Information technology service management is commonly known as ITSM. It controls nearly all aspects of an organization related to IT services. It is a common misperception that ITSM is just an IT support; definitely, it is an IT support, but it is not bounded in these narrow ranges; it has much wider fields to play. Being an IT service management, IT is the primary part of it but not an integral and essential part.
Due to the increasing trend of digitalization, it has become impossible for organizations to compete with their rivals in competition without meeting the continuously changing demands of the current technological period. ITSM is one of these trends of digitalization competition between organizations. It is one of the most important but complex processes for organizations to adopt. Its main concept, importance, and benefits are the things that we have talked about in our previous articles. In this article, we will talk about common challenges in the ITSM process that are faced by organizations and will also provide solutions to these problems.
It’s true that ITSM has keen importance in an organization’s daily routine business. But, despite its importance, it has so many complexities in it. Organizations have to face many challenges in this regard. If they do not encounter these challenges effectively, they will not be successful despite adopting advanced technological means. Following are some common challenges in ITSM process and their solutions;
This is the most common problem that organizations face while ITSM processes. Organizations have to face these challenges due to their own incompetence lies. We said this because this challenge refers to a lack of knowledge in technicians. How could a service management team resolve that issue if they didn’t know what to do in a specific condition? So, it’s the incompetence of organizations to provide enough knowledge to technicians.
Your service management tool must have the following problems to overcome this challenge in your information technology service management;
The knowledge base is a feature of a service management software that provides complete knowledge about specific issues. It provides searchable FAQs and modern Qs and solutions for the IT team. It could be helpful for them to tackle situations in which they do not know what to do.
Through searchable documentation, a service management tool involves all information about the functions, features, and issues regarding its working. It could make it easier for technicians to work more easily on their tasks.
A shared inbox is a feature through which technicians can share their experiences in a common conversational platform. Shared inboxes can make collective efforts for service management better.
The workload is another problem for IT service management. It is because of the high number of requests or the low number of staff. For example, some enterprises have a five-member service management team to deal with their daily thousands of requests; then how could that team serve better to the requesters? That’s why this is one of the common challenges in the ITSM process.
There are many ways to overcome this problem. The cheapest and the easier way to overcome this challenge is to use a service management tool that has the following features;
Automation refers to the automatic features of an ITSM tool. These features include different things like automatic creation and assignment of tickets, automated reminders and alerts, or automatically generated processes and steps. It also includes AI features like chatbots, autoresponders, or 24/7 responding mechanisms. Automatic features eliminate the need for excessive hiring.
The self-service portal is a feature of an ideal ITSM tool that allows requesters to resolve their issues on their own. This feature eliminates the rush of unnecessary and simpler requests by pushing them toward self-service portals. This feature not only causes a decrease in workload but also causes satisfaction to requesters. It is because some requesters don’t want to be involved in a complex process for the resolution of their simple issues. So, they usually prefer to solve their problems on their own.
Sometimes, requesters give a complex task that is not understandable to the service management team. Due to this less understanding, they could not be able to resolve it easily. For example, a requester requests that my Gmail show me an error. What should be concluded from this request? The service team just understands the error, but how could they solve it until the type of error is not defined? So, this state of the dilemma is one of the common challenges in the ITSM process.
It is a long rendering issue before the organizations regarding ITSM. Various ways are found useful for overcoming that challenge. Following are some of these solutions to resolve that problem;
The live chat feature allows the service management team to communicate with requesters through live chatting. Due to this live communication, the service technician could ask his queries about the request. For example, if a requester requests about his Gmail error, the technician could ask for all information about that error through live chat.
Another method to overcome this problem is to define a complete mechanism for submitting a request. For example, if someone wants to submit his request about the error in his Gmail, he has to provide complete details about what type of error takes place in which part of his Gmail. Without providing complete information, he could not submit his request.
Lack of understanding is one of the common challenges in the ITSM process. Organizations have to face this challenge due to the bad performance of their technicians. Generally, IT team members rapidly try to solve the requests without understanding what the requester wants to say. They do this to reduce the rush of requests from their desk. Through this rapid elimination of requests, they pretend to show their performance better, but in fact, they are performing in the worst way. In this way, they have failed to satisfy the requester.
The only solution to overcome this challenge is to enhance the performance of the service management team. There are many ways to enhance their performance. Some of these are as follows;
Performance monitoring is the best way to overcome this challenge. In this way, you can produce fear in your service team members that they have to be accountable for their bad performance. There are also many ways for performance monitoring, but the most common way in this regard is to monitor performance through an advanced service management tool. An ideal ITSM tool must have the feature of performance monitoring.
It is a common saying, take care of your employees; as a reward, they will take care of your customers on their own. That seems to be true in many cases we witnessed. It is because if an employee is unsatisfied with his executives due to any reason like salary issue, work hours or workplace issues, etc., due to this dissatisfaction, he could not be delivered better. That’s why it’s important to have satisfied employees; Organizations can do so by choosing an internal helpdesk software. For example, TIKTING can be used for both employee care and customer care services, so it could be the best choice for organizations looking to improve their employees’ performance.
An IT team leader used to manage hundreds of requests running on different servers and systems. He receives several auto alerts daily, and every alert may produce a disaster if it remains unnoticed. Understanding the harms of these alerts, he has to organize and prioritize them appropriately.
This is one of the serious challenges in the ITSM process. It could prove harmful and disastrous for an organization if it is not encountered properly. There are some following solutions for overcoming this challenge;
The utmost appropriate way to overcome this challenge is performance monitoring. This way, the responsible person will know I would be accountable before executives for any unaccountable auto-generated alerts. Due to this, he might work in a more efficient way.
Another way to make this better is to generate auto alerts and reminders repeatedly until they are addressed properly. This could be helpful in overcoming this problem regarding auto-alerts. Many advanced service management tools have these features. So, you can make it better by choosing an ideal ITSM tool.
After overviewing all common challenges in ITSM process and its solutions, we have learned that an ideal ITSM tool has the ability to overcome all these common problems and challenges regarding ITSM process. All the solutions to these common problems we have discussed in this article are regarding the features of the service management tools. So, Choosing an ideal tool could eliminate nearly all of your problems regarding ITSM. That’s why you should be careful while choosing your service management software. Your wise choice can make your work easier.
