Artificial Intelligence: Why Should You Start With Employee Service Desk?

For centuries, humans have been able to provide for themselves and their communities by inventing a variety of tools and making important discoveries. However, as we are heading towards more and more digitization every passing year, mere human involvement is no longer enough in the corporate world! 

Businesses today are getting diversified and catering to clients located across the world. Customers have been demanding an increased amount of personalization in the services provided to them. Shareholders and investors need real-time data of business finances and important reports. Employees need personalized attention in getting their issues resolved. 

It is practically impossible for human employees to handle all these situations effectively and simultaneously. This is why businesses have started using AI technology in automating their processes and getting their work done faster. 

The use of AI provides an organization with a machine that can think, assess, and draw conclusions like humans. The technologies of machine learning and deep learning allow a digital system to learn patterns, analyze data, make comparisons, and predict outcomes similar to a human being. Just like a human child accumulates knowledge and uses it for solving problems as it grows, an AI-powered system does the same as it accumulates more data and undertakes more business processes.

The switch from traditional processes to AI-powered business processes is essential in 2021. Have a look at some of the statistics that support the statement: 

• The global spending on AI-based systems is expected to reach $57.6 billion in 2021 (Source: IDC) 
  
  
• The AI market is expected to grow into a $190 billion industry by 2025 (Source: Markets and Markets) 
  
  
• By 2020, the AI industry could be worth more than $15 trillion (Source: PwC) 
  
  

Looking at the current wave of digitization, it is advisable for an organization to start adopting AI to leverage its current functionality and become future-proof. Let us understand why it is important for businesses to implement AI in their processes. 

Why Is AI Important In Business?

AI allows businesses to have a machine as an assistant that is programmed to think like a human! It possesses a perfect blend of human analytical skills and the precision and speed of a machine. 

Here are some of the major reasons why businesses should start adopting AI for their processes: 

Saving Minutes And Dollars 

When required to performed repetitive tasks over a long period of time, human employees tend to get exhausted the quality of work gets affected. Also, there is a limit up to which humans can keep working without slowing down. 

On the other hand, an AI-powered machine would keep running for hours at a stretch without affecting the quality and speed of work done. Machines do not need breaks, are consistently accurate, and do not get tired of performing repetitive tasks. When you use AI for carrying out your business processes, you can get your work done in a lesser time as compared to an employee doing the same work at a stretch. 

When it comes to saving money, seamless process automation, automated error-checks, and increased accuracy reduce the scope of errors committed by an AI-operated machine. While human errors would lead to a loss of money, the use of AI would not only help you save dollars but also add to your revenue. 

Obtaining Valuable Insights 

In 2021, businesses run on a digital fuel called data. Whether it is the data about your customers, your finances, your mergers/acquisitions, or the processes carried out by your team, your database drives almost every activity performed by your team. 

However, simply having an organized database is never enough. It is important to make sense of the data you have and draw productive conclusions out of the same. With the help of machine learning and deep learning capabilities, an AI-based system helps you scan specific datasets, analyze them, and provide you with valuable insights about your business. 

Whether you want to ascertain the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, the ROI of a sales campaign, analyze the trend of profits earned over time, identify KPIs for your campaign, or provide personalized support to your customers/employees based on their preferences, AI helps you in carrying out smart analytics with the data you possess. 

Improved Customer Experience 

Almost all business processes revolve around making sure that the customers are satisfied with the services provided to them. Customer satisfaction is at the core of all campaigns as it leads to getting the desired traction and return on investment. 

By using artificial intelligence, you can make sure that your customers experience the best buying journeys while engaging with your business. Right from targeting the right prospects to providing after-sale services, AI-based platforms help you be there for your customers and tailor your services according to your needs. 

Businesses (especially e-commerce ventures) use the technology to track the activities of the customers/prospects on their official websites. This data allows them to ascertain the key likes and preferences of the customers and provide them with recommendations that are in sync with their choices. 

Also, AI systems keep an eye on the choices made by the customers and a change in their buying habits to predict customer behavior for businesses. This allows businesses to roll out targeted campaigns and design them to get maximum traction. 

Streamlined Customer Support 

Customers often find themselves in a fix when it comes to providing feedback about their experience of getting in touch with the customer executives for getting their queries resolved. 

With the help of an AI-powered customer service desk, you can employ AI chatbots that are ready to assist your customers and answer all the questions they have. The service desk can also be used to take personalized surveys and collect feedback from the customers to help the management make important changes in the services provided. 

Process Automation 

AI can be used for automating an array of repetitive processes that are too tedious and time-consuming for human employees. You can set specific triggers within your system that start/stop specific processes without the need for human interference. 

For example, AI can be used for controlling temperatures in factories, automating password resets, streamlining the onboarding/offboarding process, and carrying out a number of repetitive processes where human employees would not want to be involved continuously. 

There are many more advantages of using AI for carrying out your business processes with ease, precision, and efficacy. Now, let us discuss the importance of AI in employee service desk and why you should start implementing an AI service desk as soon as possible. 

AI And Employee Service Desk

One of the biggest issues faced by employees across the world is that of disoriented and dissatisfying support. They often find themselves confused and helpless when they need to approach someone for seeking assistance. 

The traditional employee support desk hardly supported the employees’ cause and served the agents more. It provided fragmented support to the employees where different platforms were involved in providing support to different employees. This further confused employees and made them stick to sending emails and making calls. 

Also, employing a limited number of support executives from the first line of support (L1) itself resulted in an increased backlog of requests, unnecessary delays in issue resolution, and lack of a personalized approach. 

To get rid of all these issues (and many more), organizations have now started implementing an AI-based employee service desk. 

AI service desks help organizations in providing personalized support to their employees and getting their issues resolved within a few minutes (or even seconds). These platforms make use of conversational AI for handling all employee requests and providing streamlined support to employees working in all departments. 

Use Of AI Chatbots 

Instead of having to wait to get in touch with the right support executive, an AI service desk allows your employees to be assisted by an AI chatbot as soon as they log in to the platform. This virtual assistant would provide basic front-end support to your employees by answering their questions immediately. 

However, if the employees are not satisfied with the solution and want more specific support, the chatbots will automatically route their case to a suitable agent who would look into the matter and provide them with the most suitable solution. Throughout this process, the AI chatbots will act as a constant link between the employees and the support agents for smooth and effective communication. 

Automated Knowledge Management 

AI service desks allow organizations to make the most of their enterprise knowledge base and use the same for providing personalized support to the employees. Whenever an employee asks a question, the chatbot scans the knowledge base that has all the answers and all relevant information the employee may need. 

It would then pick a solution that best suits the concerned employee and provides the same to them in the most suitable format. The modern service desks also have provisions for managing the content format of the support provided and use videos, images, infographics, and animations instead of plain text. 

Invisible Ticketing System 

One of the biggest issues employees had with the traditional employee service desk was that of the manual ticketing system. While many employees were not well-versed with using the ticketing system, the others took too long to raise and manage support tickets. 

As a solution to this issue, an AI employee service desk makes the ticketing system invisible to the employees. When your employee wishes to get his case routed to a dedicated support agent, the AI chatbot will create a support ticket and inform the concerned agent about the same. Once the issue is resolved, the chatbot will automatically close the ticket and record the details into the database. 

A Single Service Desk For All Employees 

With an AI service desk, you do not need different platforms to provide support to different employees. A single integrated platform can act as an ITSM desk, HR help desk, Finance help desk, Marketing help desk, and for project management purposes. 

This makes it easier for all the employees of your organization to obtain seamless support on a single platform, without having to send multiple emails and make multiple calls. 

Context-based Support 

An AI-based employee service desk provides holistic support to your employees by understanding the context of the questions asked. Instead of providing generic solutions that may or may not work in the concerned situation, the modern service desk takes their history of interactions into consideration and provides solutions that are unique to the specific employee. 

Also, context-based support allows your employees to obtain recommendations and suggestions that are unique to their job, their role, and their history of interactions with the service desk. 

Training Your Employees 

Along with helping the employees get their issues resolved and answering their questions, the AI employee service desk can also be used for training employees in specific micro-skills. If their job requires them to learn a few skills or if they are willing to develop their skill-set, they can access all necessary training resources from the integrated platform and start learning by themselves. 

This helps you make your employees self-reliant and less dependent on others when it comes to getting work done and learning new skills. Ultimately, this increases their motivation to work and results in higher employee engagement. 

Live Agent Interaction 

Ultimately, if an employee is not satisfied by the initial level of support and the support provided by the dedicated agent through AI chatbots, the modern service desk provides them with an option to interact live with an agent. The chatbot will notify the agent about the issue you are facing and provide them with the required context to serve you better.

The Final Word 

Looking at the increasing need to automate business processes and providing seamless support to the employees, it can be concluded that AI is rapidly turning from a luxury into a necessity. It is advisable for businesses to make the switch now instead of having to struggle to catch up with the world in the days to come!