Introduction
Let's face it, IT teams often don't receive the credit they truly deserve, and it's not hard to see why. I mean, think about it: they constantly deal with customer inquiries, end-user complaints and everything in between, all to keep other teams up and running smoothly.
But what if their assigned services are predefined even before they're reviewed?
Service request management can help with all of those things IT teams are struggling with and allows you to have complete control over the operations within your organization.
By the end of this post, you'll know exactly all the ins and outs of service request management and the necessary steps to implement it successfully.
Sounds good? Let's define service request first.
What is a service request?
A service request is basically any formal request made to the service provider (that could be your IT team) by employees, vendors or even clients to ask for a specific service, whether it's a request for information, consultation or approval.
Say your IT team tends to deliver a series of services to ensure other teams operate seamlessly. Now, let's take a look at a couple of examples of service requests that their colleagues might submit:
- A marketing employee requests assistance in setting up the company email on his mobile phone.
- A fresh staff member submits a service request for installing specific software applications on his work computer.
In both case scenarios, the IT team addresses the requests, assigns them to the appropriate personnel, and makes sure the employees are provided with the necessary resources to perform their tasks.
What about service request management?
Now that you know what goes into service requests. Let's break down service request management (SRM). This concept describes the process of efficiently handling end-user requests; it particularly benefits teams that deal with a high volume of submissions regularly, such as IT and HR teams, to ensure no request will be missed or overlooked.
This process involves multiple stages, such as:
- Receiving requests.
- Assigning tasks to the right individual.
- Listing them based on their priorities
- Monitoring the request progress until completion.
A high-performing service request management system makes it a no-sweat for end-users to submit their service requests. This can be done via several channels, including email, website, help center, live chat, or any other portal provided by the company.
And if you want to take things a step further, consider creating a centralized hub that brings together all the standard service requests in one place. Not only does this provide a handy reference to your new user base, but it also helps streamline the service request process for different teams.
Once a request is submitted, automation takes over to generate a ticket and assign the request to the appropriate IT employee. Pretty cool, right?
Incident management vs. service request management
It shouldn't be a shock to hear that a lot of individuals still get confused between service request management and incident management, and we totally get it. But the truth is, they are two entirely different processes.
As the name suggests, incident management refers to how your team addresses the issues that require immediate action and urgency, like security threats, network connectivity failures and software bugs. i.e., the problems likely to disrupt business processes and put the company's revenue at risk.
On the other side of the coin, service requests can have a vital role in a company's daily operations, but unlike incidents, they don't lead to any disruption. Instead, they allow teams to work seamlessly across departments and choose requests from a predefined list of services.
It's still beneficial for service teams to manage service requests to establish effective corporate wellness and prevent major obstacles from arising. That said, there's no need to rush or prioritize scheduling and assigning requests to your team. They can absolutely handle them at their own pace without any unnecessary urgency.
Service request management process, broken down
Now comes the fun part, we must recognize that service request management can seem complex at first, especially if you still need to have a preset process in place. Don't worry at all! With a bit of planning, your team can definitely establish a well-thought-out SRM process that works.
Ready for some hands-on work? Great! Let's break down each step of the process together.
Request Submission
To kick off our SRM process, a user submits a service request. The submission can be conducted through different channels based on the size and needs of your business. Now, how they do this can vary depending on the size and SOPs of the business. If it's a small or midsize company, there are options like phone calls, emails, or interactive forms. On the other hand, big corporations prefer to go for a more sophisticated platform, such as a service desk or an internal help portal.
Service team assessment
Now that the request is submitted, the service team must assess the request and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. Randomly fulfilling the request is not an option; they need to be meticulous. For this, they focus on three critical elements:
- Request urgency level: for example, a customer reporting a critical software bug that disrupts their workflow.
- Required resources: for instance, a marketing team receiving a request to create social media graphics, which requires graphic design and content creation skills.
- Supervisor approval: for example an employee requesting a maternity leave may need approval from their manager or HR department before it gets processed.
Request fulfillment
Now that your team is familiar with the context, the next step is to fulfill the request. During this phase, the request is converted into a ticket and assigned to the available service agent. For illustration purposes, let's say the request has been given to an individual named "Adam."
Complete & archive the request
Once the request is handed over to the service agent, he must undertake the necessary actions to complete it within a specified timeframe; for example, Adam assisted a customer in reporting a software bug and ensured the issue was thoroughly resolved.
Once this operation is over, Adam can properly archive the request ticket and bring the task to a close.
Ask for user feedback
If you thought that's over after completing the request, gear up! Our dedicated service agent, Adam, should get in touch with the user to ask for feedback.
This step is extremely important to ensure your team and organization deliver a top-notch user experience and consistently optimize your service request management process.
Six Best Service Request Management Practices
Now just reading about how to establish a great process isn't enough, and it'll take a little more work than that to boost our service agent team's productivity.
Need some ideas to get you started? Here are some of the best practices that will level up your game and improve your service request management process.
Centralize your SRM process
Let's start with the basics! The first thing you need to do is to gather and manage all the service requests in a single place. You might be wondering why's that important?
Well, this practice will ensure that you're not processing the exact requests over and over again and provide your workforce with an easy-to-access space.
For example, if you centralize the request process in an AWS optimization tool, you'll be able to better visualize and track the request's status, see how the timeline is shaping up and know who's in charge of each request.
Build self-service resources
When you build a self-sufficient employee base, you don't have to do any of the heavy lifting, a one stop solution for that could be setting up a self-service portal or a knowledge base to provide a series of guides and tutorials that can empower them to find answers on their own and reduce the need for additional tickets.
Alternatively, consider creating practical handbooks explaining the procedures for service request submission.
This way, you can cut down on unnecessary back-and-forth conversations later on.
Put automation to work
Time is money and so are resources like employees and training. That's where automation comes in handy to eliminate all the headaches related to repetitive tasks and minimize the chances of human errors.
Using Scribe can help automate the SRM process documentation & SOPs in an effortless way, allowing everyone across your team to save time, spread knowledge and streamline the entire service request management workflow across your team.
No more guesswork? Yes, please.
Document all the valuable information
Your IT team probably deals with a sea of requests day in and day out. In this case, documenting service requests is indispensable to ensure no valuable data gets missed.
Among the vital information you'll want to keep track of, we have: the type of request, the assigned service agent, the requester, and the actions conducted.
Capturing this data will enhance your SRM processes and specify the completion timeline for each operation.
That's why Scribe is on a mission to help you document your service request for every team across different industries.
It doesn't matter if your company is big or small or what industry you're in – Scribe has got you covered for future reference. Get all the information you need right at your fingertips!
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Measure your performance
When it comes down to refining the service request management process, you may need more than just internal documentation to give you the complete picture.
So another great way to optimize your SRM operations is to track the performance of each request. For that, you must take the key performance indicators (KPIs) very seriously and provide regular reports.
Adopting this approach will not only help you gain insights about user requests but also enable you to make well-informed decisions in the future.
Accelerate your service request approval
We've all experienced this firsthand – some requests can take ages to get approved. It all depends on their nature. However, these unnecessary delays in getting the approval can seriously impact the quality of service.
To better understand how things work, you need to know that the request approver, in most cases, holds a managerial position within the organization's hierarchy, so to give you an overview of how this whole process operates, imagine a case scenario where an employee submits a request for maternity leave.
The supervisor does not have the authority to approve the request directly, so what's the next step? He forwards the request to the HR department for verification and approval. When the HR director gives the go-ahead, the employee can begin her leave procedures in compliance with the company's policies and guidelines.
Dealing with tons of request approvals is a very daunting task for a manager that may have other urgent priorities. So why not take automation for a spin to speed up that service request? You can, for instance, implement an automated approval system for maternity leave requests by setting up predefined criteria and conditions for eligibility.
See? Super easy to speed that up
Optimize user experience with service request management & Scribe
There you go! We've taken you through all the nitty-gritty of SRM, and now it's all up to you.
We can keep saying the word "service request management" all day long, but it won't do much for you if you and your team don't take action to set up a solid service request management system. And what better way to do it than with Scribe!
Scribe is powerful enough to handle anything you throw at it, from documenting the SRM processes to organizing all the essential resources your company requires.
Scribe makes things a breeze for your IT support agents to tackle different requests and optimize the user experience, all while ensuring compliance with the standard operating procedures of your company.
So if this isn't the perfect cue for you to start using Scribe and automate your service request process, we honestly don't know what is.
Author Bio:
Amine Boussassi is a marketing manager at Hustler Ethos, He is enthusiastic about productivity, project management tools, and everything in between. His overarching mission revolves around empowering companies to achieve high rankings on Google.
