The service desk is all that most users see of their IT service provider. Consequently, it’s often how they experience your service desk that determines whether or not you earn a reputation for excellence.

Even if IT services never failed, you’d still need a service desk. Organizations have to manage all sorts of interactions with their users. They have to deal with service requests from customers who want new equipment or access to services; to answer questions from people who don’t know how to use services, or to handle general queries and complaints.

Many of the organizations I work with understand this, and they work hard to give their users the best possible experience when they contact the service desk. Staff are trained to be polite and to empathize with users who may be stressed by IT failures. Knowledge is provided to help service desk agents provide fast resolutions to most routine incidents. Self-service portals enable tech-savvy users to resolve their own issues quickly and efficiently. All of this helps form a great impression of the service desk, and so of the organization.

But, inevitably, users sometimes have to contact the service desk more than once to resolve an issue, and this is where I’ve often seen things going wrong.

If you take the time to consider the entire user journey, from when they first contact you, until their issue has been fully resolved, you’ll probably discover many opportunities to improve user experience. Here are some examples of things to think about.

If you take the time to consider the entire user journey you’ll probably discover many opportunities to improve user experience - @StuartRance Click To Tweet

Focus on value

When a user tells you what their issue is, and what they expect you to do about it, take a minute to think about what it is that the user actually needs. For example, I’ve witnessed one service desk agent take a call from a user who said, “The printer isn’t working and I really need to print this document urgently.” There was a procedure for managing printer hardware faults, and once the agent had established that the printer was faulty, they logged a call with the third party who serviced the printers. Job done?  Not really. The agent could have stopped there, but this would have missed what was actually important. The user had said, “I really need to print this document urgently.”

When a user tells you what their issue is, and what they expect you to do about it, take a minute to think about what it is that the user actually needs. – @StuartRance Click To Tweet

A few questions established that the document was required to help close a sale and that it had to be there in the next 30 minutes. So the agent said, “email me the document and I’ll print it and bring it to your desk.” Clearly this would not be an appropriate response to every printer hardware fault. But on this occasion, it was the right thing to do – and the sale was closed that afternoon.

Only ask once

One of the most frustrating things for a user is when they’re asked for the same information multiple times. For example, they’re asked to fill in a form on a portal, and then the service desk contacts them and asks the same questions as the portal did; or an incident is escalated to a new support team and they don’t seem to know the complete history of what has happened before.

One of the simplest things you can do to improve your users’ journeys is to ensure you provide well-structured information about previous interactions to everyone involved in an incident so that they don’t need to ask the user to repeat the information they’ve already provided.

One of the simplest things you can do to improve your users’ journeys is to ensure you provide well-structured information about previous interactions to everyone involved in an incident – @StuartRance Click To Tweet

Similarly, if you have resolved one incident for the user and they call back to report another issue, you should have the history of their previous interactions available in a form that is easy to review, so that you can avoid asking things they told you last time. Of course, you need to check that the information is still valid, but this is much less frustrating for the user than answering the same questions all over again.

Omni-channel service

Sometimes a user will log an incident or request using one channel but will then want updates or to provide more information using another channel. For example, they may phone you to log the initial call, but then when they’re out of the office, they may want to use the service portal app on their phone to continue the session. Or they may have logged the initial call on a service portal, but then want to provide more information by email.

It’s not that difficult for a service desk to make it easy for users to choose whatever channel they find most convenient for each interaction, so why force them to continue using the channel where the call started?

Say what you’ll do, then do what you said

Probably the most important thing you can do when you’re interacting with users is to set clear expectations, and then to reliably meet those expectations. Every time.

If you tell a user that you’ll do something, and then you don’t do it, or you do something different, they’ll remember this for a long time.

Probably the most important thing you can do when you’ are interacting with users is to set clear expectations, and then to reliably meet those expectations. Every time – @StuartRance Click To Tweet

Many years ago, I was a software developer, and the mouse on my Unix workstation stopped working. I phoned the service desk who said that they’d post me a new mouse and that I should return the old, faulty, mouse in the box that the new one came in. I was happy with this, but so that I could continue working I turned around to my colleague behind me and said, “Dave, can I borrow your spare mouse for a couple of days please.” Dave lent me his spare mouse and I put my faulty mouse in my desk drawer.

That afternoon I had to visit a customer, and when I got back I found a note on my desk saying, “Engineer called and replaced your mouse.” Sure enough, there was a new mouse on my workstation, Dave’s spare mouse had disappeared, and I still had a faulty mouse in my desk drawer. In summary, the service provider had delivered a more expensive, faster, service that would’ve been perfect if only they had told me about it first. But by telling me they would do one thing and then doing something different, even if it was supposedly better, they created a new problem.

On the other hand, here’s an example of how to do this well. My mobile phone had a cracked screen. I found a company on the internet that would replace it for a very reasonable fee, so I paid online and posted the phone to them. The next day I watched the tracking information from the post service to see when the phone was delivered. Much to my delight, I received an email within 30 minutes of the phone arriving saying that they had the phone and confirming the next steps. They said that 97% of repairs were completed the same day, but also explained what would happen in the worst case. That evening they sent another email confirming that the phone was repaired and giving me the tracking number so that I could check the return delivery. I received the repaired phone the next day. They had done a good job of replacing the screen. It was a straightforward approach, and it probably costs less to work in this way than to employ staff to answer phone calls from customers asking what was happening to their phones.

Conclusion

If you want happy users and a reputation for excellent service then don’t just plan individual interactions, plan their entire journey. Follow the details of exactly what users experience when they report typical incidents or make service requests and think about how you could make this experience better for them. And when you’re designing user journeys make sure you include users and customers in the team whenever you can. After all, that is the best way to ensure that what you deliver works for them.

If you want happy users and a reputation for excellent service then don’t just plan individual interactions, plan their entire journey, says @StuartRance. Here he provides advice on how. Click To Tweet

As always, if you try the ideas in this blog, please let me know how well they work out for you.