What is the defining characteristic of "self-service?" Does the answer change when we ask from the service desk manager's perspective vs. the business end user's?
Many in the service desk world have come to think of "Web-based submission of a ticket" as "self-service" (with apologies to ITIL, "incident or request" is too cumbersome here so I'm using "ticket"). But really, what "service" are we enabling business users to "serve themselves" with here? If the business user sees "submit a ticket" as a service, then I'll concede that web-based ticket submission is self-service in its own right. What would your business users think?
What about the service desk manager - isn't reducing IT staff time on intake a good thing? Of course it is, but isn't that aiming awfully low for self-service? Isn't what happens AFTER the ticket is submitted - regardless of how it's submitted - more important to both the business user and IT?
Although the service desk manager can certainly cut costs by letting users input their own tickets into the system, eliminating the phone call isn't the main point for the user. It's getting what they need quickly. If I use the world's slickest iPhone app to simply jiggle the phone to request a password reset, but then I wait a few hours for someone from IT to call me at my desk, confirm my identity and manually reset my password, was that "self-service?" The service I wanted was a password reset, not to submit the ticket for it.
As a business user I might use the Web, iPhone or Blackberry app, make a phone call into an Interactive Voice Response system, or use a carrier pigeon to submit a ticket. From my point of view all I'm really changing is the transport mechanism for the request. Making a phone call to explain an issue or request to a live IT person might be an inconvenience to some, but it might be easier, faster or reassuring to others.
I would suggest that "self-service" is both about:
1) empowering the user to get what they want as quickly as they want it, and
2) eliminating IT staff interventions (isn't it nice that the second supports the first). A knowledge system where users can search and find answers themselves is a good example of "true self-service" (provided the user gets what they need in the knowledge). A service catalog with back-end fulfillment workflow can also satisfy both the end user satisfaction and IT savings goals of self service - even more so when the automation is "closed loop" by tying into identity management, software provisioning, or other "last mile" execution tools to deliver what the user needs.
Don't get me wrong, easy submission of tickets is a good thing. But if we want to reap the rewards of self-service we need to aim higher in what we mean when we say it. And if we want to promote "self-service" to the business user community let's make sure we know what they think self-service is. Meanwhile if anyone has that jiggly iPhone feature in the works, let me know.