5 Things to Consider Before Selecting an IT Service Desk Software
Help Desk / Service Desk is a conversational name given to the capacity in an organization that listens to clients’ requests and delivers against service levels committed to ensure customer satisfaction. It sounds simple, yet it requires a custom mix of individuals, procedures, automation, compliance, data, and innovation to make the service desk effective and efficient.
This blog focuses on five key recommendations in selecting the right Service Desk Software that enhances workplace operations and put you in the right direction. Before you go through the list, please ensure that the Service Desk Software is ITIL 2011 compliant. This certification guarantees that the products tick the standard expectations from service-desk product.
1# Right-Sized Product that can Scale
There are products that are either too expensive with unused features bundled or inexpensive without required features or flexibility. The challenge is to select the right-sized product that suits your organizational requirement and the one that can scale with your growth. The largest product is not always the best. Features and flexibilities are essential to adapt to your business environment today and in the future.
2# Multi-Channel Compatibility
The businesses are distributed and clients are largely mobile. In the hyper connected world, clients shouldn’t be restricted to use specific medium to interact with service desk. What you and your internal clients need is a multi-channel experience like e-mail, mobile, web, custom apps(through API’s). So, ensure that the Service Desk product caters to your multi-channel requirements of today and tomorrow.
3# Process Modeling and Codeless Configuration
Service-desk operations should reflect the real operational process being followed by your customer service organization. It does not serve any purpose, if the service-desk tool is only used for tracking and the rest of operations happen outside. Hence it is critical to select the product which allows you to model the proven best practices followed by your team and manage the operations.
Configuration and Customization is the critical aspect of a successful implementation. Great Service Desk products do not rely much on endless coding to customize and implement. Select a help desk product that enables codeless configuration and that can help you eliminate the customization costs.
4# Insights & Personalization through Analytics and Automation
When you are evaluating a Service Desk product, pick something that can drive personalization. Analytics and automation driven products make personalization possible and give you insights that can help you preempt several Service Desk calls. The product should give you a 100% visibility and improve the performance of your service delivery through SLA measurements, compliance and escalations. In other words, the inbuilt analytics and insights drawn from custom dashboards and reports should enable CxO’s make well-informed decisions.
5# Knowledge Management
No Service Desk product is complete without a solid Knowledge Management. The product should help in building your knowledge-base based on incident record resolution details or previous experiences. This ensures completeness of KB articles via Knowledge-base manager approval mechanism for new articles.
The role of ITIL Service Desk is to enable enterprises and service providers to manage service operations and ensure guaranteed service delivery to their customers as per defined service level goals. While there is a lot of talk about AI and ML, what is more important is to check your readiness before getting an overloaded Service Desk. These 5 considerations will help you select the right Service Desk product and rapidly achieve your goals.
What are the other features you feel are important in considering a Service Desk Product? Do share your thoughts.
