Despite the urgent need for an automation system and the availability of appropriate resources, a number of companies do not even think about introducing a service desk or other new tools. Of course, the customer always makes the final purchase decision. However, in our experience, the overwhelming majority of companies postpone projects to implement a new system and, often, this is a consequence of internal administrative and organizational problems.
Here are a few reasons why companies are closed to innovation and Service Desk implementation. Are there any in your company?
Implementing any system or building process in a business requires money, time and other resources. Therefore, it is pointless to initiate them without motivation. But it often turns out that there is no real desire to change something: the company seems to be working, there seem to be regular customers. Why bother? The business supposedly does not need this.
Such a position arises for various reasons, depending on the level of the employee in the company hierarchy. A hired executive working on a fixed salary, if his KPI does not include performance efficiency, may not be interested in increasing turnover or reducing churn.
As for managers and business owners, quite often they do not want to change any established order of work. Due to age or other reasons, there is no desire to waste time on this again, to dive into details and put things in order again. However, this very “existing order”, which is so carefully preserved, is usually only an appearance. It’s just that the owner is not knowledgeable enough about the “internals” of the company to understand what problems are imminent. “Sticks in wheels” are probably noticeable to managers at a lower level, but even if they have the initiative to introduce new tools, they are not given the opportunity to move on these innovations – after all, top management is confident that everything is in order.
Another large class of administrative problems is the fear of changes and innovations on the part of the company’s management. It is known that all new solutions, including the introduction of the service desk and work tools, cause discontent among conservative employees. Not wanting to go to conflict, many leaders simply refuse the very fact of change.
However, the artificial “freezing” of the situation will not help establish eternal peace in the team. On the other hand, you can invite the employees themselves to participate in the selection and implementation of a new tool. This approach usually helps to defuse the wave of discontent by giving employees the confidence that management cares about the convenience of their work. It is important to explain to employees that any innovation (even initially aimed at control) has certain positive consequences for them. For example, recording conversations with clients in a call center helps to justify the operator if he was completely correct, while the client was inadequate.
Unfortunately, businesses in many countries are still generally extremely ineffective. But this is not visible until there are metrics and objective measures. The reluctance to reveal the real state of affairs is sometimes shown by employees at all levels of companies: from a simple secretary to a general director, who needs to somehow report to the owners. Without metrics, you can be limited to the imitation of violent activity.
Unfortunately, there is no universal advice on overcoming this barrier. Until the worldview changes, i.e. until an employee (of any level) understands that not only the abstract future of the company depends on the efficiency of his own work, but also the stability of his own position, the business will step on the same “rake”. Of course, managers or business owners need to identify such barriers in the form of people as soon as possible and overcome them with administrative decisions.
Oddly enough, but in matters of support processes, the introduction of Service Desk systems will just identify the aforementioned “problems”. That is why, often, employees sabotage such projects.
Oddly enough, in a business where everything must be based on cold calculation, people very often make decisions based on their intuition. And if intuition suggests that it is correct to set the price “like the neighbors’”, then there is no point in making calculations.
While there is no business analytics, there is no understanding of the real situation, and hence there is no value of innovation for the manager or business owner. At first glance, it seems that the company is “doing well”.
But the competition in the market is growing. As long as a service or product is unique due to its properties or the territory where it is offered, you can afford to work by intuition. Of course, this deprives part of the profit, but it will not exclude the stability of the work. However, as soon as a competitor arrives, they will have to tighten their belts. An intuitive way to attract a customer – by price – will no longer work. You will have to look for the unique features of your business, transform the usual approaches to work and count money, to the last penny. Isn’t it better to start working in a new way in advance?
Practice shows that the listed problems are quite successfully overcome by administrative means. But for this innovation requires an ardent supporter among the top management, and better – among the owners. In addition, a technique is needed. The chaos in business can be turned into something orderly only if you have a good sense of where change is going.
In theory, the building of processes in itself should precede the introduction of new tools, including automation (i.e., the technique should go ahead of specific services). But in practice, small and medium-sized businesses cannot afford to waste time and money only on processes. And their chaos has not yet reached such a global scale to call external consultants. Therefore, it makes sense for companies to implement Service Desk systems that will clearly show which problems lead to inefficiency and who “sabotages” the work.
A simple example is registering service requests with a service company. While clients call “their” managers and agree on something with them, the management has no idea what the employees are doing, what tasks they manage to complete in a working day and how problematic the clients themselves are. Simple automation of registration and distribution of applications will highlight this area of activity in detail. Delay reports will reveal the lazy, client-side dissatisfaction – non-client-oriented, etc. A set of ready-made reports in the tool will allow you to quickly see problem areas and start improving. As a result, we get the implementation of the methodology – the alignment of processes – as a “free application” to the implementation of an automation tool convenient for the company.
Thus, for small and medium-sized businesses, the combination of an ideological mastermind of innovations and a successful automation tool corresponding to the profile of its activities will help to solve urgent problems. For service companies and after-sales businesses in the B2B segment, this will be a Service Desk system.
