“Learning Nuggets” reduce IT Service Desk call volumes

Written by John Towsley on June 2, 2009

I have noticed a recent trend in my discussions with IT Service and Service Desk Managers. In addition to a renewed focus on Customer Service (see my blog here), they are all focused on the challenge of using timely, relevant learning to reduce call volumes.

After Password Resets, Email and Calendaring seem to come up as the most frequent offenders for call volumes followed by one to three mission critical applications.

So what’s the solution? In a nutshell, “learning nuggets”. I’ve been kicking around the IT and corporate learning industries for more years than I care to admit, but never have a seen a more opportune time to use technology and innovation drive learning that generates immediate R.O.I.

It’s not difficult. Identify the what knowledge or skills are missing in your client base that drive the bulk of your calls by answering this question: If our clients only knew xxx our calls would drop by yyy.

Focus on keeping the learning short and direct to the point.

1. Take advantage of rapid development tools to create the learning in a format acceptable to your organization.

For example, in every meeting I’ve been to recently our clients end up asking for a demonstration of our SHIFT learning development tool. It creates e Learning quickly and affordably that can be maintained and updated as needed. The outputs can be simple stand alone HTML courses or full SCORM compliant courses compatible with a corporate Learning Management System.

2. Launch the learning and get your analysts and self help sites to direct people to it.

3. Track the results. (reduced calls by type)

4. Modify the training as needed.

Last, publish the results, it never hurts to toot your own horn and you deserve it!

August 13, 2009: Blended Learning and what it can accomplish, Part 2
August 6, 2009: Blended Learning and what it can accomplish
July 24, 2009: Rapid Learning – Too much talk about tools (Part 2)
June 23, 2009: Making sense of Help Desk Value
June 18, 2009: Creating an eLearning Module in No Time is Easy!

Comments (2)

Adam

June 4, 2009
3:58 pm

This sounds like a great innovation, but it is all about motivating the users to actually follow through with doing the learning nuggets. Some people just seem to prefer to pick up the phone since they see it as the path of least resistance. How big of a percent reduction are you seeing with implementation of these programs?
John Towsley

June 4, 2009
4:05 pm

Right on. We are just starting to try this with customers so we don’t have enough data yet to accurately measure the results. The concept though is also to be proactive as well as reactive. That is, drive the learning to the client as part of a release or change. I’ll update when we get some solid stats.