Putting users first with zero-touch, proactive End User Compute

What you measure matters. Measuring user experience puts the focus on ensuring that your people are engaged and productive - which is all the more important as hybrid working patterns become the new post-Covid-19 normal. However, improved user experience does not have to be at odds with cost savings.

The use of data analytics and automation can improve the experience of users and deliver savings compared to the more traditional service-desk SLA approach.

In this era of slick digital experiences, where companies like Amazon and Netflix have set the expectation for user experience, your people are expecting a similar smooth, easy and pleasing interaction with their workplace software and devices.

When one of your team members is struggling to connect to the corporate network, or their laptop keeps slowing down, they don’t care whether the overall network service level is being met. In that moment, it’s their experience that matters, and it’s that experience which determines how productive and engaged they are.

This is where User experience Level Agreements (XLAs) can help: they set an expectation for an optimum level of performance, focusing on what matters to the user of the service — your team members. And by taking a user-centric approach and managing the user experience, you’ll ultimately achieve the best results - not only for your people but your customers.

So, what’s the most effective way to measure and implement XLAs? Gone are the old-fashioned user surveys which by their very nature are retrospective and prone to perception-management. Today’s expectations are that we want to know what’s happening in real time and, better yet, fix problems before the user even knows they’re happening and before they start to impact the users experience.

One way is to ensure your IT partner is investing in smart analytics tools that pre-emptively monitor the network and individual devices of users for experience issues. This means the system has instant insight into any issues that might become a problem for user experience, even before the user is aware of them.

The most sophisticated systems dynamically learn and discover how applications are performing on the network and on users’ devices. For example, at Capita we can actively poll a laptop for WiFi performance and determine that there is an issue with the router the laptop is connecting to.

We have also implemented zero touch self-healing — the system automatically steps in and fixes issues, without the need for the user to call a service desk, wait for someone to help them, or spend time trying to explain the problem. In many cases, the issue is fixed before the user is even aware that it’s happening. In the WiFi router example given earlier, the device will automatically switch to another router in range which is performing better.

This approach is obviously hugely beneficial for user engagement and productivity. And it also has major cost benefits too. Instead of user engagement costing more, it’s possible to achieve increased productivity and more engaged people - as well as lower IT service desk costs. The automations work 24/7 to discover and eliminate service issues, with fewer mistakes and bias, and at lower cost than human service providers.

It also means service desk people can be refocused from answering routine incoming calls to become problem managers, proactively working with users to improve the overall experience and providing a human touch. And because issues are caught early, there’s a major reduction in major incident processes.

Another major benefit of this approach is that it means that all users, whether they are at head office or in the most remote regional office, will have the same experience measured by the same XLA, rather than depending on physical proximity to the service desk support team.

In the post-Covid-19 world we’ll see many organisations maintain hybrid workforces, with many team members working remotely which is why it’s so important that all your people, even those working from home, have the same proactive, zero-touch IT experience.

Through a combination of field engineering capability and remote tooling we can offer high user satisfaction and support everywhere in the UK — ranging from small retail in remote locations to large offices or contact centres in the main cities to achieve exactly that.

To start your journey to greater user experience, higher productivity and more cost effective service delivery please reach out to Arwel.Davies@capita.com