Five Predictions for Service Management for 2021

Hopefully, at some point in the near future, businesses will look back at 2020 and likely remember great efforts to pivot quickly. In 2020, service management proved its worth, as teams in the IT service desk dealt with a higher volume of requests due to the rapid change to remote work. In many cases, this also sparked digital transformation.

These often-intense changes have created a bright future full of opportunity for teams across the world – all with service management at the forefront.

As we near the end of 2020 and approach 2021, let us look at some predictions in service management for the coming year.

Employee experience at the forefront

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, employees have shown incredible resilience in the ability to pivot to the new reality. It made organizations more aware than ever that the employees are the backbone of the business and need to be empowered and supported in everything they do. Employee experience has always been a prevalent topic in the service management world, so it is not surprising that the future will show an increased focus on employee experience.

Many organizations are making use of advanced technologies, including conversational AI and intelligent knowledge management systems, to increase productivity and efficiencies in ITSM. This, along with the use of shift-left strategies (such as using self-help technologies to automate processes) will be critical when it comes to delivering optimal customer and employee experiences. Not only does this speed up the delivery of support for the end user and customer, but it also improves the quality of services delivered while reducing costs. Also, internal customers (employees) have higher levels of satisfaction with a comprehensive ITSM self-service experience.

Whereas up to now, initiatives such as shift-left or automation were mainly cost-driven, there will be a shift to initiatives driven by outcomes, including higher employee empowerment, satisfaction, and engagement, with cost savings becoming a result rather than a driving factor.

Expanded automation capabilities

The future for many industries is automation, and service management is no different. When paired with service management, automation leads to a more successful shift-left initiative and, ultimately, an increased deflection of tickets, freeing up agents’ time for more interesting work.

Automation is made from a set of repeatable steps that can be done without human intervention. Overall, automation works to deflect tickets, resulting in the reduction of service desk call volume by as much as 30%, and can majorly impact service desk metrics for the better – all of which helps lower costs, and increase productivity and satisfaction of your service management team.

Increased Use of Chatbot Support

Chatbots are not only the future of service management, but the future of communication in general. In fact, Gartner predicted that “by 2020, the average person will have more conversations with bots than with their spouse.”
That sounds crazy, right? And yes, maybe it was a little bit far-fetched. But, with major growth and change in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, chatbots are now able to lend support like never before. Working with a knowledge management database, chatbots can now access data and knowledge articles, create tickets within the ITSM or ESM system, and help users find the right support.

Plus, chatbots can now be programmed with a Natural Language Processing (NLP) layer which can understand a wider range of people from a variety of regions, making it perfect to support remote workers across the world as they interact with IT support. This advanced technology takes chatbots beyond the bots of the past and creates more meaningful, contextualized experiences. The rapid evolution of capabilities and increased ease of implementation will show a wider use within service management in the next year.

Wider Use of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is the process of creating, sharing, using, and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieving organizational objections by making best use of knowledge. Being able to engage users through a contextualized knowledge approach will play a key role not only in the creation of knowledge, but also in its use.

This goes beyond simply creating lengthy knowledge articles and storing them in a shared drive. A knowledge management solution or self-service portals allows you to go beyond the knowledge article and offer an engaging knowledge experience that will reach anyone within your organization. There are so many benefits to knowledge management, including increased efficiency with reduced costs, a superior employee experience, reduced duplication, and so much more. For these reasons, and as knowledge management is the basis of a good chatbot experience, the integration and use of knowledge management will only continue to grow in the future.

Greater Focus on Enterprise Service Management

In the future, IT service management is poised to be a challenger to traditional ESM processes and tools. Recent reports from Forrester point to the fact that 50% of the workload handled by a given ITSM software solution is not related to IT. Though not all ESM processes can be done through an ITSM software, most of the customer/employee facing processes can, which brings a huge ROI while creating major benefits for the employee experience across different business units.

For example, embedding processes for IT and HR support into the same self-help portal of the ITSM tool empowers employees to get help faster and creates a better experience. Tickets for time off requests, benefits questions, and other HR-related issues can be submitted through a self-help portal in the same manner of IT requests. This also supports the shift of focus onto the overall wellbeing of employees that we have seen in 2020, a shift that will continue and accelerate in 2021.

When it comes to people, it is important to provide them with the right work environment that will not make them more productive and take care of them – which can be made easier with sturdy ITSM processes in place. This is not limited to the HR department and the IT service desk; it can be useful for requests from marketing, finance, legal, or a whole host of other units.

2021: Service Management at the core of digital transformation

As we have learned this year, there is much that remains unknown and to be seen in the years to come, but one prediction that will ring true regardless of what happens in the next year is the growth of the digital revolution. As employees continue to work remotely, the need for an enterprise-wide solution will only grow. The renewed focus on service management, digital optimization, and their effect on employee engagement, opens up tons of opportunities for service management professionals.