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10 Situations When You'll Need to Know About ITSM

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Vaishali Gopi
10 Situations When You'll Need to Know About ITSM

Look around and you will find most companies are using some forms of IT related technology. This is not only true about businesses belonging to the IT sector in particular. Companies belonging to diverse niches like FMCG, apparel, healthcare, insurance and hospitality resort to using different types of IT services for operational requirements. To ensure all these IT related services run smoothly and conflicts between the apps and services are reduced, using comprehensive IT service management solutions are necessary. That explains why ITSM has gained prominence.

Emergence of ITSM in the business scene and its growing adoption

There was a time most companies had an IT support team and that team used to take care of problems related to software and hardware issues. However, things have changed drastically in the last decade. IT services are no longer restricted to catering to back-office functions in most organizations. In most companies, a lot of software applications, hardware devices, networking services and cloud services are used on a regular basis. Just having an IT service desk  or support team is no longer going to cut the ice. ITSM is a vast set of practices and policies that are used to make optimum usage of IT services and make these aligned to organizational goals.

ITSM can be defined as a comprehensive framework, comprising of strategies for planning, managing, deploying, supporting and enhancing IT services. Apart from aligning all IT services with company goals, its use also helps enhance customer support. There are many ITSM frameworks available for adoption and ITIL is the most popular one. While there are subtle variations among these different ITSM frameworks – their main aim remains the same. An ITSM strategy promotes preventative, proactive focus on operations in a company rather than rising to occasion when any problem is found.

Situations when you will feel the need for ITSM deployment

Despite the growing rate of ITSM adoption by mid and large sized businesses, a section of companies remain skeptical about it. They have certain misconceptions and doubts about benefits of ITSM deployment. Unless they are faced with certain situations they do not realize the need and importance of ITSM adoption.

Listed below are the major situations when you are compelled to think of ITSM deployment in the organization:

  • When productive time is lost in fixing glitches and conflicts

What can be more annoying and frustrating than losing productive business time in fixing IT service related glitches? When your company uses various software applications and web services and those run on different types of computers and mobile devices, instances of device snag or software issues may happen. As the company grows, recurrence of such problems will go up. Imagine the amount of time your workforce will lose in fixing various IT service related issues. Even a separate hardware and networking team will not be able to address all issues. Deploying ITSM can help you figure out root cause of such commonplace IT service problems. By taking required preventive actions such problems can be thwarted largely from recurring. Your employees will be able to focus on their work and productive time will not be lost.

  • When the running cost cannot be kept within limits

No matter how big or small your organization is, you would not want the operational costs to touch the sky! Normally, most companies find it tough to keep this cost under control. Some unplanned expenses may crop up and often these are related to IT services and products used by the company. Factors like networking glitches, hardware device failure, Cloud service issues or software interoperability issues are not unheard of in business setups! When such problems crop up, fixing those mean added expenditure. ITSM deployment results in reduction in number of those problems- paving way for reduced instances of additional expenditure in the company.

  • When lack of sync between departments bottleneck workflow

The various departments in your company need to use and access some common IT resources, for good workflow. These may include internet service, cloud services, security software solutions and the CRM database etc. However, the workflow may be bottlenecked occasionally owing to lack of sync between the various departments.  When an ITSM tool is in place, this problem can be resolved. Such a framework ensures the sync between various departments remains optimal and resource sharing is seamless.

  • When the customer support agents do not/cannot operate as they should

Competition in every sector is fierce and the companies resort to every possible means to keep the customers happy. The customers have also smartened up and if they are not satisfied with your company’s service- there are plenty of alternatives to pick from. If you feel the support agents are not performing as they should- deploying an ITSM software solution can help. By using such software solution, you can monitor performance of each agent- whether he/she is using call, email or live chat to interact with the customer. The agents find it easier to handle complex customer issues when a robust IT support desk solution is present. This is a part of most contemporary ITSM tools.  

  • When you do not get enough data to analyze customer mindset

Understanding mindset of the customer is important if you want your venture to sustain and enhance revenue, as it is. In the last few years, the customers have becomes smarter than ever before thanks to proliferation of high speed web access services and evolution of mobile devices. It is important to understand mindset of your target customers and the existing ones too. This is possible when you can obtain enough data pertaining to their problems, preferences and priorities. Usage of a robust ITSM solution gives you access to a huge labyrinth of data. By analyzing the data obtained from chat and call logs and email conversations you get insight into shifting trends in customer demand and the pain points they encounter. By taking up remedial steps, you can address those concerns and customers are satisfied. This enhances customer retention rate.

  • When you want real time monitoring of customer support activities

A typical IT help desk solution can be used to save logs of received calls and chat sessions and those can be useful in agent performance analysis and understanding customer grievances and need. However, you may want more insight into these and prefer real time reflection of customer service operations on a daily basis. A suitable ITSM framework which comes with integrated service desk setup offers you real time monitoring capability. You can monitor number of pending calls on IVR, ongoing chat sessions and pending emails etc.

  • When you want more automation

The skilled employees in your company workforce can focus better on their work when small and repetitive tasks are automated. This is applicable for each team in the company. For example, the veteran customer support agents can deal with complex issues and escalated cases if basic customer queries are handled by chat bots integrated with the live chat software. Many others tasks can be automated by deploying a suitable ITSM framework in the company. This reduces workload of employees to an extent and they can concentrate on work they are skilled at.



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Vaishali Gopi
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