And say “How Do You Do” to Service Centers
If you had the choice of taking a cab or an Uber, which would you choose? You probably opt for the vehicle where predictability comes first and no cash ever exchanges hands. Feeling lazy and strapped for time, but still want a home-cooked meal? With one-click, Blue Apron plans and delivers your entire meal. Welcome to the new service economy.
Self-service has become our lifestyle so why shouldn’t it be the same at work? Savvy teams, be it in marketing, HR, legal or finance are constantly trying to find ways to scale their business. Getting their co-workers to self-serve common issues is part of a new trend for teams to adopt best practices that their customer support and IT service teams have used for years.
According to HDI, the most popular use cases of service outside of IT across the world are HR, Finance and Sales.
Service Teams
This approach to service management is long overdue. We referred to these teams as cost centers rather than as strategic assets to organizations. In reality, they are service teams – teams who provide valuable services for the rest of the company: HR helps employees manage their payroll and benefits; Legal helps employees get contracts approved; Graphics designers help product teams get their content onto the Website. The net output of all these service teams creates an environment in which the whole company wins.
Here are 3 pro-tips on how companies can adopt service management outside of IT:
Pro Tip #1 for Human Resources. Help employees help themselves: Provide self-service for employees to solve a problem themselves with common HR operational tasks. Build a knowledge base of common HR requests including employee transfers, employment verification requests, and other employee changes. And always remember, the bigger the library, the better.
Pro Tip #2 for Legal. Scale your team: “Low hanging” service requests like contract reviews are the prime candidates for a service desk workflow as the task is highly structured and repetitive in nature. That way you can focus your legal resources on high risk and high impact initiatives.
Pro Tip #3 for Finance. Many areas in finance such as accounts payable are ripe to reap the benefits of automation. Not only will you help employees be more productive but you’ll get more insights into what the team is working on, and how well they are servicing their business stakeholders.
While every company is unique and what works for some organizations may not work for yours, there is a shift to put service at the center of your business. Service centers revolve not only around ease-of-use but also ease-of-life. It’s the future.
