67% of customers prefer using self-service over speaking to a support agent.
Unsurprisingly, as more organizations digitize, the IT department and customer-facing helpdesk have become integral components of business operations.
A service catalog is an easy way to present IT or support service options to end-users and help organize submissions for IT technicians so they can resolve tickets faster.
Read on for more insight into how a service catalog works, what helpful service catalog tools are, and how ITSM software empowers easy customer management and faster ticket resolution.
An ITSM service catalog, also know as an IT service catalog, is a centralized collection of information that details all the service offerings a support team can offer to either internal users (in-house employees) or external users (customers, business partners, etc.). In other words, it’s a complete menu or portfolio of services that the IT department can perform.
Towards the end of the 20th century, businesses started incorporating more IT services into their standard processes and customer services. It soon became apparent that keeping track of available IT resources would require detailed documentation.
This led to the evolution of the IT service catalog, which emerged from the information technology infrastructure library (ITIL). ITIL is a framework that provides best practices for implementing IT Service Management (ITSM) by establishing set processes and checklists that help a business develop an effective strategy.
The ITSM service catalog was officially introduced in 2007 as a best practice of ITIL v3 for managing IT services. Since then, ITSM service catalogs and similar databases have become necessary for businesses looking to deliver consistent, valuable, user-centric IT services.
An ITSM service catalog lists all the IT services available within an organization, along with relevant descriptions, service level agreements (SLAs), and pricing. It is primarily used by IT service management teams to manage and deliver IT services to their customers.
On the other hand, a self-service portal is a customer-facing application that allows end users to request IT services or resolve IT issues without contacting the ITSM team directly. The self-service portal can provide access to the ITSM service catalog.
It also allows users to perform tasks such as resetting passwords, accessing knowledge base articles, and requesting service changes.
Both end-users and service desk teams use a service catalog.
Users interact with a service catalog to view service offerings with information like category, price, or other relevant service-level specifications. From this storefront view, they can choose what they will need and submit a request that references a specific service type.
An IT department will also have access to a complete service catalog, but the technician side can be thought of as a more thorough technical database of instructions, information, workflows, or other relevant processes that they need to help assist with requests.
The IT department will act as the service catalog manager as they determine what kinds of services they will offer.
An ITSM service catalog covers all services, from hardware issues to HR tasks. Some examples of how a service catalog is used are:
A customer who subscribes to a clothing subscription app didn’t receive her order in the mail, and now she needs help tracking her package. She logs onto the app and navigates to the Support page.
Once she arrives, she is presented with various category options in the ITSM service catalog that her request might fall under, including Billing, Login & Account, Returns or Exchanges, and Shipments & Delivery. The customer chooses “Shipments & Delivery” as the appropriate category.
A service rep reviews her request, knows in advance what she needs help with, and is prepared with the technical instructions on how to solve the issue. The customer and rep connect, and they eventually resolve the ticket.
A developer at a software company is having trouble with her computer; it’s working slower than usual, and service is frequently interrupted. She submits a request to the internal IT service portal and selects “computer & hardware” as the service category.
A helpdesk rep receives her request, and starts immediately working within a pre-built workflow designed for the service category.
A hiring manager from HR needs to set up a new employee with proper access, passwords, payroll hardware, and more.
Rather than deal with many back-and-forth emails, they can view the ITSM service catalog and submit standardized requests for obtaining IT assets, setting up the workspace, and other employee onboarding necessities.
ITSM software promotes better catalog management for the IT department and delivers a smoother end-user support experience. Here are the service catalog tools an ITSM platform might include and how they create a better organization.
ITSM software empowers you to build a service catalog, often times starting with request types. Request types are the in-app service categories you can create and customize according to your business needs or typical user requests.
Within your ITSM platform, you can add things like the category, the request type name, a default ticket title for internal purposes, and a default ticket template that appears in the body of the ticket.
Request types also allow you to specify items like the assigned team, status, priority level, service type, and sub-service type.
The most helpful way to use your request types for customers is to create custom forms associated with each type. This way, end-users have a more direct, guided experience submitting information with their tickets.
Your ITSM software should have automated workflows and approval settings, which are beneficial service catalog tools. For example, you can configure certain request types to trigger approval workflows after a user submits a form associated with that request type.
This streamlines the technician’s entire ticket resolution process and standardizes the procedures for each service offering from the catalog.
Sometimes, users might have a quick question they’d like to solve themselves or be interested in learning more about service offerings or general support topics. In these cases, quality ITSM platforms offer several tools to enhance the service catalog.
For example, some ITSM software providers offer the option to include a video within a support form, giving more detail to the end user on the service offering associated with the request type.
Further, the service catalog manager may publish content in the user service portal explaining the service types in detail.
Implementing an ITSM service catalog benefits organizations that offer any IT service, regardless of size.
While ITSM service catalogs are always helpful, there are several best practice recommendations that you should follow when creating your catalog.
To learn more about these best practices, visit the blog 6 Best Practices for Creating a Service Catalog in DeskDirector. These best practices apply regardless of your ITSM solution, and we’ll recap a few of them here:
Service catalog best practices show that there’s a right way to create your catalog, and there’s also a wrong way! Here are some common mistakes to avoid when developing and implementing your catalog:
Now that you know the best practices for implementing your ITSM service catalog (and what common mistakes to avoid), the next step is building and implementing one and seamlessly integrating it into your current operations. You can get started by following these steps:
Your service catalog is essential for delivering scalable, efficient IT processes to all users. ITSM tools simplify service catalog organization and automate support processes so your IT team can get more done.
Looking for an ITSM solution that levels up your service catalog, improves user experience, and drives operation efficiency? Sign up to try DeskDirector!