The Entitled Flamspidge

In setups with this shape, the portal has enough structure to look legitimate and too little self-service depth to be trusted. Intelligent guidance and connected everyday task routes have been replaced by early escalation; the bypass became its own support culture. The answer exists, but everyone trusts the colleague who gave up first.

The visible cost is the 15–25% of tickets intelligent support should have absorbed sitting back on the desk. Another 25–40% of routine tasks that should finish in-portal keep spilling into side chats, handoffs and someone’s private bookmark collection.

Once the first fixes settle, the portal starts answering before the desk gets dragged in. Routine requests find the right article, form or destination without a Teams sherpa, and the support queue stops being where knowledge goes to be rescued.

This does not need to become a year-long rebuild: the first move is a 4 to 6 week push, priced in the mid-£20k range, with ITSM Pro or Enterprise and Now Assist as the only named prerequisites. The full plan is 4 moves, so you can take the self-service fix first and decide how much of the rest earns its place.