LumApps integrations for a better service experience and IT Support team productivity

IT support teams are commonly overwhelmed by daily calls and emails from employees about problems they’ve encountered:

• “I can’t access this application”
• “My PC graphic card seems broken”
• “How can I configure my email box?”
• “Did you manage to fix this issue I reported last week?”

The list goes on. Time is lost answering status questions, or repeating answers to another colleague instead of more high-value tasks.

IT self-service tools and helpdesk software are designed to help with this (for example: ServiceNow, Zendesk, Jira, Freshdesk, Redmine, monday.com, etc.). These solutions aim to empower employees with the tools and environment to resolve IT issues on their own through internal knowledge bases, or ticket management systems, rather than contacting an IT support member directly.

Without these tools, IT support teams cannot quickly and efficiently handle employee queries, requests, and incident reports. Communication piles up on channels such as phone calls, emails, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc.

Organizations Need to Improve IT Help Desk Adoption

Despite the documented effectiveness, adoption is still a challenge. A Service Desk Institute (SDI) “A View from the Frontline” report found close to half of organizations still need to improve IT self-service adoption.

The reality is, employees are often unwilling to spend their time using support ticketing applications to solve internal IT issues, or looking in knowledge bases to troubleshoot. It’s common for IT support teams to constantly urge people to use the knowledge base or make sure tickets are reported. Generally, people would rather call or message someone directly, which hurts collective productivity. Consulting firm Gartner defines this as “digital friction” (the unnecessary effort an employee has to exert to use data or technology for work).

While most intranet vendors enable companies to insert an ‘url-kind of link’ to the ticketing system on their platform’s pages to navigate to other applications, companies should leverage their employee experience platform by providing the workforce with a comprehensive IT Support Hub and/or Community. A one-stop shop to connect, read news, get answers and request assistance.

That way, employees could find key support information displayed in engaging and different formats (knowledge articles, posts, micro-learning videos or tutorials). Additionally, they could create tickets or find past tickets in search results, all without leaving the platform or logging into another application.

Avoid Time-Consuming App Switching

Avoiding switching from one application or environment to another is another productivity and experience boost. IT support integrations enable employees to find information without leaving their LumApps platform. They can quickly find answers themselves in the internal knowledge base. Automation capabilities within LumApps platform pages is also useful for solving IT help desk issues. Chatbots installed on the IT Support Hub and/or Community can provide generic answers to recurring IT-related questions that clutter help desk channels.

Among LumApps Open Platform’s 50+ connectors to business apps, the employee-services dedicated integrations provide such capabilities that benefit both employees and the IT help desk:

• For example, a widget can be included in relevant LumApps pages (such as the Employee dashboard or the IT homepage) to enable employees to create a ServiceNow, Jira, or Zendesk ticket directly within the LumApps platform. Templates ensure support teams have all the information needed to expedite assistance.

• Any IT support rep can access the list of tickets (opened, pending, being processed, and solved) via a dedicated connector, sort through reports for their ServiceNow, Jira, or Zendesk solution. Tickets can be filtered per title, last update, project name, or assignee.
• Another example is the dedicated connector that enables employees to search in the Zendesk knowledge base for troubleshooting. The recently introduced integration with Coveo and their connectors with third-party knowledge bases (among which are ServiceNow’s and Jira’s) could also help employees getting broader results for IT troubleshooting when typing a query in the LumApps platform search.
• The current number of open tickets in ServiceNow, Jira, or Zendesk can also be displayed with a dedicated count widget to provide instant visibility in the LumApps pages.

• A Witivio chatbot overlay in the IT Support pages can also help employees getting prompt answers to most-asked questions at any time, regardless of time zones or IT specialist availability, resulting in fewer tickets created, and IT support relieved, enabling them to keep focus on strategic matters. These capabilities are enabled via a no-code chatbot builder that helps companies assist employees at scale, and manage the chatbot’s knowledge without technical expertise.
• And when an organization has specific integration needs with IT Support systems, like surfacing specific content or information for example, the LumApps SDK (Software Development Kit) allows in-house developers or IT-consulting partners to build their own connections and widgets to integrate all your work-critical tools or proprietary tools.

According to consulting firm Forrester, smart integration points with top productivity tools and enterprise apps are among top capabilities expected in modern intranets. By avoiding employee context switching, simplifying work experience, and removing complexity of working in multiple applications, the above-mentioned LumApps integrations provide employees with a seamless self-service experience within a single interface.

The superior service experience improves employee satisfaction relating to IT issues. From a help desk team’s standpoint, these integrations will significantly increase IT support productivity.