Making users access Self Service Portal is as important as building the portal.
Self-Service Portal enables the users to log their tickets, track the progress of their existing tickets and search articles/solutions from the Knowledge Base, without even contacting the help desk. In simple words, it allows end users to get assistance, around the clock.
How does a Self-Service Portal merit a help desk?
Proper Documentation and Categorization of tickets
Usually when a ticket lands in a help desk through an email or a phone call, the ticket has insufficient information. The technician is most likely to call or email the end user again for relevant information and document & categorize it accordingly. Instead, if the request is raised by the end user, the user would be glad to fill in all essential details needed to resolve his issue.
Reduce Level 1 Tickets
With the Knowledge Base functionality in the Self-Service Portal, end users can search for simple trouble shooting steps/solutions before raising a ticket. They can understand more information about the existing known errors so that they don’t have to create a new ticket for it. This will reduce the number of incoming level 1 tickets and the technicians can focus more on severe incidents.
Avoid unnecessary ticket for a thread
With the Knowledge Base functionality in the Self-Service Portal, end users can search for simple trouble shooting steps/solutions before raising a ticket. They can understand more information about the existing known errors so that they don’t have to create a new ticket for it. This will reduce the number of incoming level 1 tickets and the technicians can focus more on severe incidents.
Avoid unnecessary ticket for a thread
Most end users are not patient enough to wait for a response. They either send multiple emails or make immediate calls after raising an issue. This ends in creation of more tickets for the same incident from the same user. By using Self-Service Portal, the requester can create a ticket and also notify the technician from his end or request for more information about the status of the request, again without raising individual tickets.
Offer them their Service Menu
With the Service Catalog functionality, the end user can know what services he is eligible to opt for and can request for the service right from his Self-Service Portal. This will also narrow down his expectations and approval process accordingly.?
Keep them in the loop
Timely and effective communication is always important. Self-Service Portal is a great zone to keep your end users well informed about whatever they have to know. It could be a scheduled change, already encountered problems and so on.
Here’s the hardest part:
The biggest hurdle in handling a Self-Service Portal is making the end user access it. End users have comfortably settled into the conservative methods of emailing or making phone calls to raise tickets. Pulling them out of their comfort zone and getting them to access the Self-Service Portal is tricky. Here are some tips that I suggest to my clients:
- One of the tips that I would always suggest is to send them links to the Knowledge Base while replying to their tickets. If they are prompted to use the Knowledge Base several times, they would sink into the routine of accessing the Portal before raising tickets.
- ?Direct them to the Self-Service Portal by skipping the login screen with single sign-on
Self-Service Portal is one of the building blocks for an efficient help desk that begins with proper ticket classification until help desk reporting. Always build a Self-Service Portal that is effective two ways, benefiting your help desk and your end users.
