Gartner highlights four myths surrounding IT self-service

So says analyst Gartner, which forecasts that, by 2015, the majority of IT organisations will have less than 10% of their contact volumes managed by IT self-service. The organisation's research vice president David Coyle puts it thus: "IT self-service is a great concept, enabling and empowering end users to solve their own IT problems, thereby allowing support organisations to gain efficiencies through a reduced incident and request workload. However, building a best-in-class IT self-service portal does not guarantee that end users will utilise it." He says there are four common myths that need to be addressed with IT self-service. The first is that it will reduce costs. The reality, he says, is that it will only reduce Level 1 support. "Self-service works well only for specific record types [mainly how-to requests, FAQs and password resets], so organisations should understand that implementing self-service will reduce volume only for those call types," says Coyle. "Organisations that fail to understand the demand mix of service and support will not be able to predict or measure the influence of self-service," he adds. "In addition, IT self-service requires upfront and ongoing investment in staff resources and tools, like knowledge management and password reset." Coyle's second myth is that IT self-service is a one-time investment. In fact, the approach requires constant care and feeding. End users can be aware of the existence of IT self-service support and still not understand how it functions, how it can and should be leveraged, or the benefits it can provide, he warns. This requires marketing effort to would be users, but also continuous knowledge update to avoid the portal falling into disrepute. As for Gartner's third myth, it is that end users will flock to self-service. In fact, he says, user acceptance varies greatly. "End-user utilisation is the primary objective, so the time and cost investments that are tied to building a world-class self-service portal will not yield favourable returns if end users are not inclined to log their own tickets or attempt to solve their own problems," insists Coyle. And finally, myth number four is that IT self-service is easy to implement. The reality is that appropriate 'companion' tools and processes are prerequisites for a successful implementation. Coyle's perspective: "End users want an IT self-service portal where knowledge is readily available, where passwords are easy to reset, and that is very intuitive to use. It is not the responsibility of the end user to dig through knowledge if it is not stored correctly, or care about any processes or roadblock issues that prevent the support organisation from keeping the site fresh and up to date."