Rethinking It Service Desk In 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic, which broke out three years ago, has indeed forced organizations of all sizes to rethink how they work and IT leaders to reprioritize their investments. As more organizations adopt hybrid and remote work models, the IT service desk must enable employees to work seamlessly from any location. Even before the pandemic, employees had a hard time resolving IT problems, and they had to collaborate more with each other. Since the pandemic shows no signs of ending anytime soon, working from home has become increasingly difficult for employees and support agents as they encounter various challenges at work which need instant resolutions and personalized attention. Furthermore, millennial employees are extremely demanding IT support due to their increased use of devices, numerous integrations, easy access to IT, and the ability to experiment independently. New hires will also experience various challenges in a remote and hybrid environment. Hence, it is crucial for CIOs to understand the needs of the remote workforce and find a permanent solution while also making enterprise-wide decisions. That's where service desks come in.

What Makes Traditional Service Desks Ineffective In 2022?

A service desk provides employees with instant answers to their queries. In this new normal, employees will indeed experience various technical issues related to IT, equipment, and inability to access documents like revised company policies. In many cases, they spend much of their time researching the right information to help them resolve these issues. The McKinsey report concludes that employees spend nearly 2 hours a day searching for information. It negatively impacts their work experience and business productivity. Thus, the modern workforce needs quick, efficient and personalized support.

With a traditional service desk, help can be obtained through incident resolution or service requests. An employee can complain by creating a ticket for their case, citing the problem they are experiencing. The critical problem with traditional service desks is that the services are more valuable to the agent than to the employee. The employees' main complaint is that they must wait a long time to resolve their issues. When several employees file complaints at the same time, the agents will focus on the complaint that is deemed most important according to their code of conduct.

Usually, in such situations, employee support is disconnected and delayed. The delayed support will affect the employees' productivity. Thus, remote employees don't prefer the traditional service desk.

What Employees Dislike About Traditional Service Desks?

1. Limited information sources
   
   
2. Complicated information on simple issues
   
   
3. Delayed and fragmented employee support
   
   
4. Lack of awareness and training
   
   

IT Service Desk: A Necessity Of The New Normal

In light of the changing workplace culture, it's pretty evident that traditional service desks are no longer relevant for the modern workforce. Traditional IT service desks are developed to serve employees who work from the office premises. So, it is difficult for traditional IT service desks to serve employees who work in hybrid and remote settings. Furthermore, the IT support provided by traditional service desks is generic and does not consider each employee's specific needs. This has led to organizations automating their processes and getting their work done more quickly using AI-powered service desks.

There is no doubt that an IT service desk is the backbone of an organization's IT department. Using one point of contact, the IT service desk manages everything from system outages to individual technical issues. It addresses user requests, and provides a communication channel between the various service management functions. In addition, the service desk also handles change requests, maintains third-party support contracts, manages software licenses etc. With an AI-powered IT service desk, your employees can get instant, personalized and effective solutions to their issues within 15 seconds. Modern IT service desks leverage advanced technologies like conversational AI and machine learning to support the employees' specific needs and preferences. When employees receive holistic support and personalized attention, employee engagement and productivity will improve. Eventually, this will allow organizations to maximize their profits. Thus, it is imperative for an organization to streamline its support processes in a hybrid workplace by modernizing its IT service desk.

What Are The Business Benefits And Capabilities Of An IT Service Desk?

1. Delivering instant support
   
   The traditional service desk method requires users to wait until the case reaches the agents; the agents investigate the issue and then provide solutions. Using a modern IT service desk, an organization can offer instant and accurate answers to employees' queries. In these platforms, conversational chatbots are often used to automate the first level of support. Therefore, employees can resolve their issues quickly without wasting a lot of time.
   
   
2. Reduce the agents' burden
   
   Modern IT service desks allow employees to reduce their dependence on support agents. Customer service or employee support used to be a traditional process, which resulted in the agents handling multiple tasks simultaneously. These situations often lead to agents feeling overwhelmed and unable to focus on their work. An IT service desk relieves this burden by allowing employees and customers to auto-resolve their issues. If every single case is not routed directly to the agents, they can focus on each one and provide the best solution to the users.
   
   
3. Real-time information at fingertips
   
   A robust knowledge management is a critical component of modern IT service desks. Knowledge management allows people to find all the information they need in one centralized location. People can efficiently resolve issues and find the answers they need this way.
   
   
4. Streamline tedious IT processes and workflows
   
   Modern IT service desks eliminate mundane and time-consuming IT-related tasks that require personalized attention. Without human intervention, you can set a trigger within your system to run and pause processes such as password resets, instant software installations, laptop configurations, sending personalized emails and notifications etc.
   
   
5. Reduce operational costs and other activities
   
   By implementing an IT service desk, organizations can reduce operating costs and increase scalability. Modern IT service desks are capable of performing routine tasks efficiently. A modern IT service desk will handle routine and more straightforward tasks while allowing agents and employees to focus on other activities that add value to the company.
   
   

How To Rethink IT Service Desks For The Remote Or Hybrid Work Culture?

In the wake of COVID-19 and its new variants, infrastructure and operations leaders have the opportunity to amplify the evolution of the IT service desk, encouraging innovation and improvement. If you are a CIO looking to implement a modern IT service desk to improve employee support in this hybrid and remote age, be sure that it has the following key features.

1. Support Within Your Collaborative Platform
   
   It's no secret that modern workplaces are entirely relying on collaborative platforms such as MS Teams, Slack, Zoom etc. to carry out their daily tasks. They allow employees-both on-premise and remote, to communicate and collaborate via a single platform. Additionally, it provides employers and team leaders with an easy way to reach out to all employees and ensure everyone is engaged. With an IT service desk integrated with a collaborative platform, you can centralize employee support. With this approach, all your employees can receive seamless support on the same platform that they work on. It only takes a few clicks to raise an issue from their respective accounts whenever needed. As a result, your employees don't have to switch to a different platform if they need personalized support.
   
   
2. Conversational Chatbots for L1 support
   
   With an AI-powered IT service desk, employees can start interacting with a conversational chatbot the moment they log in, rather than waiting for a support agent to come. The virtual assistant would offer basic front-end support to your employees by answering employee questions immediately. If the employees are unsatisfied with the solution and want more support, the chatbot would automatically route their case to a suitable agent who will look into the matter and provide the most suitable solution. Throughout the process, AI chatbots will act as a constant connection between employees and support agents in order to achieve smooth and robust communication.
   
   
3. Twitter-age Knowledge Management
   
   Companies can take advantage of their enterprise knowledge base with IT service desks while providing personalized support to their employees. Twitter-age knowledge management within a modern IT service desk provides instant answers to employees with the help of a robust Natural Language Model. Whenever employees have a question, they need to type it on the MS Teams where they spend most of their time, and then all the contextual information will appear in the form of videos, images, articles, FAQs, handbooks, user manuals, etc.
   
   
4. Invisible Ticketing System
   
   The manual ticketing system was one of the most significant issues with the traditional service desk. Generally, employees did not like the concept of a ticketing system. They prefer making phone calls or sending emails rather than using it. To resolve this problem, a modern IT service desk has made a ticketing system invisible to employees since they don't want to switch platforms. With the help of a conversational AI interface, the IT service desk lets employees create tickets and check the status of those tickets. If your employee wishes to route his/her case to a support agent, the AI-powered chatbot will create a support ticket and inform that agent about it. The chatbot will close the ticket as soon as the issue has been resolved and record the details in the database, and all these happen right within MS Teams and Slack, making the IT service desk employee-friendly.
   
   
5. Task and Workflow Automation An IT service desk's workflow and task automation features streamline all IT-related tasks and workflows such as configuring laptops, installing new software, resetting passwords etc. right within MS Teams. It allows employees to save time and concentrate on their actual work instead of wasting it on repetitive tasks.
   
   
6. Live Chat with an expert
   
   The employee may not be satisfied with the first level of support (L1) from conversational chatbots. Whenever this occurs, the modern IT service desk should connect them with a dedicated agent. As soon as the agent is notified of the problem or difficulty, the agent can access the employee's data collected while interacting with the bot. With the help of an expert, your employee can quickly and efficiently solve the issue.
   
   
7. Training employees with conversational microlearning Gen Y employees no longer prefer lengthy, instructor-led training sessions. They prefer short and focused training sessions. Apart from helping employees resolve their issues and answering their questions, modern IT service desks can also train employees via conversational microlearning. Through the integrated platform, all training resources will be made available to employees who want to learn a few skills for their job or understand how specific processes work. The digital format of microlearning content, such as texts, audio, images, videos, and games, allows employees to access them anywhere, anytime, and from any device. In this way, your employees are more self-reliant and are less dependent on others when it comes to getting work done and learning new skills. In the end, this increases employee motivation and engagement.
   
   Read More: Advantages of upskilling modern workforce via Conversational Microlearning
   
   

Conclusion: The Modern IT Service Desk For The Millennial Workforce

Using an IT service desk to manage workflow and predict individual technical issues can ensure better operational efficiency within an organization.

Rezolve.ai is a modern IT service desk that helps with smooth and streamlined IT asset management. It can enhance your employees' productivity and business ROI by automating repetitive tasks, managing all ITSM tasks and workflows, handling invisible tickets, etc.