Poor customer service is one of the most common arguments I hear from organizations who aren't providing self-service options for their end users today. Many IT managers believe that their users prefer to pick up the phone and talk to a person about their request or incident. While the option to pick up the phone shouldn't go away it should not be the only option for interacting with IT.

As an example think about shopping on Amazon.com. How frequently does the typical user pick up the phone and call Amazon when they have a question about their order? I would bet it's a very very small percentage of the time. This is primarily because Amazon provides a wealth of information available to users about their orders before they even need to think about picking up the phone. And when you're shopping in bed at midnight in your pajamas do you really want to pick up the phone?

From the perspective of IT, when supporting end users IT should consider the value of self-service from the end user's perspective.

• Avoid phone hold time- Think about the unproductive phone wait time that employees experience. Why not encourage them to use a knowledge base to resolve their own problem or open a request/incident, keep working on other things and have the analyst get back to them with a solution.
• Immediate access to support resources- In addition to avoiding wait time there are instances when support staff may not be available such as on a weekend. What happens if an employee is traveling to a customer site on a Sunday night and has a problem? Are they stuck waiting for Monday morning at 9am? A knowledge base gives the user tools to attempt to solve their own problem and be up and running prior to 9am.
• Consistency in the support experience- This is a trait that the ITIL v3 Strategy book pushes. A self-service channel that has a knowledge base and a well defined process for opening up a request/incident is inherently consistent. The user becomes familiar with the interface and the process and therefore comes to expect a given level of service.

Think about your employees and the value that a self-service option has to them. Ultimately their goal is to interact with IT as little as possible and do their job. Will self-service help them achieve that goal? Will self-service provide them a better overall experience and improve customer satisfaction? When done correctly I can almost guarantee it will. What are your experiences with self-service and customer satisfaction?