What is a service request?

IT teams receive a wide variety of customer requests. Whether incoming inquiries are asking for access to applications, software licenses, password resets, or new hardware, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) classifies these as service requests. Service requests are often recurring, so efficient IT teams follow a repeatable procedure to handle them.

Service request management is related to, but distinct from other service management practices including incident, problem, and change management. Service request management uniquely involves a user submitting their request for something new --whether that’s access to a service, a new phone, or information.

ITIL specifies that along with the service desk, service requests are managed by the request fulfilment process, in response to the required ITSM process of service request management.

What is request fulfillment?

Request fulfillment is the process of resolving a customer’s service request and refers to managing the entire lifecycle of all service requests. The service desk team is dedicated to responding to and fulfilling requests while delivering the highest level of service support quality to the customer.

Request fulfillment is about enabling employees by providing access to the IT services they need to be productive. It should help users see available services, understand how to request them, and set expectations for how long requests will take to be addressed.

It’s smart to handle service requests as a separate work stream – and to record and manage them as a separate record type. This should be a distinct process from other IT processes.

Service requests should be handled as a distinct workstream to help IT teams focus on delivering more valuable work and better enabling the rest of the organization. Service requests are quite often low risk, and can be expedited or even automated. For instance, if a new employee submits a service request for access to a software application, that request can be pre-approved and automatically granted.

All of this means that the IT team can reduce stress, save time, and avoid overly complicated workflows. Considering the variety of incoming change, incident, and service requests that have to handle, separate workstreams and records will allow the team to figure out how best to allocate resources.

Service request management priorities

A strong service request management practice is customer focused, knowledge centric, and streamlined with automation. By applying these principles across your efforts, the organization can strengthen the IT support team, make it easy for customers to ask for help and get answers, and use tech to keep pace with changing organizational needs.

Support the support team

To deliver better customer service, it’s important to focus on the well-being and development of frontline support teams. Typical tiered support teams are highly structured and manage requests via escalations. We recommend a more collaborative approach to service request management. In this approach, every member of the support team can get closer to the customer and answer questions. When IT teams swarm issues, they also gain an opportunity for everyone to learn from the process of resolving the request.

By adding regular retros, the team gets a moment to step back and review everything that happened, on an ideally weekly basis. This provides a chance to ask questions, pinpoint areas for improvement, and make sure requests are routed to the appropriate teams. Becoming a learning focused team and embracing continuous improvement means the IT support team can be better customer advocates.

Shift left

To move out of a chaotic service request mess, one popular recommendation is to “shift left.” So that means It’s moving request fulfillment as close to the front line – and customer – as possible. This improves the customer experience by speeding up time to resolution, simplifying support activity, and reducing the overall cost of request fulfillment.

For instance, a knowledge base with searchable articles can work wonders in deflecting tickets. Or, customizing your request intake forms to gather relevant information can reduce long back-and-forth conversations.

Customers want a single place to go for help. Centralize the help seeker experience and make it as easy to access and use as possible. Many organizations create a self-service portal only for it to gather (metaphorical) dust. Learn from these mistakes, and create something based around the unique culture of the own organization. Remember, that even if building the most powerful self-service system, it’s worthless if customers can’t easily find it.

Leverage automation

When incorporating automation into the self service capability, indirectly reducing the overall workload for the IT team by removing common repetitive tasks. For example, use automation to speed up the follow-up communications agents complete manually today, improve the way you communicate with customers, and keep stakeholders updated on estimated resolution time. Canned responses for certain requests provide useful information to the customer and reduce the workload for the agent. Customers often don’t know where to seek help from, and automation can also be used to route service requests to the appropriate team for expedited resolution.

Be ready to scale up

As the organization grows, delivering service becomes increasingly complex. More teams are involved in managing queues of requests. With more need to delegate responsibilities, and pass work between teams, context is often lost.

A service catalog provides information about the live IT services that are available for deployment. The ability to quickly deploy a service catalog, without a developer can enable to adapt to changing business needs.

This document will guide AdvaCare Employees and IT members in the procedure of the service requests ticketing.

Helpdesk Levels and Stages

The process is divided into 4 main levels:

• Level-0
• Level-1
• Level-2
• Level-3

And across 5 stages to reflect the statuses:

1. Open
2. In Progress
3. Waiting for Customer
4. Solved
5. Cancelled

Level-0

Level-0 of the IT helpdesk ticket management process has the goal of resolving IT service requests tickets as quickly and efficiently as possible by providing users with self-service tools and resources. This helps to reduce the number of request tickets that reach the IT helpdesk, freeing up IT staff to focus on more complex issues.

Level-0 of the IT helpdesk ticket management process includes the following:

• A self-service portal that allows users to search for and view knowledge base articles, FAQs, and other helpful resources.
• A service catalog that provides users with a list of IT services and how to request them.
• A contact section (system) that users can use to submit tickets for issues that cannot be resolved through self-service.

When a user experiences an IT issue, they should first attempt to resolve it themselves using the self-service portal. Refer to our Support Website as AdvaCare knowledge base or self-service portal. If users are unable to resolve the issue on their own end, then:

• They can submit (log) a ticket through the Helpdesk module of the Odoo ERP (the main IT service management system in AdvaCare).
• For urgent issues, a user can send a direct message (via Odoo chat) to the IT team, and internally the IT team would raise the ticket.

The following individuals and teams are responsible for Level-0 of the IT helpdesk ticket management process:

IT helpdesk: The IT helpdesk is responsible for reviewing tickets and determining whether they can be resolved at Level-0. They are also responsible for providing users with the necessary information or resources to resolve issues. Refers to the IT team in AdvaCare.

Self-service portal: The self-service portal is maintained by the IT department. Users should submit feedback about the portal to the IT department so that it can be improved. Refers to the Support website in AdvaCare.

Service catalog: The service catalog is maintained by the IT department. Users should submit feedback about the service catalog to the IT department so that it can be improved. Not available at this moment.

Logging a ticket

The first step is to log the ticket in the helpdesk system. This includes entering the following information:

• The name of the end user (e.g. Customer, Employe)
• The description of the issue, following the format below
  • Explaining the context of the issue
  • Expected behavior
  • Steps to reproduce the issue
  • Platform/OS
• The priority of the issue (from Customer side)

Open

1. AdvaCare employee submits request through an Odoo ticket (automatically set in the “Open” stage)
2. IT Manager evaluates the request and assigns it to the IT Operations Supervisor with a specific priority.
3. IT Operations Supervisor updates the support ticket status to the next stage: "In Progress".

The IT helpdesk will then review the ticket and determine whether it can be resolved at Level-0. If it can, the helpdesk will provide the user with the necessary information or resources to resolve the issue. If the issue cannot be resolved at Level 0, it will be escalated to the next level of support (level 1).

Level-1

Once the ticket is logged, it needs to be triaged by a level 1 support technician. This involves determining the severity of the issue and the appropriate course of action.

Triage

The IT helpdesk will then review the request ticket and determine whether it can be resolved at Level 1. If it can, the helpdesk will apply the required solutions and provide the user with the necessary information or resources used for resolving the issue. If the issue cannot be resolved at Level 1, it will be escalated to the next level of support.

• If the issue is simple and can be resolved quickly, the level 1 technician will handle it themselves.
• If the issue is more complex or requires specialized knowledge, the level 1 technician will escalate it to a level 2 or level 3.

Communicate

The level 1 support technician will communicate with the end user to gather more information about the issue and to keep them updated on the status of the ticket.

• The level 1 technician will also provide the end user with any troubleshooting steps that they can take to try to resolve the issue on their own.

Resolving a ticket

The level 1 support technician will work to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. This may involve troubleshooting the issue, searching for a solution in the knowledge base, or contacting the vendor for support.

In Progress

1. IT Operations Supervisor evaluates the problem, and proceeds either
   1. Applying a possible solution based on the direct feasibility or
   2. Scalate to another IT Dept. member, adding a reason about this action
      1. Note: Ticket escalation is the process by which a customer issue (support ticket) is passed on to a senior customer service manager or supervisor for a quick and effective resolution. Ticket escalation happens when support agents are unable to resolve a customer query effectively in a timely manner
2. If the issue can be solved at the level-1 support, IT Operations Supervisor attends the ticket (applying a solution), updates the support ticket status to "Waiting for Customer" stage and informs about this resolution to the AdvaCare Employee for a further revision.

Waiting for Customer

1. AdvaCare employee checks that the problem has been fixed (not experiencing the reported issue anymore and meeting the expected results).
   1. If the problem persists or the provided solution does not meet the acceptance criteria, the Odoo ticket is reported back to the IT Operation Supervisor explaining the persistent issues.
2. When everything is working properly as expected, AdvaCare employee writes a comment in the support ticket confirming the satisfaction with the provided solution and agreeing to mark this ticket as solved.
3. IT Operations Supervisor updates the support ticket status to "Solved".

Closing a ticket

Once the issue is resolved, the level 1 support technician will close the ticket in the helpdesk system. This includes documenting the solution and providing the end user with any follow-up instructions.

• Once the issue is resolved, the Level 1 support team updates the ticket with the resolution details.
• Users are asked for confirmation that the problem has been resolved to their satisfaction before the ticket is marked as closed.

Solved

1. IT Operations Supervisor updates the description of the support ticket adding the following main information:
   1. Direct explanation of the steps used in the resolution
   2. Documentation (knowledge database) and other references
   3. Suggestions of enhancements for handling similar issues in the future (efficiency)
   4. Any other important and relevant information

Cancelled

1. When the issue is not presented anymore without any required solution from the IT helpdesk team, or simply it’s not required anymore, then IT Operations Supervisor updates the support ticket status to "Cancelled".

Documenting a ticket

• All interactions, steps taken, and resolutions are documented in the ticketing system.
• This documentation serves as a knowledge base for future reference and helps in creating efficient solutions for similar issues.

Considerations

• Be friendly and helpful. The end user is already frustrated by the issue, so it's important to be understanding and patient.
• Be proactive. Don't wait for the end user to come to you with an issue. Proactively reach out to end users to check on their systems and to see if they need any assistance.
• Be knowledgeable. The level 1 technician should have a good understanding of the IT infrastructure and be able to troubleshoot common issues.
• Be organized. Keep track of open tickets and communicate with end users in a timely manner.
• Be efficient. Work quickly and efficiently to resolve issues so that end users can get back to their work.
• By following these steps, level 1 IT helpdesk technicians can effectively manage tickets and resolve issues quickly and efficiently.