The everyday story

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle, Greek philosopher known as the father of western philosophy

There are all kinds of service requests, but the most important ones are also the most underrated: the everyday requests. Due to the sheer monotonousness of these requests, it is easier to get carried away and forget to notice our indicators. We now have a single-point system to solve everyday requests to an extent that they do not even feel like requests anymore. However, this was not always the case.

When we started as a software company, the number of sysadmins we had could be counted with fingers. And, as we pointed out earlier, our primary resource for managing service requests was simply a common support server. Every request felt like a new project, and each solution had a human dependency to it.

Though this worked well for us in some ways, everyday requests presented challenges we did not even recognize as challenges. A simple request to reset a password could be handled differently depending on which sysadmin was available at that moment. This was one of the reasons for our mindset to strike a balance between fixed processes and human elements. Because we realized that although we had always given prime importance to the individuality of our employees, simple everyday tasks needed a system that provided a seamless experience.

Before we could establish such systems, scenarios like the one below were bound to happen:

Service request management scenarios

When things went according to plan and a sysadmin could handle a request well, we never even thought about it. But when there was a problem, we realized why we needed a system, one guided by our values:

Service request management workflow

The experience factors

Though we have a centralized help desk system and processes to manage multiple tickets, delivering a positive experience goes beyond that.

We introduce the experience factor when we align and guide the process, people, and technology with the help of our values (indicators).

A focus on the employee

The biggest factor that helped us turn everyday requests into great experiences was focusing on employees. The HRMS, being the go-to place for employees every day, is where each request starts. This reduces many complications for us, as our employees seldom need to analyze or ponder about the request they are going to make. All they need to know are the details of the request and the fact that it can be raised from a portal they see every day.

Value alert!

Avoiding multiple portals/pages ensures that the system takes minimal effort to get the request details from the employee.

Technicians involved in the request will only need minimal communication with the employee as they have all the required ticket details in ServiceDesk Plus.

Only when the employee says they have got what they wanted do we officially close the request. This helps them experience a sense of control and confidence.

100 percent availability

As much as we focus on the process’s role in bringing about the experience, some elements outside the process contribute as well. Pit stops (small IT offices per floor) and the control room mentioned in the Incident management handbook ensure there's always someone around to help. Sometimes a conversation with a co-worker at a Pit stop will give an employee the real-life experience of the self-learning portal of ServiceDesk Plus. Minor problems like password issues and network connectivity difficulties can mostly be solved by employees themselves. When a technician is always available to clear up the problem in person, the employee would not require a technician again for such problems.

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