In earlier blog posts I’ve been making the case for a collaborative service management environment, and discussing how best to use one. I’d like to conclude this series by sharing what we believe are the essentials for any such solution.
While researching what our own solution should look like, we spoke to clients and prospects about what they would look for in a collaborative service management environment, and discovered a consensus around the following points:
1. Intuitive interface
The collaboration space should have a familiar look and feel: one that users are instantly comfortable with. It helps if the user interface resembles one of the popular social media platforms. This way, the environment will harness people’s natural instinct to collaborate and solve problems together.
2. Easy navigation
It must be possible to organize discussion spaces by topic so that users can quickly find what they’re looking for. Documents, too, must be easy to locate, regardless of where in the organization they originated. A knowledge base should be available to help technical experts and end-users find what they need fast.
3. Translation facilities
The product should be able to translate online and offline conversations automatically and in real time, so that experts and users in different countries can communicate even if they don’t have a shared language. There is evidence that even small companies need multilingual capabilities, and this is an easy way to acquire them.
4. Analytics
It must be easy to get and analyze information about activity in the collaborative space – for example, to identify the most helpful contributors so you can acknowledge and reward them.
5. Software as a Service (SaaS) option
It should be possible for an organization to get all the benefits of the solution without assuming the burden of operating and updating it, or of managing the infrastructure. If it is available on a SaaS basis then the vendor can take care of these aspects on your behalf. The other benefits of SaaS are well known. However, it’s important that the SaaS option gives you a full-strength solution and not a cut-down version.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on what you would look for in a collaborative service desk solution. Please comment below, or feel free to email me.
