Microsoft Teams Is The New Employee Portal

The concept of the intranet and employee portal arrived as a boon to confused and troubled workers more than a decade ago. It helped organizations communicate with their employees about various aspects through HR content and relevant informational resources. 

However, traditional employee portals have not aged well as years passed. 

Major Shortcomings of Traditional Employee Portals

1. Spread Out Information: Although the intranet was initially welcomed with open arms to aid in employee support, it started developing problems. The information was way too spread out to be accessed easily. This made it difficult for employees to find the right information source, check its authenticity, and get their issues solved without wasting any time. Essentially, the intranet started posing the same problems that were caused by the pre-intranet scenario.  
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3. Stale Content: Most traditional employee portals suffer from the problem of stale content. The management is seldom interested in updating the content provided to the employees over the intranet, making employees lose interest in using employee portals. As the employees lose interest, the incentive for updating stale content goes further down, leading to a vicious cycle of employees not getting the help they need.  
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5. Lack of Intuitive Functionality: Intranet walks the same path as the traditional employee service desk when it comes to a lack of intuitive functionality. Employees today need immediate answers to their problems and a support system that is quick in its toes. The information structure and navigation of traditional employee portals no longer resonates with the current employees.  
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7. Unsuccessful Alternatives: The drawbacks of employee portals resulted in employees switching to alternatives like SharePoint for better employee support. However, these platforms did not provide the speed and efficiency with which employees would obtain solutions to their problems. Looking for the exact documents and searching for the exact clause that dealt with their specific problems is likely to put off employees wanting a quick resolution of their problems.  
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9. One-way Communication: With intranet and employee portals, there is no scope for a dialog between the employees and the organization. It essentially involves the management telling them what to do without making the conversation personalized for specific employees.  
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The Rise of Collaborative Platforms

Owing to these issues created by traditional employee portals, employees across the board have started switching to collaborative platforms. These platforms have brought all workplace staff together on the same page without the need for physical office premises. 

Especially after the global pandemic struck the world in 2020, workplace collaborative platforms experienced an unprecedented surge in usage. 

According to a Slack report, the company expected total revenue of $621 million to $623 million for the full fiscal year of 2020, which represented a year-to-year growth rate of 55%-56%. 

However, although these platforms allowed a free flow of communication amongst the staff members, it did not allow the organization to communicate with the employees for ideal employee support. 

This deadlock of employees wanting organizational assistance without having a one-way conversation is ended by an AI-based employee service desk. A great example of such a service desk is Rezolve.ai, which integrates with MS Teams for collaboration and support. 

The AI-based Service Desk At MS Teams

Tools like Rezolve.ai have integrated employee service desk within MS Teams. This has made it extremely simple and effective for employees to get the support they need without facing any hassle discussed above. 

It allows employees to obtain instant assistance from the dedicated employee service desk that is automated and powered by artificial intelligence. This helps them in having two-way conversational assistance provided by the organization. 

1. Quicker Assistance: Rezolve.ai makes sure that your employees quickly obtain the required assistance and have all relevant resources at their disposal in less than 15 seconds. This is as good as having a customer service executive with you round-the-clock to listen to your problems and provide instant remedies for the same.  
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2. Carrying Out Valuable Analytics: Being an AI-driven service desk, Rezolve.ai makes sense of all the questions asked by your employees, keeps track of the history of employee support provided, and carries out valuable analytics using the same. This provides you much-needed insights into the issues your employees are facing, helping you gauge the pulse of your team effectively. This means you can track the Key KPIs to improve the quality of the service.  
   
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3. High ROI: The employee service desk at MS Teams saves you from spending on portals and support desks that walk the traditional path in assisting your employees. Rezolve.ai makes sure that there is a high auto-resolution of employee issues and an increase in self-service, giving you the best possible traction for the money you spend on your service desk.  
   
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4. Wholesome Content: With an AI-based service desk, your employees will not receive several information pages with the answer hidden somewhere within. The system will solve employee issues by engaging content like pictures, charts, and videos.  
   
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5. Connecting To Experts: Your employees can always connect to the support agents to get more specific answers to their queries and get even more personalized assistance. Also, Rezolve.ai does auto-creating and auto-resolving of the ticket with employee ticketing on behalf of the employees.  
   
   

The Final Word 

Looking at the scope and scalability of the AI-based employee service desk integrated within MS Teams, it is safe to say that the collaborative platform is the new employee portal. 

Gone are the days when employees struggled to find the correct resources and approach the most reliable support executive to get their queries resolved. 

Service desks that combine process automation with artificial intelligence are here to stay, acting as the best alternatives for the traditional intranet-based employee portals. 

We live in a time when personalization has taken center stage in all services provided by an organization to its customers and employees alike. 

Service desks like these will help you boost your productivity, get the best ROI, and obtain the traction that your business deserves.