When it comes to creating modern, efficient, and scalable service desk teams, the devil is in the detail. Selecting and implementing the right service management software can, however, take priority over creating a clear structure for these new processes when transforming IT service management (ITSM) and enterprise service management (ESM, the use of ITSM methods in non-IT departments such as HR for example) teams. In order to thrive, these tools must be tailored to the needs of your company, employees, and customers.

Whether you’re building a service desk team from scratch or transforming an existing one, here’s how you can streamline your processes to boost visibility, scalability, and customer satisfaction (CSAT).

Boosting visibility in ITSM and ESM workflows

A challenge that many executives and managers face is a lack of visibility into their IT, HR, Finance, and “you-name-it” team’s workflows. This can make it difficult to understand operations and therefore effectively predict and plan such high variability work.

Centralizing this work into a platform such as Jira Service Management provides more transparency within workflows. Instead of information being scattered across different platforms and teams, it’s all in one place that’s easy to access at a leadership and management level. This visibility allows businesses to better understand the value and contribution of each team’s work, and map this against the wider goals of the business.

At an employee level, teams have one portal for communicating with customers (be it internal stakeholders or external customers) as well as categorizing, organizing, and prioritizing service requests, incidents, and issues. Not to mention dashboards and reports for continuous improvement of these processes which are now much more visible.

Jira Service Management also allows teams to stay on track with their goals and service level agreements (SLAs). If you’re looking to go one step further and create SLAs that really cater to the needs of your customers and teams, then Time to SLA is a great addition to your service desk. The app is an end-to-end SLA management tool that offers more granular detail and tracking capabilities for teams to build more tailored SLAs, whilst keeping on top of numerous agreements with varying contractual obligations for different customers. Its reporting tools also give that much-needed visibility into the wider SLA management processes.

Time to SLA agreement configuration page — A snippet on Time to SLA’s service level agreement configuration page. The app allows users to create specific conditions and goals for each SLA.

What’s more, is that unlike Atlassian’s SLA functionality, which is only available in Jira Service Management, Time to SLA is available on both JSM and Jira Software. This is perfect for collaboration across teams within a modern enterprise. For example, you might find that your HR team is using JSM and your developers are using Jira Software, but both teams need to work together when onboarding new starters.

The Enhancer Plugin for Jira can also help to boost visibility within ITSM and ESM workflows. The app’s Time in Status custom field, for instance, shows the amount of time spent in a particular status or multiple statuses – a useful tool for monitoring the efficiency of tasks. It allows teams to pinpoint bottlenecks within workflows, identify statuses that are taking longer than expected, and improve on these processes over time. This is just one Enhancer Plugin for Jira custom field that is not available natively within Jira Software or Jira Service Management and can help to streamline your service desk.

Enhancer for Jira time review. — See a detailed breakdown of the time spent in particular statuses within the Jira issue view through the Time in Status custom field by the Enhancer Plugin for Jira.

Increasing the scalability of organizations

Greater visibility into the work that’s executed by teams means that these processes can be shaped to support the wider goals of an organization. If one of these goals is to scale, then ITSM processes can help develop new capabilities to drive this forward.

Jira Service Management allows teams to spend less time putting out fires and more time working strategically. Automation is key here and Canned Responses Pro Templates for Jira is just one app that can be used to automate repetitive tasks and increase productivity in Jira. The app enables teams to create dynamic templates that provide pre-determined responses, customizable signatures, and automated actions, so teams can be more efficient when servicing customers.

Canned Responses Pro customer reply — Save agent time spent manually copying and pasting the same messages by creating dynamic templates with Canned Responses.

All Canned Responses templates can trigger an automatic sequence of actions so thanking a customer, for example, can automatically close the issue and transition it to “done” status.

Automatic action in Canned Responses Pro Templates for Jira. — Automated actions within Canned Responses Pro Templates for Jira.

Automated actions within Canned Responses Pro Templates for Jira.
As teams become faster at completing tickets, more of their time is freed up to spend on refining existing services or launching new customer-facing processes and applications. It’s these long-established processes that come about from selecting the right service management tool and tailoring it to your business that ensures the coordination, longevity, and scalability of an organization.

Improving the end-user experience and CSAT

Customer satisfaction is one of the main key performance indicators (KPIs) for service desk teams. Streamlining service desk processes by boosting visibility, automation, and productivity allows teams to continually meet the needs of their customers. Over time, this user experience continues to improve as processes become more efficient and systems are refined.

Platforms such as Jira Service Management also give the end service desk user a comprehensive view of all of the services that are available to them. For some frequently asked questions, users are able to quickly self-serve through knowledge articles and documentation. And when they do require assistance from an agent or colleague, this experience is more standardized – ensuring the same high quality of service regardless of who the task has been assigned to.

Service desk teams leverage Time to SLA, the Enhancer Plugin for Jira, and Canned Responses Pro Templates for Jira to streamline their processes, increase transparency, and drive customer satisfaction. If you’re interested in doing the same within your organization, try Time to SLA, the Enhancer Plugin, and Canned Responses for free today!

As well as these popular apps, we have a full suite of ITSM apps at Appfire that can also be utilized by non-IT teams within modern enterprises to enhance, extend, and augment Jira. These out-of-the-box solutions allow teams to spend less time on administrative and repetitive tasks and more time helping customers, empowering teams to prioritize customer satisfaction. Check out Appfire’s full portfolio of ITSM apps.

How to streamline your service desk processes

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