Introducing Micro-Engagements for Jira Service Desk !

I was at the Atlassian Team Tour event recently when a panelist commented how email has become a digital space where information goes to die. It is hard to imagine how much has changed since Blackberry made email accessible just 15 years to-date. Email was the tool that allowed us to move business communications from paper and phone-based communication to the electronic form, but it feels like it is past time for email to step aside for some things. It is time for a better way to “interact”, particularly one that lends itself for the modern workforce, for the mobile workforce and for anyone wanting to get their request unstuck from the pile sitting in an Inbox. There are better ways to accomplish fast and smooth IT workflows i.e. simple text messages.

The average time it takes to service a request in an enterprise is about 6 minutes. Yet, the average resolution time is nearly 48 hours. The majority of time lost in servicing a request is in the theatrics of information exchange between the requestor and the fulfiller and to extract the most urgent calls to action for either party buried in emails. Most of us can attest to the experience of an urgent approval that gets lost in the boss’s inbox and requires that special “Please Approve” email or text message.

In an age where we have distributed teams, collaborative efforts within systems of records form the backbone of agile teams. But service desk workflows relying on email can be long and cumbersome. While an email is not delivered any slower than a text message, user behavior has transformed in the way we react to a text, compared to our responsiveness to an email. In our world today, we can take days to respond to an email, but most text messages are opened and responded to within a couple of minutes.

The ubiquity of the mobile device and the small form factor of the mobile phone leads to a better user experience to consume shorter snippets of information. This is what the term micro-engagement means - a short snippet of information exchange over messaging.

A conversation consists of one or more micro-engagements. It is perfectly suited for the sachet sized information exchange age we now live with our penchant for micro-blogging, micro-learning, micro-service. So why not micro-engagement?

Micro-engagements are not just how we engage in a social context. Many of the trends adopted by consumers are eventually embraced by enterprises.

As a matter of fact, when 50% of our workforce in 2020 will be millennials, the way they prefer to engage socially and professionally will not be all that different. Bringing Micro-engagements to the enterprise bridges the gap in the digital experiences that most employees are already engaged in their social contexts.

Besides, micro-engagements bring real benefits for improving productivity, lowering costs, particularly by automating many of the tasks that currently served through human touch.

We have launched our Ushur for approvals app in the Atlassian Marketplace that works with your Jira Service Desk for text-based approvals, so you don’t have to send those email or reminders to your boss. With Ushur, your approvals are no longer getting buried in the pile of emails. Check out our app in the Atlassian Marketplace to learn more.

What do you think about introducing text based micro-engagements into more IT workflows to solve problems quickly and efficiently?