IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT AND CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Incident Management KPIs
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Why You Should Do Less Incident Management
Written by Joe the IT Guy May 28, 2014
IT is a huge part of the budget for many companies, and the money spent on IT is intended to create business value and support business growth, but many IT organizations spend a large part of this budget on managing incidents. The service desk typically employs many people, and uses expensive telephony and service management tools; second and third line support are often expensive people to hire and retain; and vendor support contracts can also be expensive.
What is the “Cloud”?Greg Depp
So, I was at a gathering of friends and one of them asked me: “I keep hearing about the “Cloud”, but I don’t understand it. What is the Cloud?” It’s an interesting question, because like it’s meteorological namesake, its existence is ephemeral and changing all the time.
IT Friction Assessment
Welcome to BMC’s IT Friction Assessment. Take this quick test and identify the things you can do to make the experience of consuming your IT services simpler and easier.
4 Steps to Find the Perfect Help Desk Software
You came, you saw, you sold. Now, your clients have questions, and they want answers fast.
In the early days, managing your customer queries via email or telephone was probably a viable system. But here’s the killer: the more successful your business, the less successful this down-home customer support interface will be.
In the early days, managing your customer queries via email or telephone was probably a viable system. But here’s the killer: the more successful your business, the less successful this down-home customer support interface will be.
HP Launches Big Data-Based IT Service Management SolutionsBY JASON VERGE ON JUNE 3, 2014
HP has introduced service management offerings that leverage big data generated in customer IT ecosystems. The announcement included a Software-as-a-Service service desk offering called Service Anywhere and Propel, a solution for building enterprise service catalogs, enabling IT organizations to deliver and broker traditional, cloud and hybrid IT services and address point-to-point integration issues.
Bridging the Barriers to Knowledge Management
by Paul M. Dooley
There seems to be increasing interest in Knowledge Management these days. In fact, reports are that
Google no longer has an overriding emphasis on simply being the best "search engine" - instead, they have
placed increasing emphasis on the importance of Knowledge Management by positioning their latest
Enterprise Search product as a key device in tapping into an organization's collective knowledge.
Google no longer has an overriding emphasis on simply being the best "search engine" - instead, they have
placed increasing emphasis on the importance of Knowledge Management by positioning their latest
Enterprise Search product as a key device in tapping into an organization's collective knowledge.
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Are your help desk technicians ready for the BYOD revolution? By rmandalia
BYOD increases productivity and mobility for organisations and job satisfaction for their employees. As a result, BYOD culture has already been adapted by many organisations and many more are on the way there.
That said, BYOD adoption has also removed the restrictions on applications and hardware devices that can be used in the enterprise network, thus causing an impact on help desk technicians. Here is a look at how BYOD can impact your help desk.
BYOD increases productivity and mobility for organisations and job satisfaction for their employees. As a result, BYOD culture has already been adapted by many organisations and many more are on the way there.
That said, BYOD adoption has also removed the restrictions on applications and hardware devices that can be used in the enterprise network, thus causing an impact on help desk technicians. Here is a look at how BYOD can impact your help desk.
How to Hire Quality Service Desk Agents
What is the ITIL® service lifecycle?
To sustain high levels of business performance, organisations need to offer competitive products and services that customers will value, buy and use. Adapting quickly to changes in the economic climate and in the market place is of real importance. All services offered should enable business transformation and growth.
ITIL Service Management supports this transformation through the use of the Service Lifecycle, which is split into 5 distinct lifecycle stages:
To sustain high levels of business performance, organisations need to offer competitive products and services that customers will value, buy and use. Adapting quickly to changes in the economic climate and in the market place is of real importance. All services offered should enable business transformation and growth.
ITIL Service Management supports this transformation through the use of the Service Lifecycle, which is split into 5 distinct lifecycle stages:
- Service Strategy
- Service Design
- Service Transition
- Service Operation
- Continual Service Improvement
SUPPORT BENEFITS OF LIVE CHAT
- Increased Customer Confidence – When surveyed, 82% of regular internet users said the presence of Live Chat on a website positively influenced their perception of the company.
- Easier – Unlike talking on the phone, there's no need to find a pen and paper to take notes. Written instructions during chat are easier to follow and the transcript can be emailed for future reference.
- Multi-tasking – Phone calls and emails can only be dealt with one at a time, using live chat enables your support team to handle multiple inquiries at once.
- Save Time – Answers and instructions can be delivered quickly and efficiently. The ability to email a transcript of the chat ensures there is no need to retype instructions into an email.
- Reduce Costs – Less time spent on each inquiry means reduced demand on your resources.
- Accurate – Pre-defined replies ensure consistent, accurate answers are given.
Austin’s Step One Aims to Put the Customer in Charge of Customer Care By Angela Shah
Calling customer service—or navigating the maze of an online help desk—is among the most frustrating chores for consumers who are dealing with product problems. Turns out, it’s not that much fun for the companies either. One Austin startup says its software can make the experience better for all.
OTRS Group and baramundi software AG release joint API
OTRS Group, the world’s leading provider of cloud-based and on-premise solutions for service desk management, has announced, together with its partner, the client and server management software provider baramundi software AG, the release of a joint API. This new collaboration combines service desk and client management and offers official OTRS baramundi Connector pre-configured mapping and automatic actualisations.
Do You Outsource Your Service Desk
What’s the Difference Between a Service Desk and a Help Desk?
If you want to know the answer, and this article isn’t your first stop, I wouldn’t blame you for feeling a little desperate. If you’ve asked the question “What’s the difference between a service desk and a help desk?”, I’m sure you got a whole lot of answers. Even worse, many of them probably seemed completely contradictory.
New Whitepaper Illustrates the Combined Benefits of KCS and ITIL
HDI and AXELOS recently joined forces to produce an innovative whitepaper that illustrates the combined benefits of adhering to Knowledge-Centered Support and the IT Infrastructure Library. Find out how KCS and ITIL work together to provide a powerful and valuable framework that can transform your organization.
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Is your comms team spending too much time on social media customer support?
DAVID HANCOCK
Most businesses’ social media strategies begin life in the communications department, but there can come a time when your comms team needs to stop acting as a de facto customer help desk.
For most businesses, a social media strategy begins as another way to talk to customers – establishing your web cred while notifying people of important events such as product launches or upcoming sales. This is obviously a natural fit for the communications department, where Facebook and Twitter sit alongside your website, newsletters and other traditional customer communication channels.
For most businesses, a social media strategy begins as another way to talk to customers – establishing your web cred while notifying people of important events such as product launches or upcoming sales. This is obviously a natural fit for the communications department, where Facebook and Twitter sit alongside your website, newsletters and other traditional customer communication channels.
Desktop Support Technician in a Nutshell
SMB Tech: Adopting New Technologies May Require Bigger Tech Support Budget
Kim Mays
In a recent blog, I discussed the results of a report by Brother on how small businesses believed that investing in new technology provided a better ROI than investing in new employees. Another statistic from that report showed that 64 percent of the respondents felt “overwhelmed” by new technology. This response isn’t surprising if you consider that another report by Parks Associates identified that small businesses spend less than $1,000 per year on technical support services. If you couple those two percentages with the fact that technology advancements are on the rise in every market including BYOD, the Internet of Things, social networking and the cloud, running a small business in the digital age can be downright daunting.
Problem Management Hits Where It Counts... Your Metrics
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Written by Jenny Rains Jun 02, 2014
As part of a recent HDI survey about problem management practices, organizations were asked if implementing problem management has impacted their metrics, specifically their recurring incidents and their mean time to resolve (MTTR). The findings are exciting and worth a share.
25 Questions for Measuring Service Desk/Help Desk Maturity
Common Measurements Used in Support Centers
- Customer Satisfaction
- Employee Satisfaction
- % of planned and unplanned time analysts are unavailable to handle contacts.
Top 10 Mistakes Managers Make Managing People
Here are the managing mistakes you most want to notice, prevent, and avoid.
- Fail to get to know employees as people: Developing a relationship with reporting employees is a key factor in managing. You don't want to be your employees' divorce counselor or therapist, but you do want to know what's happening in their lives. When you know where the employee is going on vacation or that his kids play soccer, you are taking a healthy interest in your employees' lives.
Knowing that the dog died, expressing sympathy, or that her daughter won a coveted award at school make you an interested, involved boss. Knowing employees will make you a better manager, a manager who is more responsive to employee needs, moods, and life cycle events. - Fail to provide clear direction: Managers fail to create standards and give people clear expectations so they know what they are supposed to do, and wonder why they fail. If you make every task a priority, people will soon believe that there are no priorities. More importantly, they will never feel as if they have accomplished a complete task or goal.
Within your clear expectations, if you are either too rigid or too flexible, your reporting employees will feel rudderless. You need to achieve an appropriate balance that allows you to lead employees and provide direction without dictating and destroying employee empowerment and employee engagement.
Essentials for a Great Customer Service ExperienceWritten by Richard Sykora Jul 28, 2014
Recently I was asked to be a key note speaker to a group of teachers and educational professionals from our local district. For the last few years one area of focus for the district has been in Customer Service. You see, they understand that in order to be the best district, they need to be successful in all areas of operation.
Yes indeed, educators have customers too! From needy parents like myself, to internal staff answering phones, emails, delivering payroll, and even down to the kids themselves, they have customers both internal and external.
Fundamental customer service principles can be applied to the education industry just as much as any call center around the world. Three essentials to follow in any industry will provide the foundation to maturing any organization's service, I call BPS:
Yes indeed, educators have customers too! From needy parents like myself, to internal staff answering phones, emails, delivering payroll, and even down to the kids themselves, they have customers both internal and external.
Fundamental customer service principles can be applied to the education industry just as much as any call center around the world. Three essentials to follow in any industry will provide the foundation to maturing any organization's service, I call BPS:
Taking Service Management Outside IT - It's Not as Simple as It SoundsWritten by Sarah Lahav Jul 15, 2014
As you well know, it’s not always easy working in IT. Not that it ever has been, it’s just that us IT professionals are now not only having to deal with: greater demand for IT (hopefully a sign that we are doing something right), new technologies that we need to skill up on, the potential perils (and maybe opportunities) of Shadow IT, and last-but-not-least, consumer-world-driven views on service delivery and the service experience that envelopes it.
Why a mobile workforce needs a mobile service desk
As flexible working is likely to become more commonplace, the role of the service desk will have to evolve to support workers on the move
7 Ways To Avoid Self-Service IT Pitfalls
Moving routine work from IT to end users can increase efficiency and save serious money. But too many projects fall flat.
A few years ago, one of my clients implemented a web-based self-service request system, hoping to reduce overhead by shifting some service desk work back to employees. Instead of relying solely on service desk agents, the self-help system allows users to complete online forms requesting many items that can be planned in advance, such as computer upgrades, move requests, and acquiring or changing cellphone service. Once a request is approved, the system initiates a series of tasks tied to a single ticket. The organization also revised nearly every knowledge article to be more user friendly -- a big factor in the program's success.
Beyond the Mystery:
How to Develop a
Service Catalog
By Doug Tedder, FSM, Tedder Consulting LLC
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Offer an Effective Knowledge Base to Your Customer
Written by Aroop Menon Jun 05, 2014
Imagine you’re engaged in a conversation with a group of colleagues and the topic of knowledge management comes up. You suddenly perk up to see if your perception of knowledge management equals that of your peers. One definition of knowledge management is the process of gathering, organizing, sharing, and analyzing knowledge. The practice of knowledge management includes identifying the systems needed to capture knowledge, make it structured, ensure its effectiveness, and disseminate it to users.
THE DNA OF THE SERVICE DESK
For healthy IT user support, go beyond the service desk
IT support is a vital business function, writes Noel Bruton, but we need to focus on more than the service desk to forge improvements.
How to Save Hours Every Day (and naturally be more productive) with this Simple Help Desk Strategy
June 4, 2014 ● By Marisa Murgatroyd
If I were to do a quick poll of my audience and ask them what is the biggest time suck in your business, email would be right at the top of the list.
Probably followed by social media (but we’ll talk about that another time).
How many of you dread going away on a business trip or vacation and coming back to hundreds (if not thousands) of messages in your inbox?
Or simply waking up each morning to 50+ new emails that need answering?
Probably followed by social media (but we’ll talk about that another time).
How many of you dread going away on a business trip or vacation and coming back to hundreds (if not thousands) of messages in your inbox?
Or simply waking up each morning to 50+ new emails that need answering?
Desktop Support Ticket Volume Still on the Rise
Given the steady increase in ticket volumes noted over the past few years, and knowing that this is a trend that will likely continue, how can technical support teams manage this volume? For the past three years, desktop support teams have recommended three key tools.
Defining the Service-Oriented Enterprise
By Frank Slootman
It is imperative that IT becomes the backbone of the modern enterprise! But this major shift is not necessarily hard-wired. For so long, IT has been kept busy by putting out fires and keeping the lights on that service management has tended to become an afterthought.
Characteristics of an Effective Leader
*Maintaining a positive perspective
*Encouraging participation
*Providing incentives that are challenging yet attainable
*Delegating effectively
*Encouraging Creativity
*Practicing fairness
*Making unpopular decisions
*Executing strategic plans
*Enforcing organizational policies
*Leading by example
*Continuing to learn
*Inspiring and motivating others
*Creating organization alignment
*Exhibiting excellent listening and communication skills
*Encouraging participation
*Providing incentives that are challenging yet attainable
*Delegating effectively
*Encouraging Creativity
*Practicing fairness
*Making unpopular decisions
*Executing strategic plans
*Enforcing organizational policies
*Leading by example
*Continuing to learn
*Inspiring and motivating others
*Creating organization alignment
*Exhibiting excellent listening and communication skills
Seven Steps to
Exceptional Customer Service
A White Paper
By
Paul M. Dooley
1. Research your customers to tailor your services
2. GREET your customers - by name
3. Show that you VALUE your customer
2. GREET your customers - by name
3. Show that you VALUE your customer
Samanage Continues to Gain Industry Accolades With Top Honors from Service Desk Institute and AlwaysOn
Zappos Family Core Values
As we grow as a company, it has become more and more important to explicitly define the core values from which we develop our culture, our brand, and our business strategies. These are the ten core values that we live by:
The future of the enterprise service desk is mobile
By Will Kelly
After spending some time checking out MyIT from BMC Software, I've seen the future of the enterprise service desk and it's mobile. MyIT offers a mobile front end for the Remedy Service Desk solution, a standard for service desks in both the federal and commercial sectors. Recognizing that navigating the service desk can be confusing, BMC created MyIT that brings together a updated formless interface to common service desk tasks, integrated alerts about service health, an enterprise app store, and self-service support tools.
ITSM Industry Thought Leaders and Technology Innovators Cherwell Software, Pink Elephant, HDI and Bomgar Unite for Five City Metrics Roadshow
The Science of Metrics roadshow, hosted by Cherwell Software, is a full-day event designed specifically to enable IT professionals who want to leverage monitoring and metrics to make data-driven decisions instead of merely acting on instinct. Help desk and service desk directors, managers and analysts, IT service management professionals and IT consultants will learn how to better use metrics to their advantage. The roadshow events are 8:30 AM – 3:00 PM in Chicago, Illinois on May 28; Boston, Massachusetts on May 30; Charlotte, North Carolina on June 2; Atlanta, Georgia on June 4; and Miami, Florida on June 5, 2014. Spots are still open in all cities.