The COVID-19 pandemic left a massive dent in the various sectors of the British economy and the IT sector has not been an exception. Maintaining the kind of service levels consumers were used to before the virus struck, has become incredibly difficult. Two leading reasons for this are the reduced resources and trying to work efficiently while practicing social distancing. So how can we improve the IT support in the COVID-19 era and boost employee experience in the United Kingdom?
Here are 5 ways to improve IT support In The COVID-19 Era To Boost Employee Experience:
1. Pay Attention To The ‘New World’
There has been a paradigm shift in the way companies function in the post-pandemic era. The number of people working from home has gone up. Only a section of the organisations is calling the workers back to a common office. As a result, the ways in which end-users are supported have changed.
As offices shut down, new avenues opened in the form of online conference calls being hosted on platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. More and more people began to realise the value of free features like Google Slides which didn’t need unnecessary emails between colleagues to change a minor error in one of the slides. Simply giving access to their colleagues made the work exponentially easier while saving a lot of time.
Pay attention to the features and applications that have gained popularity due to the limitations brought forward by the pandemic. Add that to your arsenal for a better experience.
2. Communication Is Key
It is easy for work silos to get created in the absence of common spaces where people work together. As a result, miscommunications lead to setbacks in the team’s productivity.
It is important to continue to interact with your colleagues within the organisational hierarchy to stay in tune with the needs of your end-users.
3. Consider ITIL4 As Your Business Guide
ITIL4 is the latest version of ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) which provides a digital operating framework for organisations to churn out value from their IT-supported products and services.
Two of the main values ITIL4 emphasizes on are:
Know how customers use a service: Lab-testing a product can often be significantly different when being used by the end-users. Ask your customers for their genuine feedback regularly as it helps clearly define the success or failure of the product.
Establish a culture of value: While most organisations focus mainly on working on the technical aspects of a new hire during their training session, ITIL4 recommends working with them to help them develop a sense of value the company stands for and how it aspires to deal with all its customers.
4. Output Vs Outcomes
An organisation’s output seems to hold great value in the eyes of the stakeholders. However, it seldom converts into real value unless it leaves a desirable impact on the end users’ productivity. Therefore, paying attention to the outcomes of your output must become your concern of priority.
An efficient way to do so is by writing down the key pointers between the way your organisation performs a certain process and how it affects your customers. Then find ways to improve your performance. This would invariably lead to an enhanced employee experience.
5. Transition From Service Level Agreements (SLAs) To Experience Level Agreements (XLAs)
Most IT teams work simply to keep the infrastructure afloat. Despite having the best ITSM implementation set in place, they can’t get beyond the basic processes of Incident, Request, Problem, and Change Management. Even in those areas, practitioners face real challenges and a lack of ownership, discipline, understanding, or ‘care’ means IT service can still seem pretty poor in the eyes of the customers. Time to switch from SLA to XLA.
What if you could find a solution that would allow you to see the following:
Clarity on wasted salaries paid to employees unable to work?
Potential issues or success levels for a recent migration project?
The lifespan and performance of certain types of hardware and allow for memory upgrades rather than expensive hardware refresh across the entire organisation – because it has been depreciated on the books?
How many employees had disabled their anti-virus or malware software creating a breach of policy and security risk for the organisation?
Surely this would be a step forward for service maturity giving better indicators than monthly management reports, lagging by at least one month which focuses on the performance of the Service Desk against KPIs than the actual productivity experience within the business. Is this the start of the next big thing? A time where experience level agreements are given priority over service level agreements.
If you think this is something to consider and resonate with – perhaps you should join us for one of Bright Horse’s next webinar on implementing XLAs.