Exploring Self-Service Support Methods in IT Service Management

IT service providers are placing more and more resources for implementing self-service channels. Although there are several best practice frameworks available for managing IT service desk, such as IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the frameworks do not address well enough how self-service models for IT service management purposes should be designed, implemented or maintained. The research problem of this study is: How do IT service provider organizations use self service methods? A qualitative interview method was used as a main data collection method. The main contribution of the paper is to present results from an interview study focusing on exploring self-service methods in IT service provider organizations and provide lessons learnt based on the interview results.