Did you know a support call can cost as much as $22 (according to HDI), while self-service is just $2 per incident? It’s a recommended best practice to build out a solid knowledge base and service portal so customers can resolve their own issues instead of taking up your IT help desk’s valuable time with requests like “How do I change my password?”
Requests that can be handled through self-service help reduce the drain on IT resources when customers need assistance with common issues or questions.
By building out a knowledge base within a portal that’s easily searchable, you can free up your IT helpdesk to work on larger, more complex problems. A great example of how this can be done is to take a look at the team at Cornell where they have rolled out portals for not only IT but across the campus for enterprise service management.
Using TeamDynamix, Cornell has been able to optimize the customer experience. And adopting a self-service approach to ITSM was a large part of that.
Using the client portal features of TeamDynamix, the university’s individual IT units have been able to set up a system of client portals organized by service categories that are dynamically linked to knowledge base articles related to those categories. If students or staff can’t find the information they need, they can initiate a service request directly from these portals and their request is forwarded automatically to the appropriate service technician for a response.
What’s more, the automated workflows built into the TeamDynamix platform allow IT staff to manage knowledge base articles more systematically, ensuring that information remains relevant and up to date.
TeamDynamix is also supporting NaphCare‘s move to a self-service model.
NaphCare, an Alabama-based company providing healthcare services and software to correctional facilities, was using a limited and less efficient platform to facilitate the delivery of IT service. The former IT service management platform wasn’t ITIL-compliant and lacked important features, like automation and self-service capabilities, that would significantly improve the delivery of IT service.
As NaphCare provides and supports software, they needed an effective IT support team with faster response times.
Switching to TeamDynamix has allowed NaphCare’s IT support team to build a self-service portal and automate key processes, resulting in faster, more efficient IT service—as well as happier customers.
Barry Bowden, NaphCare’s IT Service Desk manager, oversees NaphCare’s IT Service Desk team which supports technology for the 4,600 people who work for NaphCare, as well as the users of NaphCare’s electronic healthcare records (EHR) software, TechCare.
“About 60 to 70 percent of our time is spent supporting the TechCare product, and the rest is spent supporting the IT needs of NaphCare employees, such as creating user accounts,” Bowden says.
In 2021, NaphCare solicited bids for a more modern IT Service Management platform that would allow help desk staff to be more efficient—and TeamDynamix emerged as the clear winner.
“The thing that shined for us was the self-service portal, which could be highly customized and was easy to use without requiring much administrative overhead,” Bowden says.
The self-service portal within TeamDynamix connects users with knowledge base articles written by NaphCare IT staff so they can find answers to their questions online, speeding up problem resolution and avoiding the need for further assistance in many cases.
If users can’t resolve their own IT issue, they can submit a service request through the portal by choosing from an online catalog of services. Their request is then routed automatically to an appropriate IT staff member for a response, based on the nature of the problem.
As more people use the self-service portal, this frees up NaphCare help desk staff from answering phone calls and responding to emails—allowing them to service customers much more efficiently.