What is service flux?

We live in an increasingly service-centric world, where industry frontrunners are constantly raising the bar when it comes to services. And customers have noticed. In fact, Microsoft’s Global State of Customer Service Report showed that 55% of customers expect a higher level of customer service year on year, with a whopping 70% of those aged between 18 and 34 reporting increasing expectations. Your customers now expect your service department to match the level of service they’ve experienced in the wider world. This change means added pressure for your service department to deliver faster, smoother services. All while dealing with the challenges of being understaffed.

Just staying on top of your processes won’t cut it anymore. In an ever-changing world, service departments have to find a way to stay flexible. This is where service flux comes in: by embracing change and iterative improvements, you’ll transform your service department from a bottleneck to a department that actively enables your organization and all its employees to thrive.

Transforming from a process controller to a service fluxer requires a mindset shift. Realizing that by working together you’re stronger. That enabling autonomy results in better, not weaker results. And that the process is a part of the puzzle – not the end game.  

In practice, this could look like taking a continuous improvement approach to your services, like the non-profit organization, LTE group. Or trying out the first version of a solution with a test group and adjusting based on feedback, as Collège Boréal did with change management.

How do service flux and IT frameworks such as ITIL relate to one another? Can you still apply aspects of the ITIL framework as a part of service flux?  

Short answer, yes. A big part of service flux is actively looking for tips, tricks, and best practices from existing frameworks, finding the ones that work for your organization and applying them to your service management. But it’s important to remember that the guidelines that frameworks like ITIL provide are meant to be used flexibly, as frameworks – not as rules. If a process or best practice isn’t a good fit for your organization, there’s no need to stick with it.

And what about agile? Can you combine agile working with service flux?  

Definitely. Simply put, agile is an approach to software development that helps departments be more flexible and deliver customer value faster. But most importantly, agile is a mindset. Agile’s emphasis on flexibility over following processes to the letter and not aiming for perfection right away makes its principles a great match for service flux. Agile also encourages taking an iterative improvement approach. Delivering new services in an agile way means you deliver something workable as soon as possible, collect feedback, and use this feedback to improve the product. 

Getting started with service flux means changing how you work, starting to look for best practices, and working together with other departments in your organization.  

Luckily, you don’t have to do it alone. TOPdesk is the one-stop-shop for service flux. We enable you to think big and start small when it comes to making improvements to your services. Get started quickly with our standard software, whether you want to focus on self-service or join forces with other service teams. And get tips from our experts so you can standardize processes around your specific situation in no time. After setup? Because our software is so easy to adjust, you can continue to make improvements to your service delivery, one step at a time.