Top Five Automation Opportunities For Mid-Sized It Service Desk

The ongoing COVID-19 and its variants are shaking the world economy and making a behemoth distraction to our lives and livelihoods. It has prompted a significant social and economic contraction across the world, closed many prominent businesses and companies forever, thrown tens of millions of employees out of jobs, and had other negative effects on business activities. 

If you are running a midsized company or a start-up, it is important for you to count every minute. Unfortunately, start-ups and mid-sized companies suffered the greatest losses as a result of the measures taken by the government to disengage and lock down the private sector. Medium-sized businesses find it very challenging when their smaller competitors beat them in every way and when the big competitors are more resourceful and stronger. But you have to go up against both at the same time. This is especially true of your IT resources. Unfortunately, ever since the outbreak of this global pandemic, mid-sized companies have also been forced to deal with the same issues that every other business encountered: 

• Employee attrition is one of the most significant issues every mid-sized organization is worried about. Because employee attrition rates can result in the failure of a business due to the high costs of employee turnover.
  
  
• Due to attrition, most of the mid-sized companies are probably understaffed. In a recent Gallup survey, four of ten employees in the US believe that their employers are understaffed, while few believe that their companies are overstaffed.
  
  
• The new normal- remote and hybrid work culture and the pressure to maintain service-level agreements (SLAs) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) are the other challenges every mid-sized organization faces.
  
  
• Despite this, most mid-sized companies are often saddled with older, more traditional service desks that deliver fragmented and delayed employee support.
  
  

These are some major issues that can be resolved by bringing ‘automation’ into the equation. But many mid-sized companies may not have had the time or resources to implement modernization and automation. Despite these challenges, today most of the mid-sized companies are reevaluating their automation strategies and technology stacks in order to modernize their service delivery models. But why now? 

Three Major Reasons Mid-Sized Companies Are Looking For Modernization

1. ‘Great Attrition’ and ‘Great Resignation is forcing’ CIOs to think about ‘Great Upgrade’
   
   According to the ESR report, around 4.53 million Americans resigned from their jobs in March 2022. Meanwhile, employees have given many reasons for quitting their jobs such as low wages, lack of career development opportunities, lack of motivation, inflexible work culture, inadequate benefits, poor technology, lack of employee support, and too much workload. Since these are the driving forces behind the Great Attrition and Great Resignation, companies should come up with a solution. And that is automation.
   
   
2. Better technologies at your fingertips
   
   By the way, now there are better technological solutions available. For example – earlier, automation meant long projects and uncertain outcomes. But now, there are much better AI-powered technologies that have matured and have started to perform much better.
   
   
3. Most mid-sized companies are still running old-school service desks that are meant for agents, not for employees
   
   Even in 2022, some companies are still relying on traditional service desks. There is a major flaw with the traditional service desk are they are silo-ed, and services are more beneficial to the agents than to employees. The employees' main complaint is that they have to wait an unusually long time for their issues to be resolved. This is where we can conclude that a traditional service desk slows down the entire business workflow and processes of mid-sized companies and negatively influences employee productivity.
   
   

Automation And AI To The Rescue?

Automation is a no-brainer solution for eliminating some of the tiresome and tedious tasks or workflows that cause employees to be exhausted and disappointed. When employees are freed from mundane, meaningless, and repetitive tasks they are able to focus on more important tasks. Automation technology can enhance the employee experience for businesses looking to attract and retain top talent. In addition, mid-sized companies can also boost business workflows in the process, reducing costs and increasing productivity. As reported by the Kofax 2022 Intelligent Automation Benchmark Study, around 82% of CEOs favor automation strategy, citing increased employee productivity and happiness as their key motivators. In a separate survey conducted by Toolbox, more than 92% of employers revealed that implementing automation strategies at the workplace had helped them to improve and retain their employee satisfaction. Many mid-sized companies, on the other hand, are confused about where and how to begin their automation initiatives.

Given this context, Team Rezolve.ai has come up with a quick guide to five different kinds of automation that every mid-sized IT service desk can look at.

Five Types Of Automation Where Mid-Sized IT Service Desks Can Invest

1. Knowledge Automation
   
   While working, it is possible for employees to encounter an issue regarding opening a document and they need an instant solution to find information related to the issue. As per the statistics of Economic Times, employees waste around 25% of their time searching for relevant information. This is a major cause of productivity loss. Knowledge automation is a flex point for how organizations make use of information. It enables employees to find the right help and get the right solutions to their queries without causing any delay. According to Gartner’s 2022 research, an automated knowledge base is the best bet for boosting employee productivity and stability. Because an effective and automated knowledge management system helps mid-sized employees with the tools for self-service solutions whenever they come across an issue. This will bring down the need for internal communication and collaboration with IT service desk agents. A McKinsey report states that knowledge automation will be the most crucial disruptive technology to impact the world over the next 10 years.
   
   AI-powered service desks like Rezolve.ai that work within channels like MS Teams and Slack are focused on delivering instant employee support and the information they need, without the need for a human agent. It’s Twitter-Age knowledge management feature makes sure that employees are feeling connected and empowered. With Rezolve.ai, mid-sized companies can auto-resolve up to 45% of employee tickets and boost service desk efficiency and employee productivity by 70%.
   
   
2. Invisible Ticket Creation And Status Checking/Smarter Rerouting Of Tickets
   
   Most of the time, ticket creation is a point of friction for employees. Creating and tracking support tickets is amongst the most critical problems that employees experience when using traditional or old-school service desks. Employees, especially those who were not tech-savvy, found the older ticketing platforms to be quite confusing. As a result of the disruptions in support, employees end up calling or emailing the relevant IT service desk agent. Most of the traditional ticketing systems are built for agents. It gave agents absolute control over building and managing tickets while employees struggled to get their problems resolved. Moreover, service desk agents often take a lot of time to look into the employees' issues and another couple of hours to come up with a resolution.
   
   When mid-sized organizations implement AI-powered IT service desks, it allows employees to create tickets right within collaborative channels where they spend most of their working hours. With service desk platforms like Rezolve.ai, employees don’t have to create tickets manually. They can create tickets with the help of a conversational chatbot that functions right within MS Teams and Slack. They just need to interact with the chatbot. With Rezolve.ai, employees can understand the status of their tickets and can even have an interaction with an expert Live Agent on their MS Teams/ Slack window. When the issue is resolved, the bot will automatically close the tickets and send the notifications. This will help mid-sized employees to have a simplified employee experience.
   
   
3. Routine Task Automation
   
   In today’s changing workplace, most employees are swamped with tedious and time-consuming manual tasks such as ‘checking out the VPN status’, ‘resetting a password’, ‘gathering reports and insights’, etc. That makes them weak and unproductive. The report by Clockify shows that more than 90% of employees face difficulty with repetitive tasks. Though these manual tasks sound easy, research by Simply Flows states that employees spend up to 40% performing these tasks. This is a major productivity loss for mid-sized companies.
   
   With Rezolve.ai, mid-sized IT service desks can automate various IT and HR-related multi-step manual tasks right within collaborative platforms like MS Teams and Slack. This kind of automation will help companies to reduce enterprise friction and allow employees to perform tasks more easily. Task automation can be another 10-20 % lift of additional tickets getting auto-resolved.
   
   
4. Employee Onboarding and Offboarding
   
   Employee onboarding is one of the most crucial HR processes for any mid-sized company. Although the number of tickets you get from employee onboarding and offboarding might not be very high, the amount of time it takes to manage these processes might be high-because it involves multiple departments. Onboarding and offboarding are a critical part of the employee life cycle, and when implemented efficiently, they can deliver significant returns for the companies.
   
   Thus, both onboarding and offboarding deserve the HR department's close attention, with careful groundwork, execution, and analysis to make sure they are handled properly. But most mid-sized organizations fail to onboard new hires with structures and stability and eventually face great employee turnover rates. Since mid-sized organizations rely on traditional service desks, employees who go through onboarding and offboarding processes are often confused with the poor support provided by the management. And it takes a lot of time to onboard/offboard an employee.
   
   When you automate employee onboarding and offboarding, it reduces this enterprise friction. Rezolve.ai simplifies employee onboarding, offboarding, and other key processes, reducing the process time to minutes rather than hours. The system integrates with all major payroll, HRIS, benefits etc. enabling employees to access all of their data from a single point. Using a centralized platform, Rezolve.ai makes it easier for the HR department to interact with every employee.
   
   
5. AI-powered Desktop Automation
   
   Desktop automation is the final frontier of automation – which is a comparatively new concept. In the past, whenever a desktop-level issue occurred in a mid-sized organization, technicians and agents had to login remotely in order to view the issue, then take action in order to resolve it.
   
   For example: While working, an employee faces some issues with his OneDrive, he/she immediately creates a ticket. But it takes almost 30 to 45 minutes for a human IT service desk agent to resolve it with remote access. Due to this delayed and fragmented support, employees often feel disconnected from the organization.
   
   Though several software providers in the industry provide the above-mentioned functionality, none combines AI automation engines with desktop resolutions. Service desk providers like Rezolve.ai that work within MS Teams have changed this notion and created an end-to-end solution that uses PowerShell scripts to automate unachievable tasks. It also allows a dedicated virtual assistant (VAs) to perform tasks such as installing new software, clearing cache, provisioning printer, troubleshooting OneDrive etc. Despite this, Rezolve.ai also provides access to human agents the same way some traditional systems do. Desktop automation will help mid-sized companies to achieve 60%-65% automation and reduce enterprise friction.
   
   

Conclusion

The above-mentioned are the key automation opportunities that every mid-sized organization should focus on. Indeed, today's automation technologies are opening doors for small and mid-sized firms. Automating your business doesn't have to be intimidating anymore. With more cost-efficient options and scalable solutions, implementing automation solutions has never been simpler. If you are a CIO of a mid-sized organization and are looking for the best ai-service desk platform, Rezolve.ai is the perfect pitch for you.

Rezolve.ai is a Twitter-Age IT service desk that offers AI-enabled service desk experience to employees right within Microsoft Teams and Slack. Being a next-generation service desk, Rezolve.ai delivers contextual and personalized employee support within 10-15 seconds and drives up self-service and high levels of auto-resolution with reduced service rates by leveraging AI and ML technologies. When you implement the Rezolve.ai platform at your organization, it also helps in accomplishing low incident response times, exceptional auto resolution rates and higher CSATs using ground-breaking automation skills.