EasyVista : Spread Holiday Cheer with Simple Customizations

Krista Lyons | December 15, 2020

Spread Holiday Cheer with Simple Customizations

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'Tis the season to be jolly! Although this year has been difficult for many of us, the holiday season has a way of making everything just a little bit more fun. There are so many holidays your employees may be celebrating, and to keep the festivities going you can make holiday-themed customizations to your self-service portal and chatbot.

Why Should You Customize During the Holidays

There are several holidays, which means you might consider ignoring them altogether. However, by creating a generic winter-season customization you can boost employee morale. In previous years, you may have decorated your workspace - however with remote work that is not possible. But, decorating your tools (so-to-speak) is a great way to keep the tradition of holiday décor alive.

Further, customizing your various portals and employee touch-points will help to build or expand a positive company culture while reinforcing the spirit of collaboration. This can be especially helpful in teams or departments where employees may feel burnt out during the holiday season (for example, customer support for retailers or insurance claims, IT support for remote workers, or anyone who experiences a higher workload during the holidays).

Customizations to Service Manager with Service Apps

Using Service Apps, there are several customizations you can make to EasyVista Service Manager. For example, you can modify background colors, font styles, font colors, hover-colors, and more. You can also add images, like the examples from our customers in this post, to your background.

Additionally, you can customize the actions in your self-service portal. For example, your search bar can be renamed 'Merry Search' or 'Searching Through the Snow'. Rather than including the three traditional questions on the home screen (Need Something, Contact Us, and Find Help) you can list 'Wish for Something?' 'Contact Santa' and 'Follow Your Wishes'. The possibilities are endless - if the majority of your team celebrates different holidays, you can keep this as generic or detailed as you wish: it is all up to you!

Customize Your Chatbot

Customers who use EV Self Help may be familiar with our helpful chatbot (and for good reason!). But did you know that the EasyVista bot can be customized as well? Customizing the chatbot doesn't have to be complex. Rather, you can create a visual theme by changing colors, fonts, and the name of the bot itself.

For example, these helpful holiday elves can help you find anything you need, all while spreading a little bit of holiday cheer. You can also create custom small talk and conversation before the holidays within the chatbot. For example, you can program the chatbot to say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Have you been good this year?'

How to Update Your Portal

There are several ways to update your self-service portal and chatbot, even if you are not an experienced coder. For all available customizations, check out the EasyVista Wiki here. However, we will share just a few simple update methods below.

Of course, these customizations only scratch the surface. A member of the EasyVista teamcan walk you through all of your customization options to help you get your team in the holiday spirit (and help you plan customizations for future holidays, too!).

Service App Template Customizations

Using the drag-and-drop editor, you can customize service apps in a variety of ways. You can learn about specific pre-made templates and styles here.To personalize your Service Apps style guide quickly, you can use CSS custom properties. This enables you to automatically propagate graphic properties, e.g. color, size, percentage, etc., to all of the relevant widgets in your apps.

For customizations that ripple throughout EV Service Manager into other apps, you can use the Theme Editoroption. This allows you to design style guides for apps using themes. These themes can be associated with a group of apps and defines graphic properties such as text color, background color or image, header and footer characteristics, and more.

Chatbot Customizations

Our virtual agents, also called Service Bots, give users the ability to program a unique personality. This includes the name, gender, and visual identity such as an avatar or custom fonts and colors, as well as a style of language and level of interaction.

To change the visual identity of the chatbot, including fonts, colors, and names, you can access the Self Help Web Studioto make these changes or you can configure them in the Service Apps portal. With just a few clicks, you can modify the name of the bot to something more light-hearted, like 'Santa's Helper' and can include a holiday themed font.

Give the Gift of Knowledge and Easy Customizations This Year!

As we look to the new year, there is one gift that you can give your team that will boost morale even more than a customized portal: the gift of knowledge and assistance at their fingertips. Whether it is through the use of a comprehensive self-help portal, or a cloud based ITSM solution, your team will have something to be excited about in the new year.

If you missed the opportunity to get creative and add some holiday spirit to your self-service portal, don't worry you always have next year!

Happy Holidays!