Would you ever guess that the hardest part of implementing a Self-Service portal is getting people to use it? Sure, planning, design, and configuration are a lot of work, and they can be tedious (not to mention stressful) but that’s the easy part. The frustration that comes afterwards when no one uses this amazing Portal your team spent lots of time and money on is the worst. Getting people to use it and change their current habits of just calling or emailing the Help Desk isn’t easy, but here’s some tips on how to get your internal customers to use the portal to submit tickets and research knowledge:
– It starts before the portal is launched: Utilize the marketing or communications departments within your organization. They can create a campaign and get people excited about it before you are ready to roll it out. Build up excitement!
– Make sure the portal is user friendly, trust me, there’s nothing you can do to get people to use it if they think it is difficult to use besides maybe, rebuilding it
– If you’re using the knowledge base, make sure the articles are easy to search and easy to read. No one wants to read a novel for knowledge article. Stick to quick step by steps with screenshots or how-to video
– When your users call, direct them to it. Instead of opening the ticket for them, walk them through how to log in and create their own ticket. Or when they call you for something you know there’s a knowledge article about, navigate them to the right spot to find it. Seems harsh and tedious, but sometimes a gentle push is all they need.
Getting people out of the mindset of always depending on the service desk to do everything is the most daunting part of implementing a Self-Service portal, but if you make it easy to use and get people excited about it (along with some gentle nudging in the right direction) it can alleviate some of the pain from the implementation.
-Krystina Hodge, Consultant | Project Manager
Contact the consulting team at consultants@dataseti.com
Find us on dataseti.com or read us on dataseti.blog.
Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter!