How an AI-enabled Service Desk Improves Employee Experience

If you work (or have worked) on an IT service desk, you’ll have felt many of the pressures or challenges that IT support teams commonly face. Sometimes perhaps without being fully aware of why there never seems to be “enough hours in the day” to achieve everything that’s asked of your IT service desk. 

The list of common IT service desk pressures and challenges seems to be growing too – as the business and IT worlds continue to change, reflecting the increasing reliance on technology and the greater complexity of operations and the IT that enables them.

To help with these pressures and challenges, this blog looks at the opportunities and benefits that artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled service desk capabilities offer. But first, it’s worth taking a quick run through some of the challenges your IT service desk is facing or is likely to face in the future. And then you’ll appreciate even more how SysAid for Teams can help.

This blog looks at the opportunities and benefits that artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled service desk capabilities offer to help many common IT #servicedesk pressures & challenges. #AI #EX Share on X

The Common IT Service Desk Pressures and Challenges

Not all of the following will apply to your IT service desk, but this list is a good summary of what is being seen across the IT industry:

• Higher ticket volumes
• Tighter budgets 
• Higher end-user expectations
• Issues with staff retention and recruitment
• ITSM tool issues 
• Insufficient improvement resources

Like I said, not every common IT service desk challenge will apply to your organization, but many will and – importantly – there are likely interrelationships between them that need to be handled carefully. For example, the need to cut IT support costs might adversely affect your IT service desk’s ability to invest in improvements (even though the delivered improvements will help to reduce costs). Or the inability to recruit top IT support talent might adversely affect the delivered employee or end-user experience. 

Suffering with higher ticket volumes, tighter budgets, & insufficient improvement resources? Check out this blog for advice on how to alleviate these pressures. #EX #ITSM #ServiceDesk #AI Share on X

This complexity makes addressing the IT service desk challenges your organization faces even more difficult and opens the door for AI-enabled capabilities to improve the operations and outcomes of your IT support capabilities.

How AI-Enabled Capabilities Address the Common IT Service Desk Pressures and Challenges

Traditionally, the “project management triangle” conundrum of “quality, time, and cost” has applied to the IT service desk. One of the three is always lost when achieving the other two. For example, achieving better quality more quickly increases costs. Or reducing costs either degrades quality or increases the time taken (or perhaps both). Hence, project managers – and IT service desk managers in this instance – have to trade off between quality, time, and cost.

Discover how AI-enabled capabilities address the common IT #servicedesk pressures & challenges in this blog #ITSM #EX #AI Share on X

Thankfully, automation has already helped, with this native to the corporate ITSM tool or accessed via orchestration capabilities. The result is that an organization can benefit from all three of “better, faster, cheaper” with this “more traditional” automation. This is because automation reduces the reliance on human interactions, and consequently reduces delays, human error, and costs in delivering what is a better process and outcome.

The addition of AI-enabled capabilities, which leverage machine learning and natural language processing (NLP), further helps IT service desks struggling to surmount one or more of the above pressures and challenges. These capabilities amplify the benefits of traditional automation with what can be considered “intelligent automation.” For example, in addition to increasing the benefits of traditional automation, such as:

• Increased speed 
• Reduced costs
• Improved end-user experiences
• The ability for human capability enhancement and protection against skills shortages
• Reduced human errors
• Accuracy and consistency 
• Greater flexibility and adaptability

Looking to increase speed, reduce cost, reduce human errors, improve end-user experiences, & obtain greater flexibility & adaptability? AI-enabled capabilities can help. Here's how. #servicedesk #ITSM #AI #EX Share on X

The use of “intelligent automation” also:

• Provides contextually relevant knowledge and automated actions to end users and IT staff 
• Adds intelligence to automated tasks and processes using historical data, and further reduces the reliance on human input
• Provides predictive analytics that allows issues to be addressed before they affect business operations and outcomes

Ultimately, intelligent automation helps your organization improve across all three of “better, faster, cheaper,” even more so than with traditional automation, positively affecting operational performance, services, experiences, and outcomes. For example, the use of machine learning for automated, rather than human, decision making in a process speeds up process execution and delivers a better experience while reducing costs.

'Intelligent automation helps your organization improve across all three of 'better, faster, cheaper,' even more so than with traditional automation, positively affecting operational performance, services, experiences, and outcomes.' #AI Share on X

How an AI-Enabled Service Desk Improves Employee Experience

While the above list of benefits is relatively generic, the benefits of intelligent automation are best explained through a use case.

A good example is the use of AI-enabled bots for end-user ticket management. Where rather than calling or emailing the service desk, employees can use a text-based bot within your organization’s main collaboration tool, such as Microsoft Teams, to:

• Create and update tickets
• View active and recently closed tickets 
• Receive ticket updates/notifications
• And even approve workflow requests directly from within Teams

This AI-enabled service desk capability improves employee experiences in various ways, with the improvements dependent on the employee’s preferences and needs. For instance:

• Increased choice of service and support access and communication channels
• Meeting the employee’s consumer-world experiences (and the service and support expectations they then bring to the workplace)
• 24/7 availability of IT support even when the service desk is closed
• The employee dictates the route and speed of the interaction, accessing human support if needed, based on their immediate circumstances
• Speedy access to the information or support the employee needs means they’re losing less productivity (which research shows is a key factor in positive employee experiences)

AI-enabled service desk capabilities improves #EX in various ways. Examples include: 24/7 availability of IT support, speedy access to what they need, & an increase choice of access & comms channels. #servicedesk #ITSM Share on X

This bot-enabled support interaction can even start on the employee’s mobile device, recognizing the mobility of the modern workforce. With employees working remotely in many industries – think of your students in your educational institution, your factory workers in manufacturing, and traveling sales personnel or employees commuting into the office in any industry. What a great experience for them to be able to ask for help directly from the mobile in their Teams app, which is always open anyways!

Want to Take a Closer Look at SysAid for Teams?

If you’d like to learn more about SysAid for Teams, please join us at our celebratory Launch Event on June 29th. Save your seat now.