Self-service options aren’t new. In fact, we’ve been helping ourselves for decades. In the early days of self-service, we had few options, like vending machines, ATM kiosks, and self-service gas stations. As technology has advanced, we now have a plethora of options. With self-service options heavily influencing our lives, it’s easy to dismiss how simple the services make daily living. One of these such conveniences is a self-service IT portal.

IT Self-service refers to empowering your staff with the resources to resolve IT issues on their own rather than contacting a support member. Users will also have easy access to human agents if self-service fails.

What is an IT Self-Service Portal?

An IT self-service portal is a place that compiles all your self-service resources and tools for the reference of your internal teams. The self-service portal allows end-users to access knowledge base articles and create and manage tickets from a single interface.

Learn more: Odoo Employee Contract Portal Self Service

An IT Self-service portal consists of the following components: a knowledge base, a help center, and a place to raise and manage tickets. Offering a dedicated portal for self-service is important to ensure that your teams have a seamless user experience while helping themselves. 

Why is it Important to Have an IT Self-Service Portal?

A self-service portal is a one-stop-shop for all support activities of your staff members. Businesses with solid self-service tools have higher first resolution and first contact rates than those without.

A knowledge base will help your teams find answers to common questions, thereby freeing your support team time to focus on issues that require human intervention. Here are some more reasons why you should have an IT self-service portal.

Why is it Important to Have an IT Self-Service Portal?

A self-service portal is a one-stop-shop for all support activities of your staff members. Businesses with solid self-service tools have higher first resolution and first contact rates than those without.

A knowledge base will help your teams find answers to common questions, thereby freeing your support team time to focus on issues that require human intervention. Here are some more reasons why you should have an IT self-service portal.

Reasons Why You Should Have an IT Self-service Portal

1. Reduce ticket resolution time and cost. 
2. Reduces wait times in a queue for help.
3. Enhance agent productivity
4. Improves productivity by allowing consumers to find the answers themselves.
5. Improve overall employee satisfaction
6. Improves the relationship between IT and consumers.
7. Provide 24×7 Service
8. Provide seamless self-service within a sngle interface

What Should be Included in an IT Portal?

The goals of an IT self-service portal are great customer experience, reduced costs, and improved productivity. To achieve these goals, the following should be included in a top-notch portal:

• Searchability
• Tutorials and videos of solutions
• Tracking and status updates via the web and email
• FAQs and a configurable knowledge base
• Intuitive UI
• Accessible by multiple devices
• Communication tools such as chat, forums, and social tools
• The ability to perform level one functions, such as a password reset
• Analytics and dashboards
• Knowledge base rating system

Challenges of Implementing a Self-Service Portal

One of the many challenges of implementing a self-service portal is the changing impact of an IT department. The role of an IT department has evolved over the past decade. IT has shifted to more of a customer service role, allowing self-service portals to offset many responsibilities originally attributed to the IT department.

However, with this said, the IT department needs to monitor who has access to what. With a portal, IT may give up some control, however, the benefits outweigh this potential disadvantage. Mainly, IT departments gain more time to focus on higher level issues, and time is one commodity that’s priceless.

Another challenge of self-service portals is consumers’ familiarity and comfort with the portal itself. Have you seen or used a self-service portal that’s not updated? Or one that’s hard to navigate? The portal must have information, protocols, and functions that consumers want and/or need. In this way, they are more likely to use it, allowing IT to monitor the portal’s utilization while notifying IT when updates are warranted.

Companies need to educate their consumers on using the portal as a first stop as opposed to initially contacting the IT department. For this, it’s a good idea for IT to walk consumers through the portal, teaching them about the portal’s functionality and use. After consumers develop a comfort with the portal, this self-service option should be the go-to platform whenever an issue arises.

The Future of the IT Self-Service Portal

Over the years, the IT self-service portal went from being a nice addition to your business to becoming a necessity. The traditional ways of obtaining assistance create frustration and time delays. Nobody wants to wait for service. The demand for instant customer service creates both headaches and opportunities for IT departments.

The IT self-service portal should not only serve as a source of knowledge, but also a place that anticipates consumers’ needs before they arise. This is much easier said than done, with the IT department at the forefront. IT departments must now provide engaging customer-focused communication and support. IT departments will dictate the dialogue in this category, and it will be interesting to watch the once “if it is not broke don’t fix it” department become a consumer-focused driven department.

Final Word

An IT self-service portal is a must-have for every business trying to manage employee workload and enable self-service. Introducing technology and knowledge management to your service desk is important when you outgrow the needs of your employees. The functionality of self-service helps things move at every possible touchpoint of IT.

When implementing a knowledge base for customer support or internal users, you need to know if it allows user-friendly customizations and can be integrated with ITIL workflow automation and BI tools in the future for easy analysis. HappyFox knowledge base allows all this and more to ensure that your self-service delivery is on point.

Via: bmc, happyfox