In a recent conversation I had with a former colleague, an End User Computing Manager, I was told “white glove is dead”. That comment really surprised me and got me thinking: Surely, it’s not a done deal? Don’t we just have to find new ways of meeting expectations?
In a pre-covid world, this former colleague had a methodical approach to check-boxing all the elements of a good support experience. Whether delivering laptops/desktops, providing ongoing support, all the way through to the hand back when employees left the business—he had a step-by-step process. Now, those processes have all but been thrown out of the window.
So how should we think about providing top-quality IT support in a remote-first world when old ways of doing things won’t cut it? When we cannot necessarily show up at a user’s desk, talk through their IT issues and direct time toward their problem, we need new ways to can streamline the support process and enhance their user experience.
In fact, the previously mentioned EUC manager said now is a great time for his teams to review their ways of working. They’ve realized that there was a misconception that the user needed their help, when in fact they just needed to be enabled. Here’s two ways to do just that. 

1. Enable level 1 analysts

A service desk’s ability to provide high-quality support is almost always directly related to the knowledge base information and tools they have at their disposal. Gone are the expectations of the “help desk” only resetting passwords and escalating all other incidents to another group. With Covid-19, the level 1 analyst may well be more valuable than ever because, according to a recent article from PR Newswire, 66% of U.S. employees are working remotely for at least a portion of their work week, with approximately 44% working remotely full time.
Although the response time to an incident is still usually prompt and within the Service Level Agreement (SLA), the resolution can often fall out of that SLA. Indeed, during covid-19, three-quarters of remote employee waited hours, days, or weeks for their issue to be resolved. This may be due to the difficulty of the incident but, in many cases, it’s because the analyst is stuck waiting for a coordinated time to address the ticket with the user. With all the distractions that are brought on amid Covid-19, it’s understandable that what was once a convenient time to address the incident quickly changed due to other obligations.
How does a business address this concern without changing SLAs that once suited it? The concerns in some organizations around giving the service desk too much power with traditional remediation tools and practices must be reviewed. With the level 1 analyst as the first line of support, it’s time they are provided with the technology to complete that last piece of incident resolution they have so often been deprived of. By providing a real-time connection to the endpoint, they remove the need for the user’s time. This creates efficiencies, allowing incidents to not only be quickly responded to but also resolved, without the need to disturb or even reach out to, the end user.

2. Leverage Digital Experience Monitoring to provide a visual representation of user experience

Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) is a huge topic, especially in the context Work From Anywhere. How does it tie to creating a “white glove” experience? Leveraging DEM gives IT an overarching visual representation of how endpoints are performing without the need to rely on historical incident data. After all, how many not-so-great experiences on an endpoint were not even reported? A high-level holistic view of users’ digital experiences gives a deeper view into various correlations and trends, as well as a device-level list of data to be used by the L1 to L3 roles.

Bring user feedback into the user experience equation

Prior to Covid-19, the typical way to collect feedback was sporadic. Feedback might just have been given in a passing comment in the office, or maybe gathered in an occasional survey sent from an ITSM workflow or a quarterly survey sent out with a web-based survey generator. All in all, most IT organizations either heard only negatives but didn’t align this feedback to digital transformation initiatives, or they heard nothing at all.
Now that users aren’t seen as frequently by their peers in IT, there’s a growing urge to implement a process-driven sentiment gathering process. Qualitative data of this kind provides invaluable insight into:

  • Users’ opinions about their most recent request for IT support
  • How recent changes to the IT environment are impacting user productivity
  • How users are operating overall
  • Which certain processes are working—and which are not
  • How technology is performing from the user perspective

By focusing on user engagement away from the traditional email, organizations are able to increase survey responsiveness, truly gauge how users are handling the new world of Work From Anywhere, and align user sentiment to digital transformation programs to increate satisfaction with IT.
As stated in Gartner’s Market Guide for Digital Experience Monitoring, “An approach must be developed that will “add up” the measurements from multiple application and service interactions to provide a user- or agent-centered portrait of digital business quality.”
When we leverage user sentiment as a fraction of the overall Digital Experience Monitoring picture, we are truly gauging all aspects of a user’s experience.

Discover new ways to deliver a white glove service in the Work From Anywhere Era

Want to learn more about how IT practices should evolve to support remote employees in future? Then attend the Work From Anywhere Enterprise Conference on November 17 and 18. IT experts and analysts will be sharing their vision for the future of work and how the technology landscape is evolving to support it, including a deep dive into Digital Experience Monitoring for the Work From Anywhere Enterprise. Don’t miss out.