The Current State of Service Management

No matter what you call it – help desk, service desk, service management – this IT industry is growing rapidly and becoming a necessity for many organizations. To help you understand the current state of the industry and how a help desk system can benefit you, we’ve put together a few pieces of key information. Read on to get the lowdown…

1. What kind of service do consumers expect? Since end-users are such a large part of service management, it is important to account for their needs and expectations. One very telling fact is that 90% of today’s consumers expect a company or brand to offer a self-service customer support portal. In other words, consumers like to do more and more problem-solving on their own, rather than having to always speak to a help desk representative to solve issues. This self-service aspect of service management has grown significantly over the years, as users continuously crave more independence and efficiency in dealing with issues. How can they fulfill this desire? Many service desk systems today come with a self-service portal, where users can access a knowledgebase of past issues and work to solve them independently. This aspect is becoming essential to a service desk system.

2. How do users report their issues? This is another consumer behaviour that has changed a lot over the years to adapt to the ever-evolving technical world. A few years back, it was typical to speak to help desk representatives over the phone, and deal with issues this way. Today, with more advanced help desk systems and the prevalence of email communications, consumers prefer to report their issues via email. In fact, 16% of issues were reported by email in 2006, and that number almost doubled to 30% by 2011. This trend is predicted to continue slowly over the next few years, so service desk systems with email integration will be favoured by consumers.

3. What guidelines should be followed for the best service? The common recommendation is for organizations to follow ITIL best practices for incident, problem and change management. But are firms really sticking to them? It has been reported that 43% of organizations actively use ITIL best practices. Of that 43%, about 71% see it as essential for them in service management. So, the verdict from the organizations who are using ITIL proves that it is pretty integral to effective service management. However, that other 57% should definitely consider adopting ITIL best practices as well if they want to stay on top of their service management game.

4. Lastly, what does the future of service management look like? Unfortunately, in a study done this past year, almost 80% of those surveyed said their current customer service system won’t meet their future needs. The service industry is continuously evolving, so customer service and help desk systems need to keep up in terms of what they can offer organizations for delivering the best possible service. In addition, only 51% of organizations are delivering service-oriented IT now, and 32% are considering. These numbers should both be much higher, as firms need to focus on delivering technology as a service to consumers, not just as a capital asset.

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