IT Self-Service Portal: All You Need to Know About It

1
IT Self-Service Portal All You Need to Know
About It
Everyone knows the role of self-service in
customer experience. If there are no
self-service resources, a few button clicks can
result in long calls and waiting times. This can
lead to more frustration if the issues are
trivial. Also, it may affect internal support.
Suppose your organization doesnt have an IT
self-service portal for your internal teams. In
that case, the internal requests will be
scattered, getting help will be time-consuming,
there will be many repetitive tasks and queries,
and most importantly, it will hamper
productivity and ef?ciency.
sales_at_crmjetty.com
2
IT self-service portal is a solution that allows
customers to solve their problems themselves
rather than ask for help. Lets learn everything
about it what it is, why you need it, the
challenges in implementing it, and how to develop
an IT self-help portal. What is an IT
Self-Service Portal? First, IT self-service means
empowering users to solve their IT issues using
the relevant resources rather than contacting a
member. Users will be able to get human support
in case self-service fails. An IT Self Service
portal is a solution that comprises all the
self-service resources and tools and helps users
in ?nding solutions. It allows users to access
the knowledge base and manage their tickets from
a single interface. A self-help portal comprises
a knowledge base, ticket management,
collaboration tools, and a help center. It
ensures your users a seamless experience while
helping themselves. For the internal support
team, it means offering better and faster
services. Hence, offer a dedicated portal for
self-service.
sales_at_crmjetty.com
3

• Why You Need an IT Self Service Portal
• Self-service is a one-stop solution for all your
  customer support needs. It drives down call
  volume in call centers and increases the
  adoption of products and services. A knowledge
  base is customers preferred choice as it has
  answers to their basic questions like FAQs. It
  frees the support team to focus on queries that
  require human support.
• Here are the other ways self-service will help
  you
• Empower Customers
• Today, tech-savvy users require prompt service,
  speedy resolutions, and fast answers to their
  problems. They expect this from their internal
  IT support team as they do as a regular
  customer.
• Hence, implement self-service as it will empower
  customers to ?nd quick answers. They often look
  online for answers, and a portal will ensure that
  they ?nd the correct answers. They wont have to
  wait hours for IT support to solve a simple
  network issue.
• Save Time
• Do you have to manage a lot of repetitive tasks?
  Do you

sales_at_crmjetty.com
4

• handle some tickets again and again? Does it take
  up a lot of time? If yes, then you need a
  portal. It will free you and your support team
  from basic queries. The most common being,
  resetting the password. With an IT self-service
  portal, end users can reset their passwords
  without taking your valuable time.
• This way, youll have fewer queries, more time,
  and happy customers.
• Improve Ef?ciency
• Tier 1 support requests demand 40 of the time.
  If theres a solution that lets the support team
  view all requests, access resources, and provide
  solutions from one place, it will speed up their
  task completion. Similarly, end-users can log
  incidents, make requests, ?nd answers without
  contacting IT staff. They will know where to ?nd
  answers, and the support team will know which
  task to focus on.
• Increase Job Satisfaction
• Support staff members are under a lot of
  pressure, and answering repetitive questions in
  a day makes the job dull and unsatisfactory.
  Unless the queries challenge them and make them
  use their expertise, it hampers their
  productivity. With an IT self-service portal, they

sales_at_crmjetty.com
5

• can focus on trivial matters and get a feeling of
  accomplishment in solving challenging queries.
• Provide 24/7 Support
• You cant be available 247 nor with your support
  team. However, an IT self-service portal ensures
  that help will be given to whoever and whenever
  they ask for it. Theres no time limit to when
  users can access the knowledge base and ?nd the
  installation guide.

The goals of the
IT self-service portal are improved
experience, reduced cost, and better
productivity. To achieve that, all you need to
do is try on some permutations and combinations
and select the suitable ones. In other words,
features that will suit your and your customers
requirements. What to Include in Your IT
Self-Service Portal? Your portal should be driven
by the services you offer and employees/customers
wants and need. For instance, they may have
some channel preferences for self-service, like
some might prefer a mobile experience while
others would go for a desktop solution. You need
to ensure that the
sales_at_crmjetty.com
6

• self-service portal provides both. Similarly,
  here are some of the features that you should
  add to your portal.
• Issue Logging
• If theres an issue that users ?nd dif?cult to
  solve with self-service, the issue logging,
  i.e., ticket management, should help them
  generate a ticket to describe their issue and
  ask for assistance. Customers should be able to
  track their ticket status. Based on the support
  category, it should automatically be assigned to
  the relevant support person.
• Self Help
• Users should be able to help themselves. For
  example, if theres an issue hindering their
  progress and desk support means missing the
  deadline, they should be able to look for a
  solution themselves. It can be going through
  similar tickets raised by other users or
  scanning through available resources and
  documents. When it comes to self-help, an
  intuitive user interface with advanced search
  and ?lter options is essential.
• Alerts and Reminders
• Notify users about their ticket status or
  updates. Apart from ticket updates, if there are
  some changes or alerts that the users need to
  know, like new guidelines and

sales_at_crmjetty.com
7

• policies, they should be noti?ed about the same
  via desktop noti?cations or emails. If there are
  some installations or version updates, users
  should be reminded of that too. Ensure that
  everyone stays updated with the latest
  happenings and tasks/activities.
• Automated Capabilities
• You cant keep sending welcome emails to everyone
  who registers for the portal. So, automate most
  activities like changing passwords, reset, and
  sorting the tickets based on their priority and
  category. For quick actions like sending emails
  and reminders, you can create templates and set
  autoresponders.
• Chat Support
• According to Comm100, millennials prefer live
  chat support over other communication channels.
  So, make sure your IT self-service portal
  consists of internal chat features. Integrate
  AI-enabled chatbots to help users with the basic
  queries and a customer support chat via
  messenger or other social channels. This will
  help users and the support team to communicate
  via their preferred channel.

sales_at_crmjetty.com
8

• Collaboration Facilities
• Add community forums to your portal. This will
  enable users to suggest, discuss, and share
  ideas. Collaboration tools, along with customer
  engagement, will also help in brand building.
• Knowledge Base
• Provide access to business-related information.
  It can be FAQs, articles, tutorials, videos,
  documentation, news updates, or more.

• The other requirements of the IT self-service
  portal will differ based on your services. If
  you expand it to manage HR and other
  departmental capabilities, you may have to add
• Payroll and bene?ts
• Sickness recording
• On-boarding and off-boarding employees
• Performance Assessment
• Recruitment
• Feedback and Suggestions

sales_at_crmjetty.com
9

• Suggestion While undergoing the self-service
  portal development, consider newer technologies
  like voice search, in-app virtual agents, and
  automated telephony services.
• Learn how CRMJetty can help you deliver
  excellency Develop an IT Self Service Portal
• Business Bene?ts and Challenges of IT Self
  Service Portal
• Bene?ts of Self-Service Portal
• The implementation of rich features for your
  self-service offers various bene?ts such as
• Improving Employee Experience
• Employees expect the same level of experience as
  they get as a customer while at home. IT
  self-service portal makes issue logging, service
  requests, and accessing knowledge base as easy
  as viewing the orders and tracking the shipments
  on Amazon.
• Easing the Pressure on Overworked Service Desks
• As employees can solve their queries themselves,
  it reduces the number of requests and calls on
  the service desk, allowing tech support teams to
  focus on

sales_at_crmjetty.com
10

• important matters like data security.
• Simpli?ed Management
• IT self-service portals require fewer resources
  to manage a support team. It free ups the
  manager for higher leadership activities. Rather
  than conducting service desk training, they can
  update the knowledge base, and the employees can
  refer to that for help.
• Prioritizing the Tasks and Requests
• First, it removes the immediacy of attending
  calls. Next, automation and self-service
  eliminate the repetitive tasks allowing the
  support team to focus on priority tasks.

• Cost Savings The back-end employees do

automation and what the self-desk
self-service let team did while
waiting for the answer. Time, ef?ciency, and
productivity are the measures in which it helps
save cost.
sales_at_crmjetty.com
11

• The purpose of an IT self-service portal is
  common and straightforward. However,
  implementing it requires proper planning.
• Challenges of Implementing Self-Service
• One of the major challenges of an IT self-service
  portal is the changing user behavior. The IT
  department has advanced from offering in-person
  tech support to self-service. However, they need
  to monitor who can access what. Though the
  bene?ts of an IT self-service portal outweigh
  the disadvantages, there are some challenges that
  you have to tackle while implementing
  self-service.
• Inadequate Knowledge
• Simply having a knowledge base with some articles
  and documents is not enough. Its important to
  keep them updated every time. New policies,
  software versions may come up, and there have to
  be documents and guides related to them to help
  users. Updating documents for new enhancements
  in the software or the services when there are
  frequent changes can be complex.
• Data Security
• Giving CRM access to everyone can be risky. Though

sales_at_crmjetty.com
12

• you can limit it with role-based access features,
  a security loophole or a feature can risk your
  customer base. So, you need to double-check on
  the security.
• User Familiarity
• Not every employee will be tech-savvy. Some may
  ?nd it dif?cult to access a portal. Hence, you
  need to build an IT self-service portal thats
  easy to use. The names of the modules and
  buttons in the portal should be more
  customer-centric. Besides, it should have
  features and functionalities that customers
  want/need.
• Limited Capabilities
• Most of the portals fail to keep up with the
  latest trends and technologies. Or you can say
  that they have limited functionalities with no
  desire to improve capabilities over time. This
  issue of not advancing with the technology is
  the reason why customers abandon the portal.

So, bear this in mind while implementing an IT
self-service portal. Make sure you dont have to
face these issues.
sales_at_crmjetty.com
13

• Create IT Self Help Portal that Your Employees
  Want
• Lets consider that you have developed an IT
  self-service portal that works perfectly and has
  no issues, as explained below. Your support team
  is waiting to reap the bene?ts it offers, and
  yet, your employees dont use it. The only reason
  is that the portal is not built considering your
  primary audience, i.e., your employees. Hence,
  here are some tips for delivering outstanding
  results.
• Go Beyond Self-Service
• Dont simply provide a portal solution that
  enables employees to track their ticket status.
  Empower them

decisions and ?nd answers. Instead of
them with features, improve their
to make
providing

• self-service usability by focusing on design
  simplicity, i.e., removing unnecessary features,
  showing speci?c features only under certain
  conditions, etc. Implement the 80/20 rule, use
  images and icons for better recognition, and
  provide relevant content.
• Engage with Users
• Take surveys and employee feedback, talk to them
  about the services and the features. Understand
  their issues and implement those interactions
  with self-service. For example, create a new
  incident, raise a

sales_at_crmjetty.com
14

• new ticket, leave a request, get help, etc. If
  possible, also add an internal communication
  system so that its easy for employees to
  contact the IT support team.
• Make it a Home for Knowledge
• Ensure that you provide content that is reliable
  and readable. Avoid any jargon and technical
  terms unless its essential. Also, most users
  skim through the content to ?nd what they are
  looking for, so add the content in a way thats
  easy to ?nd. Keep the content updated.
• Personalize the Experience
• Personalize the user experience by automating and
  eliminating the unnecessary process. For
  example, offer a single sign-on option,
  automatically ?ll the data ?elds, and send
  personalized emails addressing them.
• Optimize Performance
• Users tend to take the path thats easy and
  avoids complexities. So, optimize the
  performance by identifying what users require
  and providing preferred ways. Keep track of KPIs
  as it will provide an overview of the
  self-service.

sales_at_crmjetty.com
15
Though these practices look easy to implement, it
may take organizations years to adopt and take
self-service to the next level. CRMJetty can be
your expert guide in delivering a better user
experience and achieving business ef?ciency. We
have 15 years of experience in developing
portal solutions for various industries tailored
to clients requirements. Whether you need a
ready-to-integrate solution with some tweaks or
one developed from scratch, we can help you with
both. Develop an IT Self Service Portal
Source https/ www.crmjetty.com/it-self-service-p
ortal-develop ment/
sales_at_crmjetty.com