Table of contents

1. AI applications are starting to make a real impact
2. Increased demands on user experience
3. Focus on value creation
4. A service flux mindset – start small, iterate and be pragmatic

1. AI applications are starting to make a real impact

Recognizing AI as a major trend in our digital landscape is nothing new – and it’s only going to get more relevant. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2025, 70% of organizations will implement structured automation – up from 20% in 2021. The question stands, how will this expand as a trend for ITSM in 2024?

For one, IT professionals expect more ways to implement AI from their ITSM software. Think of automatic categorization and routing calls to the right team based on the issue description of the call. Or using ChatGPT and other AI to auto-fill text fields in incident cards. While the margin for error with AI means content will still need to be reviewed and edited by an expert, this will save service desk departments valuable time on simple tasks.

AI applications are also shifting from ‘cute but useless’ to helpful tools for businesses. Chatbots used to

be (and still are often) tools that frustrate customers with simple conversation threads that loop and provide minimal solutions. Now, chatbots can leverage the power of AI to provide a complex matrix of solutions that benefit both customers and agents.

Entering 2024, we are just breaking ground when it comes to applying AI technology to service desk software. But in the long run, AI will be a disruptive trend for IT departments. Registering and handling calls is an important part of the work of service agents. And it’s exactly this type of admin work that’s expected to be automated by AI in the coming years.

2. Increased demands on user experience

IT teams face increasing expectations for the experiences they provide their colleagues. End-users expect a seamless and user-friendly service desk experience, that’s nothing new. But there are a few developments that will make this more urgent in the coming years.

For one, apps for private use are becoming better every year. They all provide a smooth and frictionless user experience. And your customers expect a similar experience when it comes to their business software, too. If you’re not meeting those expectations, chances are your colleagues might use that latest free planning tool they can download in 20 seconds instead of the one you carefully selected for your business.

Next to that, meeting accessibility standards is an increasingly important ambition for many organizations. Partly because of today’s diverse workforce: obviously you want the software you provide to be usable also by people who, say, are color blind or happen to have trouble reading. Guidelines such as WCAG 2.1 help organizations in this endeavor.

3. Focus on value creation

The mission of any modern IT department is not so much to facilitate and maintain an IT infrastructure but to provide value to their customers.  

This focus on value creation has two main drivers. 

The concept of ‘providing value’ in ITSM has been further popularized in ITIL 4 in 2019. Instead of focusing heavily on processes, as in ITIL v3, ITIL 4 focuses on providing value for your customers. Your aim is to discover what’s valuable to your customers and to deliver just that.

Another driver is the rising inflation that organizations have been facing in recent years.  More than ever, you’re expected to show what you’re doing – and explain why you couldn’t do it with 2 fewer people or a 10% budget cut.  

The better you can demonstrate the value of your IT team, the stronger your case will be for next year’s budget talks. 

4. A service flux mindset – start small, iterate and be pragmatic

The way IT departments approach projects is changing, too. The large, big-bang implementations with extensive design and implementation phases are making way for a more iterative approach to projects.  

It’s a trend we see at many organizations, and which we at TOPdesk call ‘service flux’.

The service flux approach means embracing constant transformation. You focus on implementing the low-effort, high-impact changes first, and go from there. It also means letting go of a ‘first-time right’ mentality.

A nice example of the service flux mindset is Knowledge Centered Service (KCS).

Traditionally, you first design a knowledge base, including all the information you think necessary, and then you implement the whole thing.  With Knowledge Centered Service, you start small and expand as you go. You give all agents the possibility to create and adapt knowledge items. You make registering and updating knowledge part of their daily process – a small step in handling each call. Each day and each hour, your team is slowly building and improving their knowledge base. Much more efficient than saving up bulk work for a Friday afternoon. 

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If you’re clinging to an outdated way of working, the first thing that needs to change is your mindset. Here are a few signs your IT team needs a mindset shift:

1. You’re hung up on processes

Have you ever felt like you’re clinging to a process which doesn’t work for your department or organization, simply because it’s part of a framework that you’ve chosen to follow? When using frameworks like ITIL from their processes, organizations tend to focus a little too much on guidelines and not enough on how their organization actually works. If your service desk consisted of a single person, would it make any sense to double that person’s workload for the sake of following an ITIL process? Definitely not. Try to think of frameworks as something flexible, which can be adapted to your needs, rather than a set of rules.

Learn more about flexible frameworks like ITIL in this blog.

2. You’re aiming for perfection

Too many IT departments shy away from making adjustments to their services because they think that, if they make a change, they have to do it all perfectly, right away.

Not only is this not realistic, but it also keeps you stuck in the same, old way of working. Imagine if you took the same approach to learning a new language or picking up a new hobby — you’d just start small and keep improving. The fact is, you can’t do anything perfectly without first having a bit of trial and error. Instead of focusing on the end-goal of perfection, think of service improvement as a series of small steps, in which you make low-effort, high-impact adjustments to your processes.

Getting started with improvements is much less daunting when you take an iterative approach to service management.

3. You’re cut off from the rest of the organization

You’re delivering IT services, so there’s no need to collaborate with departments or teams outside of IT, right?

Wrong. The old image of the IT department stuck in the basement is entirely outdated. In fact, service departments like IT, HR, and Facilities need each other more than ever. Your customers are their customers, and they expect a smooth, B2C-like experience with your services. Think of meeting rooms with intuitive technology that supports Bring Your Own Device and a flawless on- and offboarding process. None of these can be achieved without taking a joint approach and working together to deliver the best services possible. So, get out of the figurative IT basement and start talking to people from other departments!

Discover the benefits of collaborating with other departments.

Service flux: a pragmatic approach to service management

The mindset adjustments that I’ve described so far — taking an iterative approach to service improvement, treating frameworks as flexible, and joining forces with other departments — are all key elements of a pragmatic approach to service management, which we call service flux. In a nutshell, service flux is about embracing change and making small steps to improve your services — rather than focusing on controlling your processes — so you can adapt to a constantly changing world.

Want to learn more about service flux and how it can help your IT department? Check out our glossary page.

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But in practice, IT departments typically focus too much on processes. Not to say that processes aren’t important, because they are. But customers should always be part of the equation.

Adapt or fall behind: embracing flexibility in IT processes for evolving customer needs

Think about it: your customers’ needs are constantly changing based on their experiences with B2C organizations, technological improvements and bigger changes in the world.

Does it make sense, then, for your IT department to have rigid processes in place that you cling to with all of your might – even if these processes don’t actually help you meet your customers’ needs?

Introducing Best Practice Service Management (BPSM)

Instead, your IT department should focus on iterative improvement: taking small steps to improve your services based on customer needs, with processes being a part of the puzzle – not the end game.

In comes Best Practice Service Management (BPSM). BPSM is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: delivering services based on best practices, which will help your IT department become more efficient and more customer-focused – all at the same time.

It’s based on three principles:

1. Using services as your starting point
2. Using as few processes as possible
3. Using customer needs as your guiding principle

Start with the services you already offer

Best Practice Service Management is based on the services you already offer your customers. This is the most logical approach: after all, your customers don’t care which internal processes you follow (and whether you’re into ITIL or Knowledge Centered Support). They just want you to help them.

Don’t fall into the trap of only thinking about how to best implement specific processes. Use the services you offer as your starting point instead. If you’re not sure which services your IT department does and doesn’t support, you can’t control your team’s workload. Standardizing your services and recording them in a service catalogue will help your team spend less of their time and energy on handling requests and improve the efficiency of your IT support.

BPSM will help your IT department become more efficient and more customer-focused.

Limit the number of supporting processes

Once you have a clear overview of all of the services your department offers, the next question is: what do you need to support these services? That’s where processes come in. But only the ones you actually need to deliver your services and meet customer needs.

Because let’s be honest: do you need 103910 different processes to do your job?

ITIL, for example, is a great framework. But because it has so many different processes, sometimes it’s hard to see the wood for the trees. If you stick to ITIL alone, you may have to go through up to four different processes to resolve a simple request, causing unnecessary delays for the customer. (Find out more about why you should use ITIL as a framework and not a set of rules in this blog.)

Best Practice Service Management, on the other hand, only has a few supporting processes:

• Reactive management: a process for questions about services your department supports
• Relation management: a process for questions about services your department doesn’t support
• The change process: a process that allows you to make changes to your standardized services, based on customer needs, for example.
• Two follow-up processes: proactive management, through which you can proactively maintain your services, and a process to iteratively improve your services.

BPSM in practice

Here’s what BPSM looks like in practice:

Your customer has a request.

If this request is about one of your standard services, you simply process it according to current agreements (reactive management).

If the request concerns a service that isn’t available, explain to the customer why you can’t (or can’t yet) provide the service and offer them a different solution (relation management). Or adjust your current service to meet your customers’ needs via the change process.

Once these reactive processes are under control, you have the time to invest in maintaining your services periodically to ensure you can keep offering them (proactive management). And don’t forget to improve your services based on frequent disruptions, new technology, or changed legislation, for example. But remember: it’s all about iterative improvement, not a quick fix.

Implement BPSM in just 5 steps

Ready to bid process control goodbye and say hello to customer-focused IT services and iterative improvement? Download our Best Practice Service Management e-book to get started with BPSM in just 5 simple steps.

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To keep up, IT departments like yours can’t keep doing what they’ve always done.

Here are 3 ways to adapt your IT services to meet rising customer expectations:

1. Move from reactive to predictive support

According to Gartner, predictive support uses “continuous monitoring and […] trend analysis to prevent service-impacting events or incidents and guarantee performance and availability. Predictive services reach out to individual customer[s] before specific issues, which may be unknown and unpredictable, manifest themselves.”

Thinking “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there” when it comes to potential issues is understandable, especially when you’re busy with your day-to-day operations. But wouldn’t you like to know about a major outage before it becomes a bottleneck for your whole organization?

Of course, there will always be a reactive component to your services. Sometimes things just break and need to be fixed. But adding predictive support into the mix minimizes major service disruptions such as downtime and data loss, which means you’ll be helping your customers before they even know there’s a problem to begin with.

2. Break down silos between IT and other service departments with a SPOC

According to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report, 76% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments. And yet, there’s usually little to no collaboration between IT and other service departments, even when it comes to services that require more than one department like the onboarding process.

Where does that leave the customer? Who is responsible for their overall onboarding experience? Is it IT? FM? HR?

Having a single point of contact (SPOC) in place will improve communication between service departments, remove any bottlenecks and help deliver better services.

The best thing about a SPOC? Your customers no longer have to wonder which department to go to with their questions. All they need to know is how to engage the SPOC – whether it’s via a self-service portal, e-mail, chat, a walk-up or a combination of these – and their question or issue will be addressed by the appropriate person.

Find out how a SPOC can transform your organization in this guest blog by industry expert Doug Tedder.

One-size-fits all IT services simply won’t cut it anymore.

3. Create personalized customer experiences based on specific IT personas

Your customers don’t want to be treated like numbers. They expect your IT department to deliver highly personalized services that are tailored to their individual wants and needs, just like the great B2C experiences they’re used to.

One-size-fits all IT services simply won’t cut it anymore.

Think about it: depending on their role in the organization, your customers all use different hardware, software, and technologies – in different ways and for different purposes. If your IT department treats them all the same, you’re setting yourselves up for failure.

IT personas give you a more holistic view of your customers and their needs: they go beyond segmenting your customers into job title or which technology they use – they look at the how, since that has a direct impact on your IT services.

With IT personas, you can:

• Truly get to know your customers and their experiences with your IT services.
• Use these insights to deliver tailored information to relevant customers that applies directly to them instead of making generic recommendations to the entire organization.
• Provide personalized support to impacted customers when problems occur.

Prepare for the future of the service desk

Customer expectations will continue to rise in the coming years, heavily impacting what the service desk of the future looks like. To make sure your IT services continue to meet customers’ rising expectations, check out our IT Service Management software page or request a personalized demo today.

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Short for IT service management, ITSM is a set of systems and processes, which organizations use to improve the way that IT is used.

What does ITSM mean?

Unlike traditional IT management approaches, ITSM isn’t about technology itself. It’s not about developing, delivering or maintaining hardware and software. It’s about providing well-organized IT services.

Every piece of technology that you use at work – your laptop, the printer, even the apps installed on your work devices – is a service provided by your IT department.

What does ITSM look like in practice?

Let’s say you’re an employee who needs a new laptop. You can submit your request as an incident via a self-service portal, kicking off a repeatable workflow. The incident lands with IT, where it is prioritized and assigned to the right person. They get you your laptop, close the incident, and voila! You can get back to work in no time. That’s ITSM at its core – it’s about providing IT as a service.

So, is ITSM the same thing as IT support?

Not quite. While a lot of end-users think of ITSM as being just “IT support”, it’s about more than just resolving day-to-day issues. The IT service desk is definitely a part of ITSM, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Your IT department is responsible for planning and designing IT services, not just delivering them.

And what about ITIL, or DevOps?

ITIL

People often mention ITSM and ITIL in the same breath. But when you’re looking to improve your services, it’s important to realize you’re not facing a choice between the two. While ITSM is about how you organize your IT services, ITIL is a framework that offers best practices on how to implement ITSM within your organization.

Find out why you should be using ITIL as a framework – not a set of rules.

DevOps

Like ITIL, DevOps is an IT framework. But where ITIL helps streamline service management with a focus on customer satisfaction, DevOps is an approach to IT development and delivery. DevOps refers to Development and Operations teams working on an entire release chain together, from concepting and design to product support.

Can DevOps and ITSM work together?

What are some examples of ITSM processes?

ITSM is made up of several processes which help you manage your IT services – here are a few practical examples.

• • Change and Release Management. This includes changes as simple as replacing a PC. Or as complex as introducing a new software package.
  • Asset Management. Here you register and keep track of everything your customers need. From object types to licenses.
  • Problem Management. With problem management, you pinpoint and fix major structural problems within your organization.
  • Incident Management. Incident management helps you register and process all complaints, wishes and requests from (internal) customers.
  • Resource Management. This helps you stay on top of employees’ availability and workload.

Digitize your service delivery with ITSM software

TOPdesk’s ITSM software brings your IT services together in one place, so it’s easy to share knowledge, answer questions and solve problems.

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And then, just when you’ve managed to get settled, a walk-up arrives, asking for help with a password reset. They want to be helped. And they want to be helped now.

Understanding and meeting the increasing Customer Expectations

These days, it seems like customer expectations are only getting higher. And, when your team is stuck firefighting all day, meeting them feels like an impossible task. And it’s not in your head! In fact, Microsoft’s Global State of Customer Service Report showed that 55% of customers expect a higher level of customer service year on year, with a whopping 70% of those aged between 18 and 34 reporting increasing expectations.

And, while 73% of support leaders say that they think customer expectations are getting higher, only 42% are certain they are meeting those expectations.

But what’s behind this recent rise in customer expectations? And what does it mean for you and your team?

The consumerization of IT

For IT departments, this first means recognizing that the standards being set for their services are no longer within their own control. As TechTarget puts it, “in our technology-rich environment, we first need to recognize that customer expectations are being set by their best experiences with technology — and those expectations are being set by someone other than the IT department.”

It also means added pressure – on both front-line service desk employees and their managers – to deliver fast, smooth services that match their customers’ experiences in the wider world. Not only do end users now expect to be helped quickly, via their preferred channel, but organizations also expect their IT departments to adopt all the latest tech trends, from AI to the Internet of Things, to mobile. The result? The service desk becomes a pressure cooker.

Customer expectations are being set by their best experiences with technology — and those expectations are being set by someone other than the IT department.

When work gets hard, switch to smart

To keep up with these demands, IT departments need to find a new, smarter way of working. But when you’re working reactively, finding your first step can be a challenge.

Our suggestion? Start with your mindset. If your IT department is struggling to keep up with service demands, it doesn’t mean that your way of working is all ‘wrong’. But it does mean it’s probably time to switch things up. Read this blog to find out whether it’s time for a mindset shift.

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What is swarming exactly? And what are the benefits for your customers and employees? Find out why swarming is more about culture than structure.

Three-tiered support

Before going into swarming, let’s take a quick look at the traditional three-tiered support model included in the ITIL framework. The three-tiered model organizes your IT support into three main levels: the service desk, technical or application management teams, and developer or vendor support.

Based around escalation, the three-tiered support model is strictly hierarchical. The service desk solves most of the tickets that come in. If they can’t resolve the ticket, they pass it on to the second tier. If the ticket requires even more expertise, it moves on to third-line support.

What is swarming?

Swarming is very different: it’s collaboration-based instead of escalation-based. Essentially, swarming means one of your employees handles a ticket from start to finish instead of forcing it through a tiered support model.

The employee who’s most likely to resolve the ticket as quickly as possible usually picks it up. So what happens if your employee needs help? Instead of passing tickets back and forth between teams, your employee “swarms” around the problem with their coworkers, finding the answer until the ticket is resolved.

Benefits of swarming

More transparency

Swarming makes for a nicer experience for all parties involved. The three-tiered support model often leaves both your employees and your customers confused. In a three-tiered system, the service desk employee who passes on a ticket to the second tier never learns what the resolution of a ticket is.

Thanks to swarming, your first-line support no longer worries if their customer gets the help they need. Nor does your second-line support wonder how and why a specific ticket got to them in the first place. And most importantly, your customers no longer feel helpless as their ticket gets bounced around from tier to tier, without any clear resolution timeframe.

Developing new skills

Swarming opens new ways to collaborate: it thrives on the diverse skill sets in your team. Your employees learn from each other and work together towards a combined goal, developing new skills along the way.

Because your employees retain ownership of a ticket until it’s resolved, they learn how to deal with every ticket they encounter. This doesn’t mean your employees need to know everything – they just need to know where and how to find the answer.

Employee empowerment

The flat hierarchy of swarming empowers every single one of your employees in each role. In a three-tiered system, first-line support is too often seen as the bottom rung of the ladder.

Swarming forces your first-line support employees to take initiative and “swarm” with members of development teams to find the answer to a problem. This way, first-line support passes on the customer voice to your developers so they know what works best for your customers.

Lower staff turnover

The benefits of swarming mentioned above all culminate into one overall advantage: lower staff turnover. In a three-tiered system, first-line support employees typically get very little training and have to stick to a script to resolve tickets. After a year, they’re bored and move on.

The collaborative opportunities that come from swarming keep your employees motivated and happy to stick around. They’ll learn new skills and get the opportunity to explore areas that interest them. As people will naturally follow their interests and passions, this’ll improve the expertise in your team. Everyone benefits!

Swarming will only work for you if you prioritize customer satisfaction. This means you have to put your customers before your targets.

Tips for implementing swarming

You’ve now got the many benefits of swarming for both your customers and your employees down. Thinking about implementing swarming at your IT service desk? Keep the following two tips in mind.

1. See swarming as a culture rather than as a structure

If you want swarming to be successful in your team, you need to view it as a culture change, rather than as a structure change. It’s crucial to have the right people in your team. Look for curiosity and helpfulness in new hires. Curiosity can’t be taught, but it’s the fuel that problem solving runs on. And helpfulness is a fundamental part of swarming. Your team won’t be successful if they’re quick to say, “That’s not my job.”

Your existing employees will have to get used to a different way of working. Transitioning from a three-tiered system to swarming is a big shift for everyone. At first, your employees may struggle with greater autonomy. And that’s perfectly fine. You have to guide people to use their newfound freedom. Your employees have to learn to focus more on the customers, and less on “the rules.”

2. Change the way you use your key metrics

Swarming will only work for you if you prioritize customer satisfaction. This means you have to put your customers before your targets. Your employees shouldn’t have to choose between making the customer happy or making the boss happy. If they see an opportunity to improve your overall level of IT support, your employees should be able to focus on that instead of worrying about their personal statistics and the possible consequences.

Why would you have a time limit on support phone calls, for example? If you cut a call short, your customer usually calls back again the next day, taking up more of your time later on. Instead of keeping track of metrics, let your employees focus on keeping your customers updated during the process so they know exactly how things are progressing.

This doesn’t mean some of your more traditional metrics aren’t relevant anymore. Just don’t use them to check on your employees or to push them. Instead, employ these metrics to constantly improve your IT support with customer satisfaction in mind. Use the same metrics but focus on customer experience rather than employee efficiency.

Discover which 4 customer satisfaction KPIs to use at your service desk.

Ready to shift?

Are you ready to say goodbye to the three-tiered support model once and for all? Knowledge management is a key part of swarming, so it’s time to break down those dreaded knowledge silos in your IT team first. Download our knowledge management guide to find out how sharing knowledge takes your IT support to the next level.

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Spoiler alert: we don’t think it will. The question is: what might it look like instead? Let’s take a look at the service desk of the future.

The service desk as we know it

Before we go forward in time to the service desk of the future, let’s look at the service desk as we know it.

In many cases, service desk employees offer first-line support: handling incoming calls, providing customers with workarounds to known problems, and answering any other questions they might have. Some of these tasks are pretty repetitive.

In some organizations, service desk employees use a script or knowledge items to answer standard questions. Questions that require more expertise usually move on to second or third-line support.

By 2030, chatbots, scripts, and other tools will have taken over the simple, repetitive tasks that some service desk employees now do.

Automation will make repetitive calls a thing of the past

Although the digital workforce probably won’t take over the service desk any time soon, by 2030, that could all change. Why? Thanks to new and improved technologies such as AI and chatbots, the need for a service desk staffed by people handling repetitive calls will simply disappear.

By 2030, chatbots, scripts, and other tools will have taken over the simple, repetitive tasks that some service desk employees now do. Take for instance resetting passwords or assigning user rights. Some service desks still do this manually.

But why should an employee handle these simple tasks when a chatbot can do it in a fraction of a second? And why should service desk employees spend their entire day giving customers standard answers from a knowledge item? All this does is create high staff turnover. So why not start automating?

Customers are getting used to being more empowered. Most organizations already have a self-service portal or knowledge base where customers can find their own answers. At the service desk of the future, this will go even further. And, if customers can’t find what they need themselves, a chatbot will be ready to help them. The technology is already quite advanced – just imagine what it will be like in 2030.

Customer experience will be top priority

Apart from offering first-line support, the service desk also plays a key role in both customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX). Service desk employees are the face of your organization: customers and employees will often judge your company based on their interactions with your service desk.

Because service desk employees handle lots of similar calls on a daily basis, often with the help of standard answers or knowledge items, customer experience and employee experience don’t always get the attention they deserve. More often than not, service desk managers focus more on employee efficiency and targets rather than on providing excellent service.

Already, customer experience and employee experience are becoming increasingly important for most organizations. This won’t change in 2030. In fact, customer experience and employee experience will become even more of a priority for businesses.

Adapting to the future of service desks

So, what does all this mean for life at the service desk as we know it? And how will service desk employees have to adapt?

It’s pretty clear that the service desk of the future will need a different type of service desk employee. With the digital workforce handling repetitive calls, service desk managers will have to be creative with how they deploy service desk employees. Here’s what service desk employees will be doing in 2030:

Putting CX and EX in the spotlight

In 2030, front office employees will no longer be found solving relatively easy calls for IT, FM, or HR. Instead, their role will become more focused on hospitality, customer experience, and employee experience. Since chatbots and other technology will deal with repetitive tasks, service desks can spend more time and effort on delighting customers.

Handling complex calls

Of course, there will always be questions that technology can’t solve. That’s why the service desk of the future needs skilled service staff to solve more complex calls. This may take the form of a service desk or a back-office team.

Serving as a single point of contact

As mentioned, in 2030, customer experience and employee experience will be top priority for most organizations. This means many will likely adopt a fully-fledged Enterprise Service Management (ESM) approach, which will allow them to provide excellent service.

A single point of contact (SPOC) is crucial for ESM. That’s why the service desk of the future will transform into a SPOC. This way, customers will know that their question or issue will be properly addressed by the appropriate person.

In 2030, every organization will offer a SPOC in some shape or form. Your SPOC and its employees will be the face of your organization. And, in cases where a physical SPOC isn’t an option, organizations will opt for a digital SPOC.

Facilitating peer-to-peer support

Today, customers can help other customers find answers to their problems. And, alongside chatbots and other technology, this peer-to-peer support will only become more relevant at the service desk of the future. The service desk of the future will help facilitate this process by, for example, moderating forums where customers can share knowledge amongst themselves.

Ready for 2030?

Clearly, the service desk of the future will look very different from what we’re used to now. What do you think the fate of the service desk will be in ten years?

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Has your organization put its employees through ITIL training, resulting in a frenzied amount of ITIL best practice adoption? If so, introducing service level management best practices and creating multiple Service Level Agreements (SLAs) was probably part of this frenzy.

What happened to those SLAs after that? Were they “put on a shelf” and then forgotten about? Perhaps only to be pulled down to point out that some party isn’t doing or delivering what they should? Or maybe those SLAs have been consistently used, but never updated to reflect the changing times in terms of service construction, industry benchmarks, or – most importantly – customer needs?

If you step back and look at your organization’s SLAs and how service level management is conducted, are you pleased with what you see? Or is there room for improvement? In particular in how you create, use, and continually improve SLAs?

If you’ve nodded yes to the last two questions, the following five SLA best practices are great for you.

1. Ensure that everyone understands the purpose of SLAs (and service level management)

Why did your organization introduce service level management and SLAs in the first place? Just because it’s an industry best practice or simply “a good thing to do”? Or did you have a specific reason? Even if you’re planning to introduce SLAs in the future, the same questions apply.

Go on, ask yourself: “What’s the purpose of your SLAs and the service level management activity that surrounds them?” Please stop and think about this for a bit before reading the following ITIL 4 definition:

The purpose of the service level management practice is to set clear business-based targets for service levels, and to ensure that delivery of services is properly assessed, monitored, and managed against these targets.

Source: AXELOS, ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition (2019)

For me, the key phrase in this ITIL 4 definition is “business-based.” Any SLA targets that you directly lift from industry best practice benchmarks, or simply think of as appropriate measures of quality levels, aren’t necessarily what business stakeholders deem the expected level of service delivery.

SLAs must be aligned with business needs as part of their purpose. A key opportunity here is using regular service (level management) reviews to do more than simply report how service level targets are consistently met. This is too much like steering your car while looking in the rearview mirror. Instead, look at the road ahead and the opportunities and challenges these reviews bring. Focus your reviews on improvements and necessary changes, including how you can better meet your customer’s needs.

2. Recognize that the agreement of SLAs is multidimensional

ITIL 4 provides the following definition for SLAs:

A documented agreement between a service provider and a customer that identifies both services required and the expected level of service.

Source: AXELOS, ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition (2019)

For me, the key phrase here is “agreement between.” Without the agreement, and the engagement needed to deliver it, your SLAs will likely end up “not worth the paper they’re printed on.”

The agreement between a service provider and a customer needs to include many things. As mentioned before, everyone needs to understand the purpose of your organization’s SLAs. But there’s more to agree on. An SLA should focus on the things that matter most to your organization. For instance: which services are most important to your customers, and which SLA targets should go with them? But an SLA should also be about what’s most important to a service provider.

One key aspect to consider here is the relationship between service levels (and targets) and costs. Take the delivery of a business application or service that’s offered with a high level of availability and high-priority support. Here, an open conversation with your customer on what they actually need rather than what IT assumes they need might yield significant savings with only a minimal drop in the service provider’s availability and support promises.

3. Operate “in the spirit of,” rather than to the letter of, your SLA

SLAs have a defined purpose. It’s a purpose that should be bigger than simply ensuring that all contractual and service-based targets are consistently met. You might have heard the phrase “honor the spirit of the contract” before – well, the same applies to SLAs.

Let me give you an example. As we all struggle during the COVID-19 crisis, the SLA and support targets related to a business-critical system and service such as the corporate human resources (HR) system might need to take a back seat to other issues. Why? Because remote worker connectivity issues are now much more urgent than they ever were before. So even if you haven’t adjusted your SLAs according to these new priorities, you should still act on exceptions like this.

Discover how to make your SLAs more flexible in this blog

4. Consider the use of eXperience level agreements (XLAs) over traditional SLAs

Before jumping into what eXperience level agreements are, I need to call out what the industry calls “watermelon SLAs.” This is when the performance reports and dashboards that inform key business stakeholders about service performance don’t adequately reflect the real-world position. Like a watermelon, the SLAs look green. But once you cut them open, you’ll find that the green exterior hides a wealth of red: the services are actually underperforming – or even failing – in the context of stakeholder expectations.

These “watermelon SLAs” occur due to a number of reasons, including:

• Measuring the wrong things
• Measuring performance or satisfaction at the wrong points (there’s an example below)
• Not enough input on what’s important from the service customer or consumers
• No periodical review of what’s important, what needs to be measured, and what “good looks like” in terms of service level targets.

Measuring performance or success at the wrong points – either in time or during the service value chain – is a common mistake. Here’s an example I used before that still rings true today:

Compare IT operations to pizza delivery operations. The pizza company has a palatial store and has invested in the best catering equipment (read state-of-the-art data center). It employs highly qualified chefs who take pride in creating culinary masterpieces. When the pizza leaves the store, it scores ten out of ten on the internal measurement system. But this is measuring at the point of creation rather than at the point of consumption. Now consider the customer view of the pizza when it arrives: it’s late, cold, has too much cheese, the wrong toppings, and it costs more than the customer expected (and wanted) to pay.

A common IT version of this is the measurement of availability – where components might be reported as “available,” but the end user can’t actually use the service the way they need to. So, for the end user, the service isn’t available no matter what the IT reporting says.

As an alternative to operationally focused SLAs, XLAs look at the desired outcomes and the delivered value. They measure and report on what’s really important to customers and consumers, whereas traditional SLAs usually focus on availability, numbers, and speed.

Rather than measuring and reporting on IT’s view of service availability and support performance, an XLA target relates to what’s actually important for your customer. This might be business performance, customer satisfaction, the corporate bottom line, product innovation, employee experience and productivity, or something else that your organization values.

5. Don’t allow SLAs to drive the wrong decisions

Yes, there are agreed service level targets for a particular service, but is it always right to adhere to them? In every circumstance? The answer has to be “no.” Especially in times of extreme disruption such as now with COVID-19.

It’s similar to the concept of “intelligent disobedience,” promoted by industry luminary Ivor Macfarlane. Employees are empowered to make informed decisions on what to do next based on what they think is best for the customer and the organization. This concept is also used to train guide dogs. It’s based on the premise that the dog, or person, with the most up-to-date information can best judge if the normal rules apply or not.

Say a visually impaired person wants to cross a road. The green light signal sounds and all looks safe, but their guide dog doesn’t move. The dog has likely seen a speeding car that’s not going to stop in time, so it chooses to wait. This “intelligent disobedience” from the guide dog has likely saved a life. Maybe more than one.

Similar to best practice number three, you need to recognize that sometimes it’s better for everyone if an informed and empowered employee overrules an SLA in favor of doing what’s right “in the moment.”

Hopefully, these five service level agreement best practices help form your thinking about how SLAs should be used within your organization to achieve better business outcomes. If you have thoughts to share or any questions, please let me know in the comment section below!

In Stephen’s next blog, he’ll talk about the next evolution of Enterprise Service Management: shared services. Subscribe to our blog to be sure you don’t miss it!

The post 5 service level agreement (SLA) best practices for better business outcomes appeared first on MCG - EN.

We collected a list of today’s most relevant trending IT service management terms, including a brief explanation and a suggestion for further reading, if you want to go more in-depth. This list contains new terms that were introduced during the past years, as well as older terms that regained popularity due to recent developments.

ABC

Stands for Attitude, Behavior, Culture. Refers to pretty much all people-related aspects of IT. (Perhaps it is telling that IT experts needed to come up with an acronym, rather than just say ‘people’?) Hopefully the beginning of a long-overdue acknowledgement that the people who deliver the service are crucial to service management success.

For more about culture, check out our blogs on service culture.

Agile

A mindset – not a framework! – that focuses on small, iterative experiments, rather than extensive, controlled projects. The 4 guiding principles of the Agile Manifesto are at the core of it all. Originally used for software development, its principals are now increasingly being adopted throughout the entire enterprise.

For more on how the agile mindset impacts service departments, check out our blogs on Agile Service Management.

AI

Artificial Intelligence. A catch-all term encompassing concepts like Machine Learning and NLP, but also used to denote Augmented Intelligence or smart automation. The current holy grail of all things service management. Knows a few practical applications in some situations (chatbots, automatic categorization, predictive analytics), but mainly a lot of promise for future use in the years to come.

Read more about the impact of AI on ITSM here.

AITSM

Nope, the first two letters don’t stand for Artificial Intelligence. Gartner introduced the concept of AITSM to cover all the efforts needed to successfully introduce AI and Automation in an organization. Some examples: collecting and optimizing data for Machine Learning functionality, setting up knowledge bases and designing conversations for chatbots, and training users on how to work with software that augments human intelligence.

AIOps

Yes, we’re back at AI again. AIOps means Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations, a term also coined by Gartner. What it could mean in practice? Using big data and Machine Learning to automate tasks, identify strange usage patterns, recognize attacks and predict disturbances.

More on AIOps.

Bi-modal IT

The practice of combining traditional working processes with agile ones. Using traditional methods such as ITIL to control predictable processes (mode 1), while applying an agile approach to unfamiliar, less predictable projects (mode 2). Again, a term coined by Gartner.

COBIT 2019

COBIT stands for Control Objectives for Information Technology. A framework for security, risk management and information governance, originally designed to help structure financial audits, which saw an update in 2019. The 2019 update aims to make COBIT more applicable in an environment where multiple other frameworks (such as ITIL and SIAM) are already in use.

More on COBIT 2019.

Customer Journey Mapping

A popular method for gaining insight into the customer experience of your services. You map all touchpoints of your service, from self-service portal and knowledge base to email and phone conversation, and the customer experience across the entire customer journey. This helps you identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement.

More on Customer Journey Mapping.

CX

The focus on helping your customers the best you can. CX is becoming the goal for more and more service organizations. One of the drivers is heightened expectations customers have due to consumer technology – if you can order a private laptop and have it the next day, why should requesting a business laptop take 3 weeks? One way to measure CX is XLAs.

DevOps

The practice where Development and Operations teams work together on the entire release chain, from concepting and design to supporting the product. Originated as an answer to agile Development teams starting to release new functionalities more often, and Operations being less in the know about those functionalities and how to support them.

More on DevOps.

Digital transformation

Transforming the way your customers are serviced from the ground up, using modern digital technology. A popular topic since a few years, but as a project a very difficult one to pull off, since its scope is very broad and it requires an organizational mind shift. Done right, digital transformation enables customers to help themselves, resulting in faster delivery, a great CX, and potentially huge cost savings.

For more on digital transformation and its challenges, read this McKinsey article.

EX

Employee Experience. Basically customer experience (CX), but for employees. Also known as Workforce Enablement. Enabling employees in your organization to do their best work, efficiently. Requires a joint effort from all supporting teams (ESM) and suppliers (SIAM).

More on Employee Experience.

ESM

Enterprise Service Management. There’s not a single accepted definition, but it’s generally meant to indicate the idea of focusing on delivering great services, regardless of which teams or departments deliver the service. Requires close collaboration with your customers (CX/EX) between various teams (ESM), and with your suppliers (SIAM).

More on Enterprise Service Management.

IoT

Internet of Things. Not a new term, but increasingly relevant due to increased adoption of smart technology. IoT-applications such as smart thermostats and smart lighting, and workplace occupancy use IT technology for facility purposes. IoT applications provide usage data about your office building, enabling you to increase efficiency of usage and save money. Requires close collaboration between IT and Facility departments.

More on Internet of Things.

ITIL 4

The new version of ITIL, of which the first part (ITIL Foundation) was introduced in February 2019. The main differences with ITIL v3 are a stronger focus on people and value, a more pragmatic (dare I say agile?) approach to best practices, and the introduction of guiding principles.

More on ITIL 4.

KCS

Knowledge Centered Service – formerly known as Knowledge Centered Support. An agile way of approaching knowledge management. KCS entails a demand-driven, iterative process that makes knowledge registration and sharing an integral part of a service team.

More on KCS.

Lean

A philosophy focused on cutting waste in your daily work, to focus on what truly matters. Lean is not a new term, but has gained renewed relevance in service management due to the rise of agile ways of working – and due to the introduction of ITIL 4, which relies heavily on the lean mindset and terminology.

More on Lean Service Management.

Omnichannel support

Offering consistent customer experience over various communications channels. Sometimes confused with Multichannel support, which refers to offering your customers more than one communication channel – which all service desks are doing anyway. Customer Journey Mapping is a popular way of checking the success of your Omnichannel strategy.

More on Omnichannel support.

Peer-to-peer support

Co-workers helping each other out with issues that otherwise would have to be solved by supporting departments. Can be actively supported or facilitated by introducing power users within the organization, and publishing a knowledge base these power users can consult.

More on peer-to-peer support and power users.

RPA

Robotic Process Automation. Programming a robot to process a series of simple, predictable tasks. Sounds like another form of Artificial Intelligence, but that not’s necessarily the case. RPA is a form of advanced automation that sometimes makes use of Artificial Intelligence to get the job done.

Read more about RPA and the difference with AI in this blog on Medium.

Service automation

Having machines do work that was previously done by people, freeing up their time to work on other, more challenging tasks. Not a new term. Owes its renewed popularity to the promise of AI-powered automation. One of the main challenges with automation for service departments is increasing efficiency without negatively impacting your customer experience.

More on service automation.

Service culture

A shared mindset at an organization that is focused on helping your customers, with CX as one of the most important goals. Becoming more relevant in the slipstream of an increased world-wide interest in company culture as the basis for organizational success.

More on service culture.

SIAM

Service Integration And Management. An approach to service management, focusing on close collaboration with all your service parties, both internal and external. Introduced to help organizations maintain quality of their service delivery by managing their network of suppliers.

Swarming

An agile form of support that relies heavily on interpersonal collaboration and less on following strict processes. Developed as an alternative to the 3-tier support model where calls are escalated and passed on from one team to the other.

More on swarming.

VeriSM

VeriSM is an approach to service management that helps you choose which frameworks and methods work best for your organization. Stands for Value-driven, Evolving, Responsive, Integrated Service Management. One its key messages: all teams in an organization should work together towards a single goal, but that does not mean they should all use the same tools or follow the same processes.

More on VeriSM.

XLA

eXperience Level Agreement. A method for defining and measuring customer satisfaction. XLAs were introduced to supplement SLAs, since reports on response times and call duration don’t always provide a complete view of customer satisfaction. Used in collaboration with suppliers or customers.

More on XLAs and SLAs.

Download this free ITSM Word search

Staying on top of your industry trends and terminology can be pretty ­intense. Relaxing regularly is very important.

We’ve created a Word search for you containing all ITSM terms mentioned above. So get a cup of coffee, print the Word search and sit down for this puzzle. Can you find all ITSM terms? Good luck!

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