How to attract users to the self-service portal

Why do you need a self-service portal? How to force users to submit appeals through the self-service portal? In this article, the head of internal technical support shares his experience and conclusions on launching the self-service portal.



What is a self-service portal? If you give a brief definition, it is an interface for customers with which they submit appeals for services to the service department or organization. If we consider the self-service portal in the IT world, then this is another way to submit user requests to the Service Desk. ITSM methodologies suggest that there should be several channels for receiving requests in the service department. Each organization has its own set of channels. For example, before launching the self-service portal, we used the following channels:

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• post office;
• instant messenger;
• phone.

This set of channels fully covers the needs of business users, which we support. But from February 2018, we decided to expand our omnichannel and launch an additional channel for receiving requests, the self-service portal. Moreover, it went to the appendix to the Service Desk call handling system, which we implemented in the organization back in 2017. Also, the start-up was fueled by the theses that the snake oil sellers so often love to flaunt:

1. Self-service portal reduces IT costs. After the introduction of the portal, you do not need to hire additional staff who will be engaged in the registration and classification of complaints. Since users will independently register and classify requests through the portal.
   
   
   
   In practice: Not all users are competent to classify calls, so they will make mistakes that Service Desk staff will rake. Such a cost reduction.
2. Self-service portal reduces the number of calls to the Service Desk. The portal will have a knowledge base and users will independently solve their requests for cases from the documentation.
   
   
   
   In practice: Users do not read the documentation, if there is someone to call / write. For users to start reading the documentation, you need to advertise and promote this documentation. The self-service portal itself does not solve this problem.

There are other marketing theses, but this minimum set will be enough to understand the problem. Imagine that you bought into loud marketing gimmicks and decided to implement a self-service portal in your organization. And since most often at the start you only sell the portal and technical documentation without methodologies for attracting users to the portal, you will immediately encounter a problem - users will not use your self-service portal. This is logical. If your users have always contacted you by phone and mail, then why should they start using the self-service portal? How to attract them to the portal? I heard such options:

• Disable incoming calls in the Service Desk and announce that you accept all calls only through the portal. Sounds like a very radical idea. I have not seen such cases in practice. Maybe in some totalitarian organization this will work.
• To process requests received through the self-service portal several times faster than through other channels. It sounds great, but how can this be achieved if you already lack resources? Expand or optimize existing resources?

The above options are not suitable for us. In March 2018, all users were announced that we had a new channel for filing appeals, but as expected a miracle did not happen, users practically did not use this channel. It was necessary to somehow solve this problem and I decided to “bribe” users. For this, a game model was prepared. Based on this model, a contest was announced among users. Competition objectives:

• increase loyalty of users of IT services;
• to increase the share of marks on appeals;
• popularize user documentation;
• redirect part of user requests to the self-service portal.

Conditions for participation in the competition were determined and various nominations were singled out, including the nomination - The Most Independent User . Such an achivka could get employees who most of all brought calls through the portal self-service. To increase the number of winners, three victorious places in each nomination were allocated.



In November 2018, a competition was announced on the corporate portal. We decided to award the most active and loyal users for the previous period, who have used the portal since February 2018 and at the same time motivate users for the next period. While loyal users rubbed their hands and waited for awards, and disloyal bite their elbows, I drew comics about our Service Desk, counted metrics, agreed a certain amount on making gifts for the winners, ordered certificates and agreed with personnel about publishing an article in the corporate newspaper about awarding. Everything was ready for the award.



At the end of December 2018, the winners were solemnly awarded in the central hall of the organization, and a corresponding advertisement with photos and an interview was published on the corporate portal. At the same time, all winners except material gifts received additional statuses in their personal cards on the corporate portal as a bonus:

• the name of the nomination and the golden star for the first place;
• nomination title and silver star for second place;
• nomination title and bronze star for third place.

At the time of planning the competition, I was not sure what this would lead to, because I had no such experience before and I hadn’t seen such cases in ITSM practice. There was only confidence that the number of requests should increase. On the graph below (the picture is clickable) you can see the effect of the competition:

• in February 2018 we launched a self-service portal;
• in March 2018, we announced that a new way of filing appeals had appeared;
• in November 2018, we announced the beginning of the contest for users;
• In December 2018, we held the awards ceremony.

Has the competition triggered to send requests through the self-service portal? Yes, it worked. With relatively low financial costs, the number of requests filed through the self-service portal increased significantly. Therefore, if you have a need to increase the flow of requests on the self-service portal and really reduce IT costs, then this case works. We plan to carry out such actions once every six months, as long as the self-service portal is not our main channel and is not functionally modified to the proper level. But the plans have its further development.



But with this approach, the question immediately arises - "But will there be any cheaters who deliberately begin to create meaningless calls through the self-service portal in order to get the cherished mug and star?" Answer: "Appear." In order to seduce the cheaters of enterprising users, it is important to follow the rule - in no case do you need to inform users in advance about the metrics for which the reward will be given. For example, in one contest you award users who created the most appeals. And the next time you award those who created a greater number of hits and at the same time gave the most marks, etc. It is necessary to involve users not in the stuffing of indicators, but in the Service Desk tools and always remember why you are doing this and what goals you have.