IT projects have always needed to have a payback for an organization and with tighter budgets new projects require even greater justification in terms of ROI and likelihood for success. Self-service and knowledge management continually are talked about as projects many want to implement but few dive in with a high level of commitment and often have relatively low expectations. The stigma around these initiatives is that they are difficult to deploy and do not yield great results, however with our approach both concerns have been proven to be far from the truth.
The market and IT organizations need to reset their expectations for the results self-service and knowledge management can achieve. Specifically, within only a few months most of our clients have reduced the number of incidents opened by 20% to 50%, while 90% of the end users have an improved support experience. In addition, calls escalated are reduced by 15% to 30%.
Most organizations we speak to have unsuccessfully tried free help desk add-on tools, intranet portal applications, and customizing existing software designed for and used in other areas to solve help desk challenges. In the vein of getting serious these alternate efforts have proven to be short cuts. Although always undertaken with good intentions they are not a serious strategy or a productive approach to achieving real and lasting results. It's no surprise that initially 80% of our clients could not have imagined achieving the results they eventually found with RightAnswers.
Every vendor boasts about the achievements and success that their solutions provide. Every company pitch, perspective, and approach has pieces that sound compelling and will certainly require more investigation to be sure they are right for you. Carefully consider the results you expect to achieve when you decide on a strategy, as the results you achieve will ultimately define the project's success.
In your pursuit of the right approach be skeptical of investing in short cut approaches as a serious strategy is needed to produce serious cost savings. As you pursue the right solution for self-service and knowledge management make sure you get serious about the results as it will save you money, time, and effort in both the short and long run.
