the issues the service desk can’t fix.
These systematic technology problems are problematic because they have a direct drain on productivity and EX. These problems have persisted because of a no-brainer— the service desk and IT continue to face resource limitations and a lack of support for EX considerations in purchasing.
To empower employees and reduce burnout, IT leaders must reexamine the role of the service desk to understand the full impact of EX on business operations. Below are some best practices from Forrester to improve the service desk experience. Read away.
7 tips for building a better service desk
1. Collect experience feedback
Many organizations are investing in mechanisms to understand experience drivers, according to Forrester’s 2021 data, which shows that 65% of software decision-makers report adopting, having adopted, or planning to adopt end-user experience management (EUEM) solutions — many of them have native user surveying capabilities. Organizations that haven’t done so should make this a priority for this year.
2. Go beyond calculating Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS)
For organizations already collecting experience feedback, focus on building out an end-to-end understanding of employee journeys. If you’re only measuring experience during interactions, you’re excluding the population that avoids the service desk. Once these reluctant employees are accounted for, you’ll have a clearer roadmap for fixing organizational experience gaps.
3. Establish senior leadership accountability for EX, the service desk, and overall IT.
According to Forrester’s 2021 data, 51% of infrastructure decision-makers report that their IT organization has a team goal for EX and are personally held accountable for these goals. Technology silos complicate this; for example, end-user computing can’t take responsibility for the performance of finance applications. But these internal distinctions don’t — and shouldn’t — matter to end users. Members of senior leadership responsible for employees’ technology journeys must all be goaled on identifying existing shortcomings and improving technology EX.
4. Develop internal IT talent
The longer IT professionals work within an organization, the more experience they develop with the various quirks of the environment. These individuals are some of your best assets for identifying shortcomings, and they provide you with a talent pool you can invest in upskilling to meet organizational needs. Clear career progression, including sponsoring certifications, can prove an organizational selling point during skills shortages.
5. Write simpler knowledge base solutions
Despite employees’ preferences for interacting with humans to resolve tech issues, you need mechanisms to provide faster support. Employees we surveyed report that only 21% of service desk issues are resolved within five minutes. One part of accelerating support is making information end-user friendly. Most IT knowledge is overly technical and written from an IT-facing perspective. For your most common inquiries, write knowledge in coordination with end-users to ensure that it’s useful to those outside of IT.
6. Leverage self-service capabilities
Human support agents shouldn’t manage password reset processes. Your employees don’t want that, either — 66% would prefer a password reset driven by self-service capabilities (like a catalog entry or chatbot). Automating this task allows your practitioners more time for other issues like diagnosing broken devices, which users prefer resolving with a person.
7. Be more proactive
Though it’s easier said than done, proactivity is the ultimate tool to reduce chronic IT issues. Proactive tech support isn’t a single solution or tool; it’s the adoption of foundational elements you can build from. Critical elements to these foundational pieces include increased environmental visibility, user experience surveying, on-device automated common issue remediation, and transaction tracing. This is the final component of helping your users reduce their chronic technology issues.
Final thoughts
At a time when employee dissatisfaction with workplace technology is high, it is critical that organizations put EX at the core of technology consideration to reduce employee and productivity disruption. If you’re interested in learning more about the state of the service desk, download Forrester’s The State Of The Service Desk, 2022 report to accelerate your digital transformation and deliver a delightful employee experience.
