2023 Insights: Navigating IT Service Desks

Ever since the pandemic began, corporate companies across the globe have started to understand the value of employee support and experience more than ever. Cognixia has reported that more than 78% of global IT leaders now give digital employee experience projects a higher priority than they did two years ago. IT leaders have now recognized that their employees are bogged up with numerous routine tasks such as:

Attending conference calls
Installing new software developed by the company
Configuring laptops or printer
Comprehending the many systems and apps used by the business
Looking for IT skill enhancement opportunities
Troubleshooting technical problems
Answering questions about how to use various software applications.

This means that most employees are occupied with IT-related tasks, which impedes their productivity and experience at work. And if enhancing employee productivity and experience is your goal, employers should deliver robust IT support to employees. This is where the IT service desk comes in.

IT service desks are an important part of many organizations, and their role is to provide support for employees who need assistance with technology-related issues. The need for IT support has likely increased since the pandemic began, as many employees are now working remotely and may need additional assistance with technology-related issues. Overall, the relevance of IT service desk remains high, as they continue to play a critical role in helping organizations function smoothly and efficiently. As a result, employees can perform better.

This article discusses everything about the IT service desk you don't want to miss in 2023.

What is IT Service Desk?

The IT service desk is typically the first point of contact for employees who are experiencing problems with their computers or other technology, and they are responsible for troubleshooting and resolving these issues as quickly as possible. The IT service desk may also be responsible for answering questions about how to use various software applications, providing training on new technology, and helping employees with tasks such as setting up their computers or installing new software. Overall, the goal of an IT Service Desk is to ensure that employees have the technology-related support they need in order to perform their jobs effectively.

What is the Role of An IT Service Desk?

The roles of a service desk can vary depending on the specific needs of an organization, but some common roles include:

Provide AI chatbots for the first-level support for employees who are experiencing technology-related issues. This can include troubleshooting problems, answering questions, and providing basic instruction on how to use various software applications.
Escalate more complex issues to higher-level technical support teams or to a dedicated IT support agent, as needed. This can include working with other IT teams to identify and resolve more advanced problems.
An IT service desk act as a single point of contact for all technology-related issues within an organization. This can help ensure that employees know who to contact when they need assistance, and it can also help streamline the support process by centralizing all requests for help.
Provides training and instruction on new technology or software applications. This can help ensure that employees are able to use the latest tools and technologies effectively.
Keep track of the status of all technology-related issues, and provide regular updates to employees who have requested assistance. This ensure that employees are informed about the progress of their issues, and it can also help the service desk prioritize and manage their workload.
Monitoring and maintaining the organization's technology infrastructure, including servers, network equipment, and other hardware. This can help ensure that the organization's technology systems are running smoothly and efficiently.
Working with vendors and other external partners to obtain the technology-related products and services that the organization needs. This can include purchasing new software licenses, negotiating contracts for hardware and services, and coordinating the installation and deployment of new technology.

What are the Benefits of IT Service Desk?

Instant Support with Modern IT Service Desk and Chatbot

With a modern IT service desk, employees can get instant support for their issues. These platforms use chatbots to provide quick and accurate answers to employees' queries via a smart chatbot. This way, employees can resolve their issues quickly without waiting for the case to be handled by an agent.
Reducing Dependence on Support Agents with AI-driven IT Service Desk

Modern IT Service Desks provide employees with a way to reduce their reliance on support agents. The traditional employee support process often resulted in agents handling multiple tasks at once, leading to feelings of overwhelm. An IT service desk allows employees and customers to resolve their own issues, freeing up the agents to focus on each case individually and provide the best solutions.
Knowledge Management in Modern IT Service Desk

AI-powered IT service desks rely on robust knowledge management to provide employees with a centralized location for all the information they need. This allows employees to quickly and efficiently resolve issues and find answers to their questions.
Automation of Routine Tasks with AI-powered IT Service Desk

A modern IT service desk allows for the automation of various daily IT tasks such as password resets, software installations, laptop configurations, and sending personalized emails and notifications. This eliminates the need for manual intervention, allowing for more efficient and personalized service.
Maximizing Efficiency with a Modern IT Service Desk

An AI-powered IT service desk is the key benefit of implementing an IT service desk, which is to improve efficiency and productivity by allowing the desk to handle routine tasks. This frees up employees to focus on activities that add value to the company, leading to cost savings and improved scalability.

How to Modernize Your IT Service Desk in 2023?

Traditional IT service desks are not designed to cater to the needs of employees. They are intended to help on-site employees. Furthermore, traditional service desk IT support is generic and does not address the individual needs of all employees. As a result, it is critical for an organization to upgrade its IT service desk in order to streamline support processes in an organization. Conversational AI and machine learning are used in AI-enabled service desks to provide personalized assistance to employees' unique requirements and preferences.

Here are some of the most significant and productive approaches to upgrade your IT service desk in 2023.

Integrating with the Collaborative Platform

Without the use of collaborative platforms, organizations are incomplete. On-premise and remote employees can communicate and collaborate on a centralized platform using these platforms. It also assists managers and team leaders in communicating with all employees and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

You can centralize employee support by integrating your IT service desk with your collaborative platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack or Zoom. This enables all your employees to receive robust and quick support on the same platform they use for work. When they are in need, all they have to do is open a tab in their respective accounts and raise an issue. This prevents your employees, whether working remotely or on-premise, from switching to a different platform to obtain personalized support.
Utilizing AI-powered Chatbots

Using AI chatbots, you can improve the IT support provided to your employees in an organization. These virtual assistants interact with your employees like humans, comprehend the context of their problems, and offer personalized solutions.

The use of AI chatbots allows you to reduce your reliance on support agents. All cases are not routed directly to support agents in this case. Instead, chatbots provide personalized support within seconds. All that is required is that relevant data be added to your enterprise knowledge base. When an employee requests assistance, chatbots can search the knowledge base and return a solution tailored specifically for the employee in question.
Making Ticketing System Invisible

Traditional IT service desks frequently made it difficult to create support tickets for both on-premise and remote employees. When seeking IT support, non-technical employees were left in the dark and perplexed by the manual ticketing system. It is always advisable to make your ticketing system invisible to provide better support to your employees when modernizing your IT service desk.

If your service desk is integrated with your collaborative platform, your employees can simply chat with the AI chatbots from their respective accounts to create a ticket. This would generate support tickets for them invisibly and route them to a dedicated support agent. A modern IT service desk sends all necessary information about the concerned employee along with the case to assist the agent in providing a comprehensive solution.
Password Changes and Resets Can Be Automated

An organization's IT professionals are frequently occupied with dealing with repetitive requests to change and reset employees' passwords. This tends to divert their attention away from more pressing company issues. It is best to automate such repetitive tasks when modernizing your IT service desk for an organization.

An AI-powered IT service desk integrated with your collaborative platform can connect the request for password change/reset directly with the back-end, authenticate the identity of the concerned employee, and make the changes immediately without human intervention. This saves your IT team time and effort in dealing with these repetitive processes.
Notifications by automated means

All employees in an organization must be on the same page. With a modern IT service desk, you can automate employee notifications whenever you need to alert them about specific issues. A modern service desk allows you to notify your employees in real-time about system outages, important dates, deadlines, schedules, or anything else they need to know.
Simplified Change Management

It is frequently difficult for an organization to implement change in an organization because it cannot rely solely on on-premise processes. Through a centralized platform, a modern IT service desk enables you to provide all relevant resources and materials about the change to be implemented. Furthermore, by populating your knowledge base with relevant data about the change to be implemented, you will be able to provide quick answers to any employee working in an organization.

Conclusion

The modern IT service desk's broad scope makes it a critical component of any organization's technology strategy. Service desks are required and used by almost any organization that interacts with technology as part of its operational processes. They serve as the central point of contact for technology use throughout the business.

As a result, choosing the right software will allow your service desk to handle all service desk tasks more quickly, and easily.