Service Catalog Best Practices - Implement an Other service as a catch-all

Service Catalog Best Practices

Chapter 15. Implement an Other service as a catch-all

Authored and Published By: The International Foundation for Information Technology (IF4IT), LLC

Executive Summary: Chapter Overview

IF4IT

The Bottom Line

No taxonomy can anticipate every service a customer might need to request, and a customer who cannot find their service should never hit a dead end. This chapter establishes the discipline of the “Other” catch-all service at every level of the taxonomy — a domain-specific safety net that routes unmatched requests to a human who can handle them rather than losing them to abandonment or informal channels.

Core Concepts

ConceptDefinition & Strategic Role
Domain-Specific Other ServiceA catch-all at each domain and sub-domain that captures requests within that branch of the taxonomy that do not match any defined service.
Master Other ServiceA top-level catch-all at the root of both the Business Services and IT Services branches — ensuring that even customers who cannot identify a domain have a submission path.
Other Service as Intelligence SourceHigh-volume routing through Other services is a signal that new named services should be defined — turning the catch-all into a data source for catalog improvement (see Chapter 41).

Quick Q&A

Question: Why implement Other services at every level rather than just at the top?

Answer: Because a customer who has navigated deep into a specific domain has usefully classified their request. Losing that classification by routing them to a top-level Other service throws away useful information. Domain-specific Others preserve the customer’s implicit categorization and route requests to the team who can act on them.

Question: How does the Other service prevent catalog abandonment?

Answer: Because the alternative to a catch-all — hitting a dead end when a specific service cannot be found — is the strongest predictor of catalog abandonment. When customers fail once, they route their next request through informal channels (email, direct message, walking over to someone’s desk). The Other service breaks that pattern by ensuring every submission has a legitimate landing spot.

Read More Below

Overview

One of the most common causes of Service Catalog end-user frustration is the inability to find and invoke (i.e., submit a request) for a specific service. A user finds the service area they want to engage with and cannot find the service they wish to request. This calls for a catch-all service.

Best Practice

Implement user domain-specific Other services as domain-specific catch-alls.

Benefit(s)

This ensures that there is no dead-end for any service area. Even if a service requester finds the right service area but cannot find the specific service they wish to request, they can at least invoke the Other service for that area.

Best Practice

Implement a master “Other” service catch-all at the tops of both the business taxonomy branch and the IT taxonomy branch. These top-level Other services act as general catch-alls and should be routed to a group that acts as a concierge service helping route requests to the correct organizations. The people behind these general services should act as enterprise Runners, whose primary responsibility is to help the requester find and connect with the organizations and people who can help them.

Benefit(s)

Having two general Other services, one for the Business and one for IT, ensures that:

  • A service requester always has the option of entering a generic request that a service operator — acting as a general Business or IT concierge — will help fulfill.

  • Usage of Other services helps identify services that need to be created, published, and automated for specific service areas.

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