Self-service is commonly regarded as a lifesaver for IT departments and their service desks that are under pressure from both time and budget constraints. As part of a strategy to improve resolution times, reduce costs, or enhance the end-user experience and customer satisfaction, this makes complete sense.
These three points are among the frequently cited, overarching benefits of self-service. In this article, we take a closer look at the broader spectrum of self-service benefits, the associated return on investment (ROI), and how to best achieve it.
The Benefits of Self-Service
Self-service portals offer a wide range of benefits, including:
#1 Cost Savings and Increased Efficiency
IT reduces costs and speeds up request resolution by enabling end users through self-help automations or “shift-left” to take on tasks that were previously handled by the service desk.
#2 Improved Customer- and Employee-Oriented Experience
Today’s customers and employees have certain expectations regarding the accessibility of communication channels. Self-service offerings complement this spectrum and lead to low-barrier support experiences.
For IT departments, this means users now expect self-service options in the workplace, including ticket creation, IT service catalogs, and knowledge bases, as well as anytime, location-independent access from any device.
#3 Greater Support Availability
Self-service can be used to provide 24/7 support, at least for all cases that users can realistically resolve on their own. For more complex matters, self-service can at least provide an important starting point.
The potential of self-service becomes particularly striking when it is offered in multiple languages and time zones: this generates significantly lower costs than hiring native-speaking support staff to cover these cases.
#4 Relief for Overburdened Service Desks
A self-service portal diverts calls away from the phone channel, which can greatly reduce the workload of the IT service desk. Support staff can process self-service tickets during less intensive periods provided that priorities and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) permit this. This also contributes to cost savings because staffing needs become more balanced, meaning peaks and fluctuations in ticket volume decrease.
All these benefits positively influence the IT service desk, end users, and the organization as a whole. However, it’s important to understand that these advantages only materialize if self-service usage is high enough to make a meaningful difference in daily operations.
#5 Additional Support Through AI
Many applications leverage the advantages of artificial intelligence (AI), thereby increasing the value and thus the ROI of a self-service portal. Typically, AI chatbots answer questions, refer users to helpful resources, and provide guidance.
Moreover, AI-supported knowledge bases make accessing information even easier, with modern features such as AI translations facilitating multilingual use.
Realizing the ROI of Self-Service
In the past, achieving the desired ROI from self-service was difficult, mainly because it was often implemented insufficiently. In short: many users were not properly aware of the offerings or were unable to use them effectively.
Today, however, the situation looks different: there are now many initiatives to raise awareness of these offerings, as well as advanced ways to implement self-service. This creates new opportunities to unlock the full potential of a self-service portal.
Key ROI drivers, self-service components with particularly high value, include:
- Detailed knowledge bases with Knowledge Base Articles (KBA) and thorough instructions
- Clear, centrally accessible answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs)
- Low-barrier AI chatbots that answer questions instantly
Conclusion: Once an organization sufficiently explores self-service portals, their capabilities, and the user perspective, ROI can typically be achieved quickly.
Calculating the ROI of Self-Service
What matters most: The success of self-service is absolutely achievable, and companies are increasingly investing in this success. There is no doubt that self-service plays a major role in the present and future of IT support. But how can your company justify the initial or additional investment?
While all the benefits mentioned above are important, most business cases focus on measurable, quantitative advantages – especially financial savings.
Two aspects are particularly important:
- What are the realistic average costs per ticket?
- How much can these costs be reduced through a self-service portal?
“Cost per Ticket”
A commonly used ITSM KPI is the so-called Cost per Ticket (CPT). This refers to the average cost an organization incurs for processing a single ticket.
All operational expenses are considered, including personnel, license costs, infrastructure, etc. This total is then divided by the number of tickets resolved in the corresponding period.
Cost per Ticket: Total service desk costs / total number of resolved tickets
Note: Costs per ticket can vary significantly depending on the ticket type. Incidents (e.g., simple desktop support) are typically cheaper than complex service requests or problem resolutions.
Calculating Savings / Saving Potential Through Self-Service
The simplest way to determine the (potential) ROI of a self-service portal is to calculate the monthly gross savings: multiply the expected number of tickets that will be deflected by self-service by the average savings per ticket.
This is not an exact science, but it provides at least an indication of the monthly saving potential. These savings can then be compared against the one-time and ongoing costs of the self-service solution to calculate the ROI. If necessary, a payback period analysis can also be performed.
Information You Will Need
To do this, you need:
- The total number of tickets your service desk handles per month
- A realistic estimate of what percentage can be deflected by self-service
- Ticket costs per unit (or use the industry averages listed below)
- Known one-time and ongoing self-service costs
(Note: Since self-service capabilities are often already included in modern ITSM platforms, some costs may instead reflect optimizing your ITSM investment.)
Average Costs
According to MetricNet, the following average costs apply:
- Self-help (Level 0) – 2 USD
- Service Desk (Level 1) – 22 USD
- Desktop Support – 69 USD
- IT Support (Level 2) – 104 USD
Since these values date back to 2017, they should be used with caution. However, they still provide a reasonable impression of how costs increase significantly with each service level.
Above all, they clearly illustrate the savings potential of a well-designed self-service portal. In this example, each request resolved through self-help instead of the service desk saves 20 USD, typically the case for a password reset.
Conclusion: High Savings Potential
Clients who still require support staff after using self-help are generally better prepared and therefore also incur lower costs.
Note: In general, cost per ticket fluctuates significantly and can vary greatly by case. Particularly extreme outliers – fairly high costs for individual tickets – highlight how valuable a self-service portal truly is.
The more tickets (and related support effort) are shifted to self-service, the cheaper they are to resolve. An important goal of self-service is therefore to relieve service and support staff, especially in simple and recurring cases. This saves time, reduces stress, and lowers costs, meaning a positive ROI is within reach.
Conclusion
Self-service clearly offers significant financial advantages for organizations. However, this requires implementing a suitable portal effectively and ensuring that clients, both customers and employees, become thoroughly familiar with it.
In addition to the obvious financial benefits, self-service also provides productivity and end-user satisfaction advantages that should not be underestimated. A happy, productive workforce is vital for any company and self-service plays a crucial role in this.
Equally important is a satisfied customer base, which pays off in the medium and long term not only through “hard” metrics such as customer retention rate (CRR), upselling, or acquiring new customers based on referrals.
