No matter your organization’s size or industry, providing a stellar customer experience is likely a top priority. And for those using an IT Service Management (ITSM) platform to mature their service and project delivery, there are three areas you need to focus on when it comes to providing excellent customer service:
- Providing an easy-to-use self-service portal.
- Using Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS).
- Curating an accurate and up-to-date knowledge base (KB).
The Importance of an Easy-to-Use Portal
No matter your ITSM provider, one of the features of your ITSM tool should be an out-of-the-box self-service portal that is easy to configure and gives customers a frictionless experience when they are seeking answers to problems or issues they are having.
Your portal should also be WCAG-compliant and fully accessible.
Why are portals so important? For many organizations, this is the first line of defense when it comes to problem-solving. Think of your portal as a storefront, your customers will come to it and look around for the information they need. If the layout is busy and the navigation is confusing, they will likely leave your portal and send emails or make phone calls to get the information they need. And when you’re experiencing an outage or other issues, all those emails and phone calls stack up meaning the response time to customers can be hours, days or even weeks.
With a branded, easy-to-use portal you can greet your customers and offer a self-service approach that allows them to solve their problems 24/7. If their problem is one that’s complex, you can provide a button they can click to submit a ticket and have it automatically routed to the appropriate person for resolution.
And for issues like password resets or name changes, you can use an enterprise integration and automation tool that connects dynamic forms with your ITSM to create workflows that automatically take care of the request when that form is submitted.
You can even deploy a conversational AI chatbot to help with tasks like this. Depending on the chat vendor you use on your portal, you can have a chatbot, like the one from TeamDynamix, that connects to backend systems so your users can fill out dynamic forms or even kick-off actions (like password reset requests) all from your conversational AI chatbot.
This provides a stellar customer experience and a frictionless approach to service delivery while reducing the strain on your IT service desk.
Using Knowledge-Centered Service to Optimize Service Excellence
Implementing Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS®) as part of your ITSM process can allow you to better service your customers by giving your employees an easier way to record and publish knowledge to your portal and knowledge base. Knowledge-Centered Services (KCS) is a service method that focuses on knowledge and its implementation.
When using KCS, an organization focuses on creating and curating knowledge content that’s already being collected as part of its current troubleshooting and problem-solving efforts. As the information is collected (whether through tickets, or other interactions with customer support and your IT help desk) articles can be created in a knowledge base. This knowledge base can then be used for self-service.
To fully adopt a KCS, your teams must be able to easily and quickly use the knowledge base you create. Ideally, this knowledge base is integrated with your ITSM tool so you can follow KCS style guide best practices alongside your service management processes.
The easier it is for you and your team to follow the KCS style guide you put in place as a part of your everyday work, the more likely you are to succeed in driving self-service adoption.
Following the implementation of KCS, many organizations report the following benefits:
- Lower inbound call volume.
- Increase in customer satisfaction.
- A more accurate knowledge base.
Giving Customers the Answers They Need Through a Knowledge Base
Having a robust, accurate knowledge base is critical when it comes to providing excellent customer experiences. Without a solid knowledge base, your customers won’t be able to find the answers to the questions they have, or the information they need about your organization. And if the information there is inaccurate, it will result in poor customer experiences. So how do you build and maintain a robust knowledge base?
First, make sure your knowledge base and portal integrate with your ITSM tool. This will allow you to look at tickets as they come in and create new articles to address easy-to-solve problems with information pulled from ticket resolutions.
Second, your knowledge base should be searchable using natural language and tagging.
Finally, your knowledge base needs to accommodate a feedback loop, taking comments or even net new content, and pushing that through an iterative review process. This is where KCS is valuable – for a knowledge base to be successful it needs to be relevant and accurate, and following the KCS methodology will help you keep content fresh.
Want to see how businesses are using ITSM to deliver stellar customer experiences? Check out our customer spotlights.