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After the world was hit by a pandemic in 2020, the luxury of working from home became a necessity for multiple professionals across the globe. It forced organizations to lock their offices and set up virtual workspaces to carry on with their businesses. While this made it difficult for companies that did not have provisions for a virtual setup, organizations that were already on digital collaborative platforms adjusted to the new normal just fine. 

Apart from the inevitable scenario of being hit by a pandemic, the switch from working traditionally to using online collaborative platforms is made because of the changing needs of the employees. Employees in 2021 can no longer stay engaged in an organization because of decent pay and promotions. Their needs have become more precise and personalized over time. 

Employee Needs To Focus On In 2021

The Need For A Flexible Work Environment 

Employees no longer prefer being bound by a location or time constraint when it comes to doing their job, especially if they are into creative fields. They need to work in an environment that provides them with the flexibility of working at their own convenience while making sure that the work is not affected. As long as the targets are met on time, employees prefer working at their own pace and time. 

The Need For Process Automation 

Over time, business processes have become increasingly complicated. As the number of customers handled by an organization and the need for providing personalized customer services increase, it becomes difficult for employees to meet the requirements manually. 

This has resulted in the need for process automation, especially in industries such as IT, marketing, and finance. Employees need automated software platforms that help them carry out repetitive processes, make sense of their database, and save their time and effort in performing their tasks. 

The Need For Seamless Interaction While Working Remotely 

Simply letting your employees work remotely will not help you cater to all their needs. It is important for your employees to interact with each other and with the management while working remotely. An organization needs to make sure that everyone is on the same page through effective communication. 

This not only helps you keep your team updated about the processes carried out within the organization but also provides a feeling of inclusiveness to your employees, giving them the feel of working in a physical workspace where they can reach out to their peers at any time. 

The Need For Personalized Support 

Employees today cannot make do with generic and fragmented support. They need the organization to understand the issues they face while working and provide them with solutions that are tailor-made for them. Employees always prefer obtaining quick resolutions to their problems without having to wait for getting even the basic questions answered. 

All these needs can be fulfilled by installing an online collaborative platform like Microsoft Teams. 

The Increasing Relevance Of Microsoft Teams 

Over the last year, professionals across the world saw a spike in the adoption of collaborative platforms that allowed them to work remotely. Platforms like Zoom, Slack, and Google Teams started creating waves in every industry in no time. In such as situation, Microsoft Teams emerged as a key player whose relevance is only increasing with time. 

Statistics show that Microsoft Teams currently has 145 million active users. According to research by Aternity, the online collaborative platform witnessed a growth of 894% from March to June 2020. 

This makes it clear that Microsoft Teams is used as a virtual workplace by several organizations for streamlining their processes and staying and ensuring effective communication. 

However, one of the most important applications of the online collaborative application is to be integrated with a helpdesk system to leverage employee support. 

Connecting Helpdesk System With Microsoft Teams

As discussed above, employees today are in need of personalized support and seamless assistance that helps them resolve their issues with ease and efficiency. The traditional helpdesks are no longer effective for employees in 2021. They were hardly successful in providing organized support to the employees and helping them work smoothly. 

The traditional employee service desks were nothing but assimilation of different platforms that provided generic support to the employees with mediocre results. While the IT service desk was dedicated to the IT department and HR helpdesk for the HR department, the intranet allowed employees to communicate with each other internally. 

This often resulted in employees getting confused as to whom to approach for help and having to wait for getting answers even to the simplest questions. Ultimately, the failure of the traditional helpdesks made employees go back to making calls and writing emails to obtain help from reliable sources. 

All these issues can be resolved by implementing the modern helpdesk system that runs on AI. These helpdesks make sure that every issue faced by every employee is resolved by an organization by providing personalized support. Technologies like AI and machine learning help the system understand the context of the questions asked and provide solutions that are unique to specific employees. 

The effectiveness of the modern AI-based helpdesk system increases when it is integrated with an online collaborative platform. 

Here are some of the major reasons why you should connect your employee helpdesk with Microsoft Teams: 

1. Seamless Support Without Leaving The Platform 

If you have implemented a separate platform for providing support to your employees, they would have to switch between platforms to keep a track of their support case and the work they have been doing. This would lead to your employees wasting their time and energy in reconciling between the two platforms. 

When you integrate your helpdesk with Teams, you can allow your employees to get their issues resolved on the same platform that they work on. All they need to do is visit the helpdesk section and give the necessary commands to get their questions answered in a few seconds. 

2. Rapid L1 Support 

The modern helpdesks make use of AI chatbots to interact with your employees and handle the first level of support. When the traditional helpdesks placed support agents for providing the L1 support, it often resulted in them being overburdened with cases, slowing down the support provided. 

Instead, Microsoft Teams users can get their basic issues resolved by interacting with AI chatbots on the same platform. These virtual assistants accompany your employees as they enter the helpdesk and stay with them until they get their issues resolved. Whenever a question is asked or a command is given, the chatbots look into the enterprise knowledge base and come up with a personalized solution within a few seconds. 

3. Automated Ticketing System 

One of the biggest issues faced by the traditional helpdesk users was that of the manual ticketing system. Manual ticketing often did not go well with employees with little technical knowledge, leaving them handicapped or at the mercy of others. 

However, when you integrate the modern helpdesk system with Microsoft Teams, the service desk would automate the entire ticketing system, making it invisible for your employees. 

If an employee is not satisfied by the L1 support provided by the AI chatbots, they can seek help from support agents for the second level of support. Here, the chatbots would route their case to a dedicated agent who would look into the matter and provide them with a satisfactory resolution. 

Throughout this process, the system would create the support ticket, track it, and close the same when the solution is provided by the support agent. This relieves the employees with little to no technical knowledge to obtain seamless support and get their cases resolved by the agents. 

4. Live Chat With The Agents 

Although the automated approach to a ticketing system and providing employee support is highly effective, your employees may encounter issues where live agent interaction is necessary. In such cases, the helpdesk integrated with Microsoft Teams would connect you to a support agent, allowing you to have a direct conversation over a chat or a call.

5. Effective Knowledge Management 

When you connect a helpdesk system with Microsoft Teams, you can make the most of the enterprise knowledge stored within your system. The enterprise knowledge base is a rich and valuable source of information to obtain solutions to any problem faced by your employees. 

The modern helpdesk allows your employees to search articles, policies, or any relevant form of information from your knowledge base directly from their Teams channels. All they need to do is mention the bot and include a search term. This would allow the AI chatbot to scan the knowledge base and come up with the resources that match the concerned search item. 

Moreover, these helpdesks allow you to store valuable information in your knowledge base in a variety of engaging formats. As opposed to the traditional service desks providing generic texts, you can make your employees search videos, images, animations, and infographics to obtain valuable information in the most interactive way possible. 

6. Training Employees In Micro-skills 

The modern helpdesk system is not simply about providing solutions to the problems faced by your employees. It can also be used for helping them get trained in specific micro-skills. Your employees may need certain skills to perform their jobs or just to enhance their skill-set. When you integrate a modern helpdesk with Microsoft Teams, the platform can be used for accessing a myriad of training resources. 

All you need to do is feed the system with relevant sources that can be accessed by specific employees. This will help them in getting trained without taking anyone’s help. When your employees are self-reliant, their productivity would increase and they would naturally feel more motivated to work better. 

7. Streamlined Onboarding Process 

When a new employee enters an organization, the management always needs to make sure that they are onboarded the right way. Especially now that more professionals are working remotely, you need to make sure that your new employees get comfortable with the organization soon after joining in. 

By connecting your helpdesk system with Microsoft Teams, you can automate workflows that help you make the onboarding process organized and faster. Once an employee logs into their Teams account for the first time, a triggered response can send them materials such as orientation details, their login credentials, company policies, and a warm welcome message. 

8. Automating Repetitive Processes 

The workflow automation feature of the modern helpdesk allows you to automate a number of repetitive processes, such as obtaining access to view files, changing or resetting passwords, identity verification, and many more. 

Let us say an employee wants to reset their password. On setting up an approval workflow, you can connect the request for password reset with the back-end which would automatically confirm the identity of the concerned user and allow them to set a new password themselves. 

As opposed to the traditional IT helpdesks where dedicated employees were responsible for carrying out such repetitive processes for different employees, workflow automation saves your employees the time and effort required in doing so. 

9. A Single-window Support For All Employees 

In the case of traditional helpdesks, employee support was often fragmented and chaotic. By integrating your helpdesk with Microsoft Teams, you can provide streamlined support to all the employees working on the platform, irrespective of the department they work in. Such an integrated support system provides a single window to the employees across your organization to get their issues resolved from a unified platform. 

10. Tracking History For Context 

On being connected with Microsoft Teams, your helpdesk system helps you keep a track of every interaction your employees have with the AI helpdesk. The system saves the data relating to the same, makes sense of it, and understands the contexts of the subsequent questions asked. This allows you to provide personalized and wholesome support to every single employee working in your organization. 

The Final Word 

As more and more employees are working on collaborative platforms like Microsoft Teams every day, providing them with a helpdesk integrated within the platform is always a good idea. No matter which industry you belong to, it is advisable to make the switch to the modern AI helpdesk to engage more employees and improve their productivity.