Learn about how email is the new “snail mail” for service teams. This is the sixth post in our series on how your service team can build on top of email support with Jira Service Desk by getting the right information from the start, automatically categorizing tickets, and routing tickets to the right people. Read more in the series here.
Relying on email for internal support? Chances are, your team may be wasting valuable time going back and forth trying to get the right information, and assigning work inefficiently. This can lead to slower resolution times and unhappy customers. Plus, you’re not able to report on progress to show the value of IT to the rest of the business.
This post will cover how, after setting up your email support with Jira Service Desk, to ease the transition from email to a new ticketing system to ensure high adoption and happy customers.
By the way, this process can apply to any new software system – not just to Jira Service Desk. Good luck!
It’s an evolution
First, it’s important to remember that change is an evolution. It doesn’t just happen overnight. Having realistic goals means it will be more exciting once your team hits them out of the park.
After Jira Service Desk is set up, customers can contact support by either emailing requests (which then become tickets) or through the customer portal. Ideally, all customers would use the customer portal so the right information is given from the start and so their requests can be categorized easily.
But as we mentioned earlier – change doesn’t happen overnight. There will be a time of transition during which customers will be using both the customer portal along with email in order to communicate with agents. Twitter recently went through this transition; they have successfully have reached a point at which 90% of their support requests are coming through the customer portal instead of through email.
Here are some tips on how to get where Twitter is now – and show off to the management team your software system’s high adoption numbers.
Market your service desk
Alex Stillings from Twitter calls the “How do I market the service desk?” the “$10,000” question because it’s a key element of implementing any new ticketing system.
Here are ways to market the customer portal to internal employees so that they know about the new service desk and start using it to submit requests without even thinking twice:
- Send out an “internal press release,” like Zappos is planning to with their service desk, announcing the new service desk and sending it out to all new employees.
- Have a party celebrating the successful implementation. Cimpress (parent company of Vistaprint) is having an “Office Space” themed party and they will be smashing symbolic pinatas shaped like servers to celebrate fully transitioning off their legacy system (details to come).
- Make it part of the on-boarding process for all new hires.
- Have the URL be something easy to remember. Twitter has it set up as “go.twitter.com/service-desk-name.” If your company has Google Apps for Business, they can shorten it to “go.company.name/x.” If your company doesn’t, then you can use this service.
- Include it within the IT team’s email footer so that whenever customers interact with IT agents they can refer to the service desk link as “the URL below in this email.”
Keep it simple – and collect feedback
Collecting all of the right information is important for support requests. But it’s important to keep the service desk simple to use to increase and maintain customer adoption.
- When customers are requesting help, make the language friendly and easy to understand. When creating a new form, have a “beta run” with a few customers and collect feedback.
- Refine as necessary. Running a quarterly survey is a great way to understand how employees are liking the service desk and what can be improved upon.
Be consistent
Whenever you’re encouraging a change in behavior, it’s important to stay consistent.
As James commented on an earlier blog within this series: “The key thing to the adoption of using ticket system is consistency. If the support team keeps reminding users, with some rewards (e.g. faster reply), then it will be a better transition.”
Remind employees that email is the secondary means for support – the ticketing system is the best means for support.
Investing in a service tool can scale your support as your company grows. Making the investment not only increases your team’s productivity and customer satisfaction, but tracking progress can better showcase the value of IT to the rest of the business.
We’re always interested in more feedback about Jira Service Desk and email. Comment below if these tips are helpful, or if you have additional tips.