72% of customers prefer to use self-service support rather than phone or email support, according to Forrester. Like any service industry, IT serves customers and companies with different and distinct needs. Often organizations utilize some sort of a IT help-desk model that meets the needs of the majority of people within that organization. Support requests for password resets and other repetitive tasks are submitted via email, phone in-person and manually performed by a support rep.
There are always special circumstances or people that may require additional support resources. This may be a CEO that requires full-service or “whiteglove” support. It can also be a team or a group of users that require near instant support to perform their job more efficiently.
Although there are always users and scenarios where, training, hand-holding or white glove support is needed, empowering users how to be self sufficient is just as important. For example, the use of technology can empower users to perform repetitive tasks such as password reset on their own. There are a myriad of benefits to self-service IT. These potentially include costs savings and efficiency. For example, self service password resets allows end users to minimize downtime and get back to work right away. This also frees up the support staff from repetitive tasks to focus on customer service.