5 ways to speed up IT service desk support

Whether a help-desk is serving staff or external customers, managing multiple support queries can be challenging when your resources are limited. But how to overcome this challenge and minimize the workload of your IT staff, reduce incidents time and improve customer satisfaction? Here is where business process automation can help.

Learn more about 5 practical ways to achieve these objectives and help your service desk to resolve problems more quickly and enhance overall service levels:

1. Automate routine, time consuming tasks
   Every service or IT department is looking for the ways to increase productivity, minimize the number of unmet deadlines and improve customer service and satisfaction.

   With integration of BPM (Business Process Management) and ITIL best practices you can automate the key procedures, so that the help desk team doesn’t even have to think about them. When the system automatically prompts the service engineers on what they should focus on next, it gives them more time to spend on more lucrative activities and gain service efficiency.

   When the most time consuming tasks are automated service managers can focus on a proactive service approach thus driving additional value to the customers.

2. Boost implementation of best practices
   Introducing BPM technology into your ITSM enables you to analyze the procedures and individual steps of the processes your IT staff execute. This is essential to access service quality and find bottlenecks to eliminate.

   Once the major service issues are identified, you can test different approaches and processes to see what works best. If the new process results in a more positive outcome and greater value it can be applied throughout the whole organization to gain service excellence.

3. Streamline internal communication
   Whether your company is large or small you might face the delays in service due to lack of communication between the support desk, R&D or finance departments. When in order to coming up with a solution a service engineer has to run through a series of long-winded processes this is highly time consuming and prevents from concentrating on more proactive tasks.

   To maximize service delivery speed you can use BPM to introduce processes that ensure that all departments are acting in ways that help and complement one another. Training new staff will also be a simpler task as it is clear what procedures and processes they should follow.

   At the same time, such approach helps an organization to support constant dialogue with users of the services to understand customer demand for services and gain control over Demand Management process.

4. Pave your way for service excellence with continuous improvement
   According to Gartner, 18% of companies said they need to change processes at least monthly. But how to support continually evolving procedures and deliver maximum value from your IT services?

   We frequently face that traditional ITSM system is not adaptable enough and can hardly keep up with the ever-changing service demands. However introducing business process automation to re-enforce your ITSM solution brings the flexibility to adapt your operations to meet new business requirements. BPM-enabled ITSM system allows a new process to be introduced almost instantly. At the same time your company gains greater control over quality of service as your IT staff have distinct procedures to follow and can quickly respond to end-user needs.

5. Customize the workflow to meet your specific business needs
   With many ITSM solutions, companies are forced to follow the rules set down by the supplier. By introducing BPM you can design your own procedures that align with overall business goals such as reduced service costs, improved customer service levels or increased productivity.

To address the challenges of current business environment, IT departments need to be armed with appropriate solutions to help them facilitate business change, transformation and growth. Advanced process automation and ITIL support ensure higher level of customer service and bring better business outcomes for organisations.