How to create a user-centric IT model: Part 5

Part 5: Offering a better support experience

If you’re new to the program, we’ve examined how forward-thinking IT are offering, implementing and succeeding with technology choice programs at their organizations. As a recap, I’ve explained why a company should offer a choice program, how to deploy the Mac and iOS devices employees choose, ways native Apple technology helps in the process and steps to empower users with the resources they need. To conclude our user-centric IT series, let’s go beyond the IT department and see how other components of the organization can play a crucial role in providing a better support experience for all.

While IT will do the heavy lifting of deploying and triaging support tickets, consider working with marketing, HR, communications and UI/UX teams to build an intuitive support experience that accounts for all the different touch-points users have with their technology. Ways employees receive or request a new device to how they request and receive support can be improved by bringing in outside ideas.

Infuse design and engineering
First, consider what makes for a good customer experience (and we say customers here because our users are really like internal customers.) Good engineering and visual design can go a long way. Think about what you expect in your consumer life when you get support. I’m assuming you expect it to be clear, simple, well-designed and easy to find the answers you’re looking for without sifting through clutter. This same concept applies to your IT team. Evaluate your current IT touchpoint with UX in mind. Are they clear for the user? Are they well-designed? Are you presenting too much information? By taking the time to do the engineering and make IT interactions simple and easy, users will start pulling the resources they need, as opposed to you having to push resources on them.

A flexible support portal
Beyond an app catalog — which we discussed in part 4 — you will need an online portal that serves as your main hub for employee interactions with IT. You may already have something like this in place. Think through the common workflows your users will encounter: How do they request a new computer? How do they find VPN settings? How do they submit a ticket? A well-designed portal can act as an online community encouraging peer support. Your portal quickly becomes the forum for arming employees with answers, and gives them a place to ask questions and post comments. This leads to employees self-helping, instead of immediately contacting you for assistance.

Resolution plus empowerment
In order to encourage and support a culture of self-sufficiency, the help desk can focus on delivering a positive user experience, versus trying to close the ticket as soon as possible. If the fix is something simple, encourage your team to take the time to train the user on why this or that broke and how they can fix it on their own. This drives down future calls to the help desk since the user is empowered to address their own problem and even help their co-workers troubleshoot a similar issue. The overall goal is to drive a culture change within your help desk. User-choice programs perform well when users feel comfortable contacting IT with questions regarding any of their devices. Think the opposite of Nick Burns.

Paving roads to improved company culture
At the end of the day, adding these components to your IT model is really all about culture. IT needs to be an extension of the culture your organization wants to have. It’s one of the few functions in a company that touches all employees. Good culture comes from engaged employees, and the quickest way to engage employees is through something they use every day.

Each chapter of our series helps aid and enhance the culture at any organization. If organizations are offering technology choice and IT is seen as an enabler instead of a roadblock, you’ll quickly discover you’ll have more productive, happier employees.

Ready to put all that you’ve learned in this series to use at your organization? Reach out to Jamf to get started.

If you’re on the fence, consider reading our User-Centric IT e-book for more insight.

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