8 questions to evaluate your user support system

The acceleration of the digital transformation has had an impact on the evolution of work habits… and has led to the development of IT tools.

As a result, we need to accompany users in these new digital applications, and we will explain why.

Making sure your digital tools are properly adopted is crucial. And good employee support means satisfied employees.

Here you can evaluate your user support system.

Why? Because it must be adapted to the new digital realities. We can no longer provide support in the “old-fashioned” way with face-to-face training, PDF manuals, etc.

To help you, we suggest you ponder the following 3 questions in this article:

• • • Why and how to structure your user support?
    • Do you have a good user support system?
    • Are you addressing the issue of digital change in the right way?

Use the calculator to evaluate your set-up:

Let’s look at this together!

• Training for newcomers is a necessity

A well-trained employee is a more productive, efficient, and involved employee.

You need to make sure that your newcomer training is effective in achieving your goals, and that your employees find it effective as well.

According to Dynamic Signal, 85% lose at least one to two hours of productivity a week searching for information, and 36% don’t know where to find the information they need to do their work.

Because they too have new objectives… or rather, expectations…

The modern learner wants on-demand training, where and when s/he feels the need, and moreover, wants this training to be part of their workflow (i.e., digitized training).

Habits and needs are evolving, but digital has its limits and is not intuitive for everyone.

This is particularly true for business software with its own specificities and impacted by regulations, although some generations are more at ease than others with the codes of instant messaging software, collaborative work,…

• More and more tools to be mastered…

According to an October 2020 study by Josh Bersin for Deloitte “The average large enterprise now has 9.1 core talent apps (up from 7 in 2018) and spends $310 per employee per year, a 29% increase from last year.“

9 HR applications! and, this can easily be doubled if we include the other current daily applications to master (CRM, ERP Finance, video conferencing software,…).

• … Which are constantly evolving, and more and more quickly

Learners have only 1% of the time to spend on their training (source: same Josh Bersin report)

It’s not just employee expectations that are changing rapidly with digital transformation.

The tools we use are also undergoing increasingly rapid changes.

Previously an annual occurrence, developments are now practically a daily occurrence.

So, we need to stay flexible and agile in order to keep up to date in using their full potential!

The different support systems that exist:

• User manuals:

Autrefois en format papier, ils sont aujourd’hui plutôt électronisés en format PDF.

Previously in paper format, they tend to come as PDF files nowadays.

Large, difficult to maintain, and not very practical to use when it comes to finding the desired information and applying it without being directly in front of the interface, they have proven to be inefficient.

• Face-to-face training:

According to a 2014 study by the Research Institute of America, the retention rate for e-learning courses is between 25 and 60 percent, compared to 8 to 10 percent for face-to-face courses.

Synonymous with complicated scheduling issues, travel, and therefore rather high financial costs, Face-to-face training is coming under increasing scrutiny, particularly in the wake of the Covid crisis.

• Training by key users:

Similar to classroom training, this entails calling on key users inside the organization to give the training. These users are responsible for training their colleagues on their tools… But this task is rather time-consuming and brings the key users little added value.

• E-learning modules:

This is the first level of complete digitization of training, these training modules are accessible on specific software / sites / knowledge bases in the form of courses, MCQs, or explanatory videos.

However, e-modules are their separate thing, i.e., they are not integrated into the software in question for use as and when the user needs them during the execution of a task.

Digital Adoption Platforms (DAP):

Another completely digitized system, the Digital Adoption Platform is more sophisticated; it is materialized by micro-training modules in the form of information bubbles and contextualized steps adapted to the user’s profile, in order to help them carry out a task directly on their screen.

• How to deliver support at a given time ‘T’?

The assistance features described above is not always able to provide answers to users’ questions.

Other means exist to reinforce user self-reliance at a given time T, thanks to self-help:

– FAQ : library of content answering the most frequently asked questions

– Intranet portal: PDF manual, knowledge base or other information available on an internal environment

– Chatbot: small pop-up often available at the bottom right of a page… this feature can now be automated and provide answers thanks to an algorithm based on keywords and embedded content

• Who answers questions from users about the functional aspects of their tools?

There is no getting around the need for users to be able to contact a person who can deliver answers to questions left unresolved despite all the help features. This person can be:

– A key user

– The application project manager

– A local support team

– A centralized business support team

– A centralized Helpdesk

• Which channels for Assistance requests?

Thus, user support is a key element, and it should be contactable through different means and platforms:

– Phone

– Email

– Enterprise social network

– Chatbot

– Ticketing tool (by entering integrated or non-integrated Assistance Requests)

• What is the response time to functional questions from users?

Requests are not always well qualified by users who are not technical experts. The upshot is lots of emails back and forth to qualify requests… which can lengthen the response time, directly impacting the company’s productivity and activity.

💡Qualified and contextualized requests can be entered from any screen directly from the application screen thanks to the Shortways platform!

Step 1: Digitize

Support is therefore essential for companies and employees alike, and not just any support: accessible, adapted, and integrated support: digitized.

By digitized, we mean:

• Digitize user manuals:

– they are bulky

– the paper format is not ecological… is not adapted to CSR

– difficult to maintain and share when changes are made

– difficult to find information

– not directly integrated

• Digitize the way we train:

– Face-to-face training is less and less justified: difficult to organize, especially with the health crisis, time consuming, costly, perceived as boring and now proven to be less effective: according to the Research Institute of America’s study mentioned above, the information retention rate of e-learning training is between 25% and 60%, compared to 8% to 10% in face-to-face training, as employees learn better by practicing in front of their work interface.

– Relying on key users is also a practice that needs to evolve. These missions are time-consuming for them compared to the meaning and satisfaction provided, when there are faster solutions to answer users’ questions

• Digitize the IT department:

The creation of a ticket, rather long and tedious, can take up to more than 10 minutes!

The IT department must also be digitized and made simply accessible otherwise problems will not be escalated, and the quality of your data will suffer.

💡Shortways Assistant allows you to create support requests with a few clicks from any screen.

If you are a large organization, it is therefore advisable to centralize this support by delegating user support to digital training solutions, and answers to users’ questions to a dedicated IT department.

Small organizations are also concerned by digitization: it is part of the new practices that are becoming more democratic, and customized solutions exist, particularly in terms of digitized training.

Step 2: Empowering users

Now that you have an IT team dedicated to this digital support, you need to optimize user support.

How? Thanks to “self-help“, users are self-reliant…. they find answers to their questions by themselves.

Offering training solutions integrated into applications in a contextual and targeted manner, such as the Shortways digital adoption platform, in the form of tool tips or FAQ libraries answering the most frequently asked questions, provides users with a first level of support at the right place in their business software.

Contextualized tool tips or step-by-step instructions guide users through the workflow of a task while remaining inside the software, unlike an e-learning module (which runs outside of the software).

In this way, users become self-reliant and resolve their problems on their own, thus boosting their work efficiency, and reducing their need for support!

Step 3: Sustainability

The final step is to optimize all the elements implemented to support your users.

How? By ensuring that your user support solution is properly used by your employees and that your Help desk is also optimized!

First of all, concerning the use of your training solution: measure and analyze its use thanks to dashboards and statistics to monitor its use, detect training needs, and make the necessary adjustments.

Optimize your Help desk? It might be easier than you think to solve a ticket right from the first exchange.

Thanks to the Shortways Assistant, support requests are made directly from the problematic screen, saving the user from having to switch interfaces and remember the ticket creation process. In addition, a screenshot can be inserted in 3 clicks to provide all the necessary elements on the support side (See how to do it in a few clicks right here).

By qualifying and contextualizing incoming support requests from the very first exchange, you reduce the number of time-consuming round trips between the technical team and the user, so that you can provide a faster response, and you streamline your Help desk, which can then focus on other areas of improvement!

Want to set up an adapted, efficient and sustainable user support system?  🚀

Contact us to see how the Shortways solution could be integrated into your work environment!