No matter how skilled they are, IT support teams can only manage so many tickets in a single day. If they receive a high volume of tickets, it can become a struggle to keep up with requests promptly.
Fortunately, there are ways to reduce ticket volume with self-service without compromising the quality of your IT support. Let’s explore…
Challenges of High IT Support Ticket Volume in a Remote Work Environment
High ticket volume can create several problems for IT teams. When IT support agents are overwhelmed with tickets, they’ll either have to rush through them or risk falling behind as the tickets continue to pile up. This, in turn, slows down business operations as employees wait for someone to address their issues and can even increase turnover as job satisfaction increases.
Of course, ticket volume alone isn’t the only challenge IT teams face — several other obstacles can potentially increase the time each ticket takes. For instance, if IT teams have limited resources or if the variety of devices they have to manage adds another layer of complexity, each ticket can take extra time and add to the overall volume.
Why Reducing IT Support Tickets is Crucial for Business Success
The best way to support IT teams is to manage their support ticket volume. While an excessive number of tickets can negatively impact productivity and satisfaction, increase operational costs, and even delay business processes, you can address these issues by keeping ticket volume at a reasonable level.
Yet it’s basically impossible for organizations to control what technical issues their employees or customers may encounter throughout the day. So, if organizations can’t prevent issues altogether, how can they manage the ticket volume?
The solution is to provide alternate support options, including self-service. The more support options users have, the more you can manage ticket volume, thus improving overall efficiency across your organization.
Self-Service IT and Ticket Volume
This brings us to the key to managing IT ticket volume: self-service IT.
Self-service options are designed to guide users through the IT process, empowering them to identify and resolve basic issues.
Common self-service IT options include:
A knowledge base with common issues and walkthroughs
Guided self-service chatbots
AI-powered automated troubleshooting
Help Desk/FAQ pages with troubleshooting instructions
Forums where users can share questions and troubleshooting suggestions
While there will always be more complex problems that require an experienced IT agent’s assistance, self-service options help users quickly resolve basic issues. This improves resolution time, reduces ticket volume, and frees IT agents to manage more complicated questions.
How Self-Service IT Can Reduce Ticket Volume
The greatest value of self-service IT tools is the ability for users to resolve common issues without needing IT intervention. When users can find the answers to their questions in a knowledge base, have chatbots guide them through troubleshooting, or get advice from other users who have encountered a similar issue, they’re empowered to manage basic IT issues on their own and at a time that’s best for them.
As a result, users can quickly get the help they need when they need it without waiting for an IT support agent, thus increasing the speed of support. At the same time, this reduces the amount of tickets IT departments receive, allowing them to focus on high-priority or complex issues.
The result? A lower ticket volume and higher efficiency across the company.
5 Best Practices for Implementing a Self-Service IT Environment
With all these benefits in mind, what are the best ways to reduce ticket volume with self-service? There are a few best practices to keep in mind when you implement a self-service IT solution:
Keep documentation clear: Self-service only works if users can properly understand and follow the directions. Any documentation must be easy to find and have clear, precise instructions without confusing jargon.
Create user-friendly portals: Users need to be able to quickly and easily find the self-service information they need. The self-service portals should be user-friendly and easy to search and navigate. Otherwise, users won’t be able to get the help they need.
Educate employees on self-service tools: Self-service tools won’t do you any good if your employees can’t find or use them. Users must know what self-service options are available and how to utilize them to the fullest. If they can't, they’ll default to filing a ticket with IT.
Ensure chatbots are accurate: if you use a chatbot or AI-powered self-service tool, it needs to provide accurate and helpful information. Training and testing are essential to ensure all the information the chatbot provides is accurate and helpful; the last thing anyone wants is for an AI-powered bot to hallucinate and provide wildly inaccurate instructions.
Update whenever necessary: Technology is frequently changing and updating, and your self-help knowledge base needs to do the same. Whenever the technology you use updates, whether it’s a visual update or a change in how features work, the self-service guidance should update with it to match. Outdated information will only confuse users and make self-service more difficult.
Measuring the Success of Your Self-Service IT Strategy
How can you be sure your self-service IT strategy is working? It all comes down to data.
Track your metrics and see how things change after implementing self-service features. Important metrics include:
Ticket volume
Issue resolution time
Employee satisfaction
If your metrics show IT is receiving fewer tickets and resolving issues more quickly, and if users are more satisfied with the support they’re receiving, that’s a sign that your self-service IT strategy is working.
However, if the metrics aren’t improving, that’s a sign that something isn’t working. Perhaps employees aren’t aware of the self-service options, or the self-help portals are too difficult to navigate. It’s important to frequently evaluate and improve your system to ensure users are getting the help they need when they need it.
How Splashtop’s Remote IT Support Solutions Complement Your Self-Service IT Strategy
Self-service is only part of a strategy to improve IT support and reduce ticket volume. If you want to empower your IT teams and provide excellent support, you need a remote IT support solution that can complement and enhance your self-service strategy.
This is where Splashtop comes in. Splashtop’s remote IT support solutions let IT agents connect to employees’ computers remotely to quickly and efficiently troubleshoot and manage any issues they receive. This helps IT teams work effectively from anywhere and support employees no matter where they are.
By combining the speed and power of Splashtop with the convenience of self-service options, your employees will get the support they need when they need it to keep operations running smoothly.
Get started with Splashtop today with a free trial to see how your IT support team can work more efficiently and securely.
