Break/fix is the default approach for IT service desks, but Datacom’s Director of Service Hubs William Clancy explains why organisations need to prioritise their employee experience – and service desks need to change.
Customer experience is the number one priority for most organisations and their contact centres — a fact evidenced by the considerable investment being made in training, experience-led technology, data collection and analysis of customer engagement.
But why is the same focus not given to creating positive experiences around IT service desks and the employees they serve?
Traditional IT service desks operate predominantly as break/fix. They are set up with technology at the forefront and often the service desk as an accessory – simply a number to call when something goes wrong. Employees are at the mercy of wait times, complex technology and rigid procedures or processes, and service desk teams often find their time monopolised by repetitive, low-level break/fix requests.
Given your employees’ ability to do their work directly contributes to how engaged and positive they feel and how they can serve your customers, the quality of their experiences should be seen as equally important to customer experiences.
Service desk teams also need to feel empowered as coaches and educators who can play a role in upskilling the workforce, not just on-call fix-it people.
All of which requires a rethink of traditional approaches to service desks: with the focus on elevating employee experiences and broadening the remit of service desk teams to become workforce enablers and technology educators.
For some, refocusing on experience might initially come at the cost of efficiency, which is obviously an important goal for IT service desks. If we can see past the short-term though, a focus on experience will deliver a range of valuable benefits for the business in the long-term. For example, reducing pressure to close calls quickly and prioritising time to talk and explain issues with employees in a way they can understand will mean fewer IT issues down the line.
Giving service desk teams this broader remit as technology enablers also creates more meaningful and challenging work opportunities for them, which leads to better engagement.
Sharing insights from experience-led service hubs
To drive a change in the way organisations think about service desks, Datacom is sharing what its teams have learned from 30 years of working in contact centres and service desks. Here are four areas companies need to consider for creating a service desk that provides better experiences for their employees — and better results for the business:
Channel strategy
Contacting service desks via phone and email might work for some, but other communication channels should exist. Implementing a proper channel strategy allows employees to interact in a way that suits them. It also enables solutions like automation to cut out the need to speak to a human if that is what the employee prefers or if it is after hours.
Proactive approach
What if service desks could stop issues before they occurred? A proactive approach focuses on helping employees better use technology and designing an experience that allows multiple ways to do the same thing. Datacom is taking this a step further and trialling technology built into the service management structure to monitor, identify, and address IT events early.
Embracing automation
Automating basic tasks provides faster service for users and allows IT teams to focus on more complex and technical work. Surveys have shown that automation can give the IT service desk team a better sense of their worth, allowing them to spend more time on deeper, more satisfying work and leaving them feeling more engaged with their role and the business.
Reporting BI & Analytics
Speech analytics is used to analyse the tone, sentiment, and words used in calls, providing insights into the quality of service and informing the next development or change required. Deep analytics help identify issues causing high volume at the service desk, enabling organisations to address them proactively and efficiently.
Datacom has already shaken off the traditional idea of the service desk and many of our customers are moving to embrace the concept of ‘service hubs’ focused on proactive resolving issues before they create problems. The opportunity exists for 95 percent of processes to be proactive, with service desks becoming an enabler to the technology, rather than a reactive response to something that is already broken.
