What is Multiexperience ITSM and Why You Should Care

Creating a smooth experience for customers and employees of the support desk is more important now than ever. With the number of support tickets mounting, agents are looking for a way to remove some of the friction in ticket handling, and customers are looking for ways to solve their own problems outside of the support desk. Certainly, executives have heeded the call and worked to provide better technology to meet these goals, yet there is a disconnect. In fact, in a recent survey conducted by PWC, 92% of C-suite execs say they’re satisfied with the technology experience their company provides for making progress on their most important work, only 68% of staff agree.

To address this disconnect, companies are turning to multiexperience interfaces of self-service support in rising numbers. Gartner wrote that “by 2023, more than 25% of the mobile apps, progressive web apps and conversational apps at large enterprises will be built and/or run through a multiexperience development platform.”¹

Multiexperience platforms are the evolution of the provision of smoother support, but to deploy this development platform it is crucial to understand what it means and how it can impact ITSM.

What is Multiexperience in ITSM 

Disjointed interfaces and clashing tools create frustration for the support desk and their customers. Both service desk employees and customers are expecting the same seamless experience they get in their personal lives. So how do you give a smoother experience to all? 

A mutliexperience approach to self-service and ITSM apps can help.    

Defined by Gartner, multiexperience: “refers to the various permutations of modalities (e.g., touch, voice and gesture), devices and apps that users interact with on their digital journey across the various touchpoints.” 

This may sound similar to omnichannel or multi-channel, however, put simply, those terms refer to where your knowledge sources meet your intended users. For example, omnichannel refers to a support channel which seamlessly meets customers on the channels they prefer at every level of interaction within your organization, like giving the ability to access information via Teams, Slack, a web portal, or whatever their preferred platform without regard to specific devices. 

Multiexperience is certainly the next step in the evolution of omnichannel because the focus is on tailoring the interface to each different device, rather than simply transferring or translating them over.  

For an example of multiexperience, think of an ITSM self-service portal that can be accessed on a laptop. That portal will need to be tailored and changed for someone accessing from a tablet or cellphone – and tailored even further still for someone trying to access from a wearable tech like a smart watch. No matter what device they are accessing the portal through, the experience should be seamless. When combined with tools like Microsoft Power Automate, your ITSM tool can create automated workflows between your favorite apps and services to synchronize files, get notifications, collect data, and more. 

At the core of this step is the consideration of the needs of the end-user. What do the customers of your service desk need the most, and where are their touchpoints? How do they contact the service desk currently? Take those touch-points and tailor them, creating a seamless experience.  

Top Reasons Why Companies are Moving Towards a Multiexperience ITSM

The reasons for embracing multiexperience go beyond bridging the gap between executives and staff. The following reasons highlight just a few of the major benefits of this development platform.

Boost Quality of Experience

With a multiexperience interface, employees who are frequently on-the-go will have a better experience accessing ITSM from anywhere, rather than trying to see tiny font or clicking buttons that do not translate properly to the device they are using. Improving the experience for customers and agents means meeting them wherever they are, which is the entire idea behind multiexperience.

For example, imagine you are a field technician who needs to submit a ticket for a broken laptop. You are using your Apple watch to interact with a chatbot to troubleshoot the laptop and ultimately need to submit a ticket through your smart watch. With a multiexperience interface, your smart watch will have formatting specific to that device for a more seamless experience. Without multiexperience, you may face frustrating blocks and ultimately be unable to use your wearable tech to submit tickets. 

Increase Speed

Speed in this context can be increased in two ways: speed of the applications themselves and speed of ticket creation and tracking for the customers

Applications can function more smoothly and quickly when they are not taking the extra time to translate an interface and data from a site that may be too large to load on smaller devices. At the same time, customers can create and track tickets more quickly from wherever they are, rather than taking time to log onto a different device. Customers can also get answers more quickly via a chatbot or virtual agent, and are more empowered to find information and access services without needing to wait for a live human from whichever devices they prefer.

Reduce Costs

Improved efficiency and chatbot integration created by multiexperience interfaces translates to lower costs, as the cost-per-call becomes optimized.

Don’t just take our word for it; according to the Service Desk Institute, offering live web/mobile chat reduces the cost per ticket from $35 to $16.80—a reduction of over 50%. Implementing an AI-driven chatbot can further reduce the cost per ticket to just $0.80—a reduction of 98%. Likewise, tickets that can be self-served through a portal reduce the average cost from $35 to just $2.

Creating A Multiexperience in ITSM

Before you begin creating a multiexperience platform, there are a few simple steps to take that will create a smoother experience for the service desk employees and customers.

Start with one customer journey to build many

To create the best experiences, you must start with outside-in thinking, meaning that you must start by understanding your customer’s journey. 

Think of the customers of the service desk and create personas, these are fictional people representative of your customer. Start with the first customer and map their touch points, pain points, and set out to answer these questions:

• Who are you supporting?
• What is their preferred way of interacting with you (phone, email, chat, in-person)?
• What are their pain points?
• What problem are you solving for them?
• What are their main goals and motivators?

Once you have built the journey for one persona, you can continue to the next until you have built a comprehensive overview of all customers.

Dial In Communication Across Your Team

Be clear on the ways that a customer can communicate with the service desk team. Outline if this will be via email integration, mobile apps, chatbots, etc. Then, once you understand the methods and channels that are used to communicate with the service desk, you can more easily decide which channels need a multiexperience interface. 

Outline Everyone’s Role in the Customer Journey

Every team member cannot be responsible for the entire journey, that would lead to ultimate burnout of the team. Perhaps this is true of manager who will oversee the journey, but each team member has a role to play. In order to understand workflows within the multiexperience interface, define who will handle incoming tickets, escalation, levels, etc. This will help trigger automation no matter which platform or device is used to create or work tickets. 

Describe The Customer Experience You Are Trying to Create

Taking this back to basics, understand what you want to create for the customer and clearly describe this goal. This will help guide you in the creation of your apps and interfaces. Do you want to create a customer experience that supports field agents who use wearable tech? Do you want to create an experience that is seamless for those using tablets? Home in on the experience you want to create before you set out to create it.

Getting Started with a Multiexperience in ITSM

When you are ready to create a multiexperience interface within your ITSM software, it is important to understand the role of apps and how to properly use them. When used properly, multiexperience can give employees of the service desk and their customers a friction-less experience and ultimately support a stronger workforce.

To learn how EasyVista Service Manager and Service Apps can help you create multiexperience ITSM, request a demo today!