Service request management is closely connected with other practices of service management, such as incident, problem and change management; yet stands alone as its own separate practice.
Under service request management, users submit requests for something they need - be it access, phone numbers or information.
ITIL stipulates, along with service desk and request fulfillment processes, that service requests be managed using ITIL Request Fulfillment Process.
What is Request Fulfillment?
Request fulfillment refers to resolving customer requests for service and managing its lifecycle, with service desk personnel being dedicated to quickly responding and fulfilling them with excellent quality of support service for each of them.
Request fulfillment refers to providing employees with access to IT services they require in order to remain productive, making available those they desire and informing users on how and when their requests will be fulfilled.
It should allow users to see which services exist as well as their processes for making requests - with estimated response times for receiving responses for completed orders being displayed as part of this service.
Organizations with high volumes of service requests would do well to treat them as separate work streams and manage them appropriately, tracking requests individually.
This should also apply to IT processes.
What is Service Request Management (SRM)?
IT teams use service request management processes to quickly respond to end users inquiries, including requests that come in through social channels such as LinkedIn.
It involves various stages in its lifecycle such as registering and assigning it to specific agents before prioritizing according to urgency, tracking its progress as necessary and reporting back.
An effective service request management system enables users to submit requests through various channels - email, live chat and forms are just three.
They could also submit them directly on your site or help center portal.
Create an IT agent-approved catalog of services so users can make formal requests more efficiently, then they will be provided a ticket from which IT agent(s).
Incident Management Vs Service Request Management
One of the most common questions about service request management is its relationship to core IT practices, such as incident, problem and change management.
Before we get into the details, its important to briefly cover some key terms.
- A Service Request: is a formal request from a user for delivering something new. "I want a new Macbook."
- Incident: A sudden event that reduces the service quality or disrupts it. This requires an immediate response. Example: "The site is down!"
- Problem: The root cause of incidents that are recurring or can be prevented. Example: "That same application issue strikes again!"
- Change: Something being Added, Modified, or Removed that could Affect IT Services. This can be linked to a request for service. Example: "I have to upgrade the database!"
Service requests should be treated as separate workstreams to enable IT teams to complete more valuable work more quickly, while simultaneously supporting all levels of the organization more effectively.
Requests can often be automated or expedited immediately--for instance granting new employee software access.
By creating separate workstreams and records based on type, your IT team can reduce stress, save time, and simplify workflows.
They may help your team allocate resources based on various kinds of change requests (change management), incidents (incidents management) or service requests that come their way.
The Service Request Management Process
There may be many variants on how service requests should be collected and completed; its essential that standardization be enforced to improve service quality and efficiency.
ITIL guidelines offer guidance for fulfilling requests, using this process you could adapt existing ITIL processes or define new ones as desired.
In brief, the service request fulfillment process is:
- Your customer contacts you via your service portal, email or phone.
- The IT team evaluates the request in accordance with pre-defined approval processes and qualification criteria. They send the request to business or financial approval if necessary.
- The service desk agent will either fulfill the service request or pass it onto the appropriate person.
- The agent will close the ticket after resolving your request and check with you to ensure that you are satisfied.
Service Request Management Priorities
Service request management is an approach which prioritizes customers while being knowledge-centric and automated, helping strengthen IT support teams while making it simpler for your customers to receive assistance and answers when they need help.
Implementing service request management at all levels within an organization is a surefire way of strengthening both them as well as your support services overall.
Here are a few recommendations on what IT service teams can do to enhance customer service and get closer to customers.
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Support The Support Team
Support teams in any organization often go unappreciated, often becoming overburdened with tickets they must manage due to increased customer demand exceeding available resources and time.
Large corporations tend to employ IT teams that respond swiftly and regularly to business requests - often first responding to customers who make the loudest complaints that it is difficult or unresponsive - often reacting first when customers make any noise about IT being difficult, unresponsive or taking too long for requests needed for work-related needs to complete requests they need for job performance - with customers complaining that IT becomes difficult or slow for completion - when in reality it should not become an obstacle or bottleneck in terms of its potential impact in this respect.
At the front lines, its of paramount importance that organizations invest in the training and wellbeing of support staff on a frontline team.
A typical tiered support team may use an escalation model when responding to client requests; we suggest adopting an collaborative approach in managing service requests instead, which allows each member of a team to get closer to clients while answering any inquiries that come through more quickly and answer questions more directly; Slack gives IT teams an ideal environment in which they can share issues amongst themselves while learning from each others experiences as well!
Team leaders and members should regularly step back and assess what happened, giving themselves time for questions, identification of areas for improvement and sending requests to appropriate teams.
IT support teams can become better advocates for customers by becoming teams focused on learning and continuous improvement.
IT can be an exhausting profession. We advise support teams to conduct regular health monitors to assess and improve themselves as teams.
Shift Left
What Does "Shifting Left" Entail? Request fulfillment is brought closer to customers for improved customer experience and satisfaction, while simultaneously cutting costs, streamlining support activities, and speeding time-to-resolution times.
Knowledge bases with searchable articles could be an excellent way to reduce ticket issuance and keep operations moving more quickly, and long-winded back and forth exchanges shorter by customizing request forms to collect pertinent data more efficiently.
Customers prefer getting help from one source, making it simple for customers to access it. Many organizations have attempted to implement self service portals only to see them gather dust over time.
Make something that represents your culture while learning from past errors; even the best SRM system of self-service will fail without customers finding it!
Leverage Automation
Automating self-service can significantly decrease the workload for IT teams by eliminating repetitive tasks that were once performed manually by agents and improving how clients and stakeholders are communicated with, including estimated resolution times and useful customer information that is delivered as canned responses; automating service requests may even serve to guide those customers who may otherwise struggle in finding assistance to the right spot.
Be Prepared To Scale Up
As your company expands, service delivery becomes ever more complex. Multiple teams now manage queues; context can become lost when being asked to share work and delegate tasks between teams; when new companies or business units acquire your system, onboarding can become extremely cumbersome and time consuming.
Service catalogs contain data on IT services available for deployment. By quickly and without developer assistance deploying service catalogs quickly to adapt quickly to changing business requirements.
ITIL Service Request Example
Service requests may take different forms depending on the service provided by the provider. Here are some examples of ITIL service requests:
1. Requests For Time Off
ITIL Service Request Process allows HR departments to evaluate requests from employees looking to take time off work for vacation or any other reason, while business can track working hours and cover any shifts or initiatives when employees are away from the workplace.
2. Purchase Order Authorizations
Companies reliant upon third party contractors for products or services require purchase requisitions as an essential document to manage business expenditure and essential finances.
Employees submit purchase order requests that then pass through finance in order to keep an eye on costs while keeping track of finances for accurate accounting of expenditure and investments.
3. Password Resets
Customers and employees frequently require password resets from IT departments.
4. Content Creation
A division may make a request if it requires content for internal documentation, advertising, or marketing. Both internal and external content providers may get this service request.
Service Request Management Best Practices
Its not enough to simply fulfill every service request. Its important to look for ways that you can reduce the end-users effort and increase agent productivity.
This year, you can adopt some of the best practices in service request management.
1. Help Desk Software Automates Time-Consuming Processes
It can be time-consuming to manage service requests. Things can quickly go haywire if your agents manually handle requests.
Automating the request management process will speed up your request fulfillment and reduce errors. It will also reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction.
Here are some ways that a helpdesk system can automate your processes:
- Automated Ticket Assignments: Once services requests are converted into tickets for the help desk, they can automatically be assigned to agents. This allows for greater accountability and eliminates the need to manually distribute tickets.
- Automated Notifications: Notifications and alerts will be sent when certain conditions are met. You can send automated notifications to your agents and users so they are always up-to-date on the status of a ticket.
- Chatbots : You can create powerful chatbots using pre-designed templates. These bots are able to hold conversations that mimic human conversation 24x7, and automate the submission of your requests.
Read More: IT Priorities 2023: Software Development
2. Manage Requests With A Shared Inbox
Email can be an effective way to manage requests when you are dealing with a small group of users. Email is not a solution that can be used in the long term.
A shared inbox is needed to centralize requests for service from email groups such as admin@ or ITsupport@. Its great that agents can all access different inboxes at the same time without interfering with each other.
You can track all service requests, whether they come from an employee at ITsupport@company and a customer at info@company.
There are also tools that enable seamless internal collaboration among team members. IT agents, for instance, may use private notes to discuss complex requests within their own company and can easily assign tickets across departments.
3. Organize Your Tickets By Priority
How do you prioritize the service requests that your team receives every day?
Prioritizing service requests can help agents prioritize their requests. All high-priority requests can be kept within reach.
Some requests require immediate responses. A manager might require you to move a projector from their office into the conference room for an important meeting, such a request has high priority and must be handled swiftly and quickly.
On the other hand, requests for additional hardware or office stationary tend to have lower priority and can usually be completed within days.
Read More: What Are The Advantages of Using Cloud-Based Enterprise Applications?
4. Reduce The Number Of Tickets Requested With Self-Service
Your agents will have less to do if your users can take care of themselves.
A study conducted found that 81% of consumers prefer to resolve issues themselves before calling a customer service representative.
Self-service comes in many forms. Here are some ways to encourage your employees and customers to use self-service:
- Knowledge Base: An online knowledgebase can contain all the self-help materials related to request submissions, tracking, service offerings, and much more. You can, for example, create a FAQ to help employees or customers reset their passwords. It will reduce the number of password reset requests, allowing agents to focus on other urgent tasks.
- Online Forums/Channels/Discussion Boards: Online forums or groups are great ways to allow end-users to interact with each other. All in one place, they can share ideas, ask questions and find solutions to problems. You can, for example, create a Slack Channel where employees can assist each other in their issues or requests.
- Customer Portal: A user can track their request once it has been sent. Logging in allows them to track the status of their requests and submit new ones.
5. You Should Periodically Audit Your Knowledge Base Content
Some requests require immediate responses. A manager might require you to move a projector from their office into the conference room for an important meeting; such a request has high priority and must be handled swiftly and quickly.
On the other hand, requests for additional hardware or office stationary tend to have lower priority and can usually be completed within days.
The creation of content is not an isolated process. To keep your knowledge base alive and well, you need to continually audit the published articles.
Keep these points in mind when you are auditing your content:
- Define Technical Jargon And Terms: Your content should not leave your users with additional questions. It is important to explain technical terms and point users in the direction of a resource that can help, like a glossary.
- Too Many Writers Can Be A Problem: Youve probably heard that "two heads are always better than one" but when it comes time to create help articles, having more authors may mean a greater number of discrepancies between solutions, language and tone. Writing, editing, and publishing articles should only be permitted by persons with relevant experience.
- Use Bullets, And Number Lists: When writing help articles youll notice that they often contain a list. Use bullets and numbers lists to make your article easier to scan.
6. Revamp Your Service Catalog
Imagine offering multiple services to end users; how will they know which are available and how they can obtain them? A well-organized catalog of services provides the answer.
Service catalogs provide your company with an opportunity to display all the services it has available - for both customers and employees - but developing one tailored specifically to your business can be time consuming and complicated.
When creating or updating your catalog, here are some points to consider:
- Define the Items: A service catalog is not just a list. It should clearly describe the services offered, their turnaround times and costs (if your customers are charged). Visual graphics will enhance your catalog and make it easier to browse.
- Integrate A Service Catalog Into Your Knowledge Base: To turn your KB into a one-stop shop, you must upload your service catalog. Users can browse your catalog to submit requests if they are unable to find the correct information.
- Get Feedback From Your Users: To improve your service catalog, you should get feedback from those who use it. Ask your users how easy it is for them to navigate your catalog. Also, ask what obstacles they may be facing and what additions theyd like to see.
7. Accelerate The Approval Of Your Service Requests
We understand that depending on the nature of a service request, approval processes may take days or even weeks - these delays negatively affect customer experience and could potentially harm relationships between businesses and their clients.
Service request approval typically falls to someone of high authority (usually a manager or supervisor), who can approve or deny service requests as needed.
Discover how service approvals work. Say an employee submits a request to obtain a new laptop - this would initially be denied by IT support personnel before being passed onto management for approval and finally sent directly back out as promised to be given out as soon as it passes muster! Only after approval does an employee get his or her new machine!
Managers needing to handle many approvals can find themselves overwhelmed, taking too much of their own time dealing with approval requests.
You could streamline this process in some way by, for instance, automating approval for laptop purchases for new employees; doing so would improve efficiency while speeding up service requests.
8. Reports And Metrics Can Help Improve Service Quality
You need to monitor reports and metrics that are relevant to your business process to improve the quality of your service.
Be careful not to overdo it.
While trying to improve the quality of service, most managers get lost in sea data. More information does not necessarily translate into better insights.
You can use these metrics to improve your service.
- Open Tickets
- First response time is average
- Average Resolution Time
- Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
A measure of how busy or overburdened your team is is by reviewing how many open or pending tickets it has received; using this metric allows you to assign tasks accordingly and evaluate staffing needs over time.
Average first response time also plays a vital role here as this tells us when users receive their initial response; prompt first responses help build trust both between employees and customers alike.
CSAT, NPS and CES metrics can all help measure customer satisfaction with your products or services. Incorporating open-ended questions like, "How can we enhance the service request fulfillment process?" into surveys will give users an indication of where improvement areas lie.
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By effectively overseeing service requests, you can help your IT team focus on what matters while improving customer satisfaction.
Service Management is an adaptable software which will assist in streamlining processes to suit any team or group of people.
