Revenue Driving Service Desk Automation: Why Is It So Important?

No matter which industry your organization belongs to and what your scale of operation is, the ultimate goal to sustain an organization will always be to drive more revenue. It is important to generate the desired amount of revenue and increase the same over time to keep your company up and running. 

There are a number of ways in which you can drive more revenue towards your organization, such as sales promotion, mergers, and acquisitions, entering a new line of products, charting out new marketing campaigns, etc. 

However, a lesser-known and appreciated way of increasing income inflow is by adapting to a revenue driving service desk automation platform. 

A lot depends on the quality of support you provide to your employees and your approach towards the same. This is because your employees are directly responsible for adding to your organization’s revenue and their productivity depends on the support provided to them. 

This can be done by implementing a modern employee service desk that makes use of AI and machine learning technologies for providing employee support. As opposed to the traditional service desks, their modern counterparts are designed to help you understand the issues faced by your employees and providing them with personalized support. There are many more applications of an AI service desk that help your employees improve their productivity, ultimately adding to the revenue generated by your company. 

Before getting to the importance of the modern employee service desks, let us understand how the traditional service desks restricted the inflow of revenue. 

How Did A Traditional Service Desk Restrict Revenue Generation?

The traditional employee service desk was hardly successful in catering to the individual needs of the employees. Instead of being employee-centric, these platforms focused more on benefitting the agents. 

This resulted in employees not being able to obtain the support they expected from their organization, leading to a lack of engagement. When your employees are not engaged, their productivity would automatically decline, resulting in limited revenue generated by the organization. 

Here are some of the major reasons behind the traditional service desks not being able to engage the employees and thus, limiting revenue: 

Absence Of A Single Integrated Platform 

One of the biggest issues caused by a traditional employee service desk was the lack of an integrated support platform. The traditional system made different employees use different platforms for getting their issues resolved. While there was an IT service desk for the IT department, there was a separate HR help desk for HR issues, and an intranet for employees to collaborate with each other. 

Due to the lack of a centralized platform, employees with little knowledge about the system were often confused as to where to go and whom to approach to obtain answers to their questions. Moreover, having multiple service desks meant spending more money in setting them up and cutting down the profits made by the company. 

Delayed And Generic Support 

In the case of traditional employee service desks, employees often had to wait for way too long to get their issues resolved. This was simply because the support agents were bombarded with numerous requests, making it difficult for them to handle every case on time. 

This was also the reason why a traditional service desk would provide generic solutions to the issues raised by the employees. It became practically impossible for the agents to understand every single request and provide a personalized solution to the same. This significantly reduced the level of employee engagement within your organization as your employees do not get the support they expected. Ultimately, it affects the productivity of your employees. 

Lack Of Customer Satisfaction 

Almost every business process carried out within an organization revolves around catering to the customers and improving their experience as they engage with the company. The lack of precision, accuracy, and speed in the traditional service desks often handicapped employees while interacting with the customers. 

Just like the employees, customers need to get their issues resolved and it is important for an organization to provide personalized solutions to their problems as well. However, traditional service desks affected the efficiency of the customer support provided by an organization, leading to reduced revenue. 

Unorganized Knowledge Management 

Enterprise knowledge is one of the most valuable assets possessed by an organization. It is the warehouse of all answers and solutions to a range of issues faced by the employees working in an organization. Also, enterprise knowledge possesses all-important resources an employee (or anyone from the senior management) may need to improve their skills or get well-versed with the organization they are working in. 

If carried out in a systematic manner, knowledge management can help an organization provide wholesome support to their employees and customers alike. 

Unfortunately, the traditional employee service desks were unable to tap into this knowledge base and leverage the same to provide improved employee support. This resulted in the system providing generic, irrelevant, and outdated solutions to the questions raised by the employees. 

Inadequate Support From Agents 

Naturally, it is almost impossible to find a support agent who is well-versed in every department in your organization. Even if you have a dedicated agent for a specific department, there may be times when they are not aware of the solutions to a given issue. Traditional serviced desks rarely made provisions for the agents to scan through suitable resources to provide quick and efficient help to the employees. 

Moreover, owing to the increasing number of cases handled by a limited number of support agents, companies often resorted to hiring more support agents just to handle the workload. These agents may or may not be the best in their field, affecting the overall support provided to the employees. 

Difficulty In Working With The Manual Ticketing System 

The traditional service desks were equipped with a manual ticketing system, where an employee was required to raise a ticket when they faced an issue and keep a track of the same until the agent provides a solution to the same. 

The ticketing system was a fairly niche feature for most organizations as not every employee was familiar with operating on the same. While a few IT employees could use the platform comfortably, many employees found themselves confused when it came to raise, track, and close their support tickets. 

All these issues collectively resulted in employees getting less engaged with the organizations they worked in, affecting their overall productivity. 

This is precisely the reason why the modern revenue-driving service desk was adopted by companies. 

The Importance Of The Modern Service Desk

The modern employee service desk was developed to help organizations overcome the issues caused by their traditional counterpart. Instead of different platforms with different approaches for employee support, the modern service desk provided employees with a single unified platform, powered by AI and machine learning technologies. 

This provided utmost ease of operation to the employees who found it difficult to work their way around using the traditional service desks. The modern service desk can be used as an IT service desk, HR help desk, marketing help desk, finance help desk, for project management purposes, and many more purposes. It allows your employees to log in to a single platform to get all their queries resolved and automate a number of repetitive tasks. 

The modern employee service desk is designed to suit employees working in all departments within an organization and increasing overall employee engagement in a company. By making sure that all their issues are resolved quickly and effectively, these service desks help employees feel valued and connected to the organizations they work in. Higher engagement leads to higher productivity, helping a company drive more revenue. 

Use Of AI In A Service Desk 

The highlight of the new employee service desk is that it is powered by AI. This allows the platform to make sense of the data fed to it, analyze the same, and draw conclusive decisions in the interest of your employees. In simple words, AI makes your service desk think like a human and fulfills the need for having support agents providing the first level of support (L1). 

This support is provided by AI chatbots. The modern service desks use conversational AI to help your employees interact with virtual assistance for obtaining the first level of support and navigating through the entire platform. The conversational aspect of the service desk allows your employees to interact comfortably with the system and obtain guided support to get their issues resolved. 

The chatbots stay with the employees right since they log in to the service desk until they leave after getting their issue resolved. For the first level of support, the virtual assistants would scan the knowledge base and come up with answers within a few seconds. If the concerned employee is happy with the answer, they can get back to work without any hassle. 

However, if the employee needs further help and wants a more personalized solution to their issue, the AI chatbots would route the case to support agents that provide the L2 and L3 support to the employee. Here, the support agent would look into the concerned issue, come up with a personalized solution, and communicate with the employee through the chatbots. 

As opposed to the traditional service desks, their modern counterparts let AI chatbots handle the first level of support and bring in the agents only when they are required. 

Saving Time And Money 

With the modern service desks, your employees no longer need to wait for their questions to get answered and their issues to be resolved. The chatbots will not take more than a few seconds to come up with answers that are tailored according to the requirements of the concerned employees. No matter how trivial or critical the issue is, the service desk will provide quick solutions to all the issues raised. 

Moreover, when you implement an integrated serviced desk that takes care of the issues faced by employees working in all departments, you cut down a lot of costs. You no longer have to invest in setting up different support platforms and hire more support agents to handle the increasing inflow of service requests. A single virtual platform does all the work without the need for hardware installation on-premise, helping the company save money. 

An organization can increase its profits by reducing its expenses and increasing its revenue. The modern employee service desk makes sure that both these aspects are taken care of. While it helps you cut down the costs involved in implementing different service desks, it also boosts employee productivity, helping you generate more revenue.

Customized Solutions Tailored For The Employees 

The modern employee service desks understand the context behind an issue raised and provide a solution that is tailored specifically for the concerned employee. It keeps a track of the history of interactions with different employees and stores all relevant data that helps the system provide personalized support to the employees. 

AI and machine learning help your service desk understand where the issues are coming from and use the historical data to provide solutions and suggestions that best suit the employee in question. 

Seamless Process Automation 

Apart from providing solutions to the issues raised by employees, the modern service desks can be used for automating a number of repetitive processes, right from onboarding employees to help them carry out specific processes. 

Users can set up triggers that send automated emails to the new employees joining the company with the policies, log-in credentials, and all other relevant resources. The service desk can also be used for automating repetitive processes like changing system passwords for the employees. Instead of having dedicated employees handle all requests manually, you can have the system automate the process by connecting the request to the back-end, confirming the identity of the user, and letting them change their password effectively. 

The Final Word 

These were some of the key features that highlight the importance of a revenue driving service desk in an organization. It is advisable for companies across the board to make the switch to streamline their support processes.