Balance Technology and People to Delight Your Organization

Greg Thompson, Director, Enterprise IT, EnPro Industries Inc.

Your organization has it all: the law-abiding citizen that follows all policies and procedures, the technically savvy engineer that wants access and autonomy, the executive that prefers their admin resolving issues on their behalf and the employee that loves dropping in with their latest technical challenge. In today’s Enterprise IT Service Management landscape IT leaders are confronted with an ever-growing, complex landscape of tools, business stakeholders that are more knowledgeable than ever about technology, SaaS solutions that require little involvement from IT and the desire from users for an amazon-like end user experience. The challenge can be daunting.

Fear not! We have an enormous opportunity to delight users and deliver value in our organizations by keeping in mind a few key principles:

1. AI can be your friend – Gartner projected back in 2018 that by 2020 25% of customer service and support operations will integrate virtual customer assistant technology across engagement channels.I have certainly seen an expansion of virtual assistant and chatbot use and we have begun to deploy them in certain cases in my organization. However, these technologies require scale, a robust knowledge base and the ability to identify key use cases for them to free up your people for the higher value work. Ensure your company culture and your users are ready to consume the technology as you expand your offerings from single point of contact to omnichannel. AIOps is another emerging area that presents a significant opportunity. It requires large amounts of data and either internal expertise or a platform with machine learning already embedded (the number of vendors in the ITSM space with these capabilities are growing quickly). The technology isn’t a silver bullet but can significantly automate normal responses and begin to auto-detect and remediate common occurrences and issues in your environment.

Balance the deployment of new technologies with the right talent in your ITSM organization and you are well on your way to a successful ITSM program

2. Build a robust self-service offering for those willing to consume it – Self service can be tricky. It requires a well laid out service catalog, a reasonable amount of standardization, a team that can build the orchestration necessary to make self service effective and an organization interested in spending time solving their own problem instead of engaging the IT support team. However, for those willing to consume self-service it presents an opportunity to deliver quick service in an incredibly cost-effective manner. Find the people in your organization that are ready to consume self-service and design your self-service offering with those end users in mind.

3. At the end of the day we are still working with people – People are the #1 asset in your organization. Many business users still prefer interacting with a person when requiring IT service. Even in the organizations that have the best built self-service capabilities and AI solutions, people still play a critical role for the complex issues. Your best people will solve the challenges that haven’t been previously encountered or work with that particular resource that can never quite get their issue fully resolved through the automated channels. Find talent with the right mix of critical thinking skills and soft skills for your organization and establish the cornerstone of your IT service strategy.

We will always be challenged making the best use of emerging technologies. Additionally, our organizations will always offer a diverse set of users that will push the IT organization to develop new ways of providing value. Balance the deployment of these new technologies with the right talent in your ITSM organization and you are well on your way to a successful ITSM program.

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