Service Request Management

Service Request Management refers to the tools and processes that allow people to submit service requests, assign responsibility for requests, and track the status of those requests between the time they are opened and the time they are closed.

Priorities of Service Request Management
The goal of each individual service request is the same: to provide high quality customer service and results. Overarching service request management priorities include enhanced customer relations, streamlined service activities, and the application of ITIL principles.

• Priority #1: Offer customer-centric processes: Almost everyone's had the experience of dealing with IT techs who make you feel like it's their world and they're just letting you live in it. It's no secret: Any tension-filled or adversarial customer service relationship creates multiple negative consequences. Creating transparent service request processes works to everyone's benefit. Users requesting services know what to expect, and some IT help desk software will let them track the progress of their service tickets. IT techs also have a clear process to follow that standardizes workflow to make it more efficient.
• Priority #2: Provide a service catalog: Ever found yourself playing 20 questions with an IT tech to figure out exactly what you need and/or what they can do to help you? The process is frustrating and time consuming for everyone. A comprehensive online service catalog, based on the history of previous service requests and ITIL issue management, will help prevent this problem. Each IT service catalog entry should include:
  • Service title: The unambiguous name of the service and a brief description.
  • Service availability: The days and hours during which the service can be fulfilled.
  • Service owner: The person within the organization responsible for paying for the service.
  • Service representative: The designated IT agent to coordinate and/or perform service fulfillment.
  • Service criticality: The degree of relative importance assigned by the business for performing the service.

Before submitting a request, users can see which IT services are and aren't available, choose the specific one needed, and have a greater understanding of the process to fulfill it.

• Priority #3: Create a knowledge base: An online knowledge base, whose initial entries are based on the history of prior service requests and ITIL incident categories, is another component of effective service request management. Its entries cover the gamut of often-asked IT questions: the steps to change a password, how to access network files and applications, or the process to convert a Google Docs file to MS Word. A knowledge base frees up IT techs by providing users with a place they can look first for answers to their questions. IT help desk agents can send relevant knowledge base links to users who didn't think to search there. A knowledge base also provides standardized information and processes as opposed to either of those being dependent on the particular tech a user contacts.
• Priority #4: Implement ITIL principles: ITIL emerged in the 1980s as an ad-hoc collection of IT best practices and checklists. It has gone through several iterations since then and is now more concerned with the alignment of IT practices with a business's overarching needs and goals rather than individual ITIL incidents. ITIL Version 4 (V4), released in 2019, is built around the service value system (SVS) concept: how the synergy between an organization's activities and components create value. ITIL processes are not focused on any specific software or hardware; instead, they aid collaboration between employees within a business to reach its goals.