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Under the shadow of customer services and management, organizations often overlook employee services and employee support. It is important for an organization to understand that its employees are some of the most valuable assets owned by the company and are directly responsible for the success or failure of the organization. It is their efforts that bring results and help an organization achieve the desired objectives. 

However, the scope of streamlines employee services goes way beyond making profits and driving more revenue. When you are able to resolve all issues faced by all your employees, you build a work environment that is conducive for them to work and give their best. 

Not many organizations are taking employee services seriously. According to a report by Gallup, only 36% of employees working in an organization are engaged. This implies that the majority of employees are not driven enough to get themselves to work every day. If you are willing to change these statistics, it is imperative to streamline your employee support services. 

Organizations can no longer go the traditional way in providing support to their employees and making their work easier. The future of employee services in an organization involves the use of advanced AI-based service desks that provide personalized support to every single employee working in an organization. 

However, before getting to the AI service desks, let us understand the importance of employee services in an organization. 

Why Should You Focus On Improving Your Employee Services?

Employee services include everything from resolving the issues faced by your employees to providing them with alternatives to make their work easier. Here are some of the key reasons why you should shift your focus towards improving your employee services today: 

Improved Employee Engagement 

As discussed above, organizations are struggling to keep their employees engaged. In 2021, it takes more than remuneration, appraisal, and promotions to keep your employees motivated and genuinely driven towards performing their jobs. 

Today, the last thing an employee would want is to find themselves confused and helpless to obtain organized support from the organization they work in. They need an employee support system that understands their issues and tailors solutions to suit their specific needs. If you provide organized employee services to your team, they would naturally feel more motivated to work and would take an active interest in the processes carried out within the organization. 

Improved Employee Productivity 

If your employees are not able to find appropriate solutions to their problems, they are likely to make compromises and end up carrying out sub-standard processes. It is, therefore, always advisable to provide wholesome employee services to ensure that your employees are assisted every step of the way in getting their questions answered. 

When they have complete support from the organization in helping them perform their job better, employees can carry on with their work with finesse and increase their productivity. This would, ultimately, lead to improved productivity of your organization.

Improved Customer Services 

Organizations often underestimate the scope and potential of effective employee services. If you cater to your employees efficiently, they will cater to your customers effectively. Especially in the case of customer-facing employees, adequate support would drive them to do their job better and handle the customers effectively. Also, if you have streamlined knowledge management in place, your employees will not take long to provide personalized support to your customers. 

A Feeling Of Inclusiveness 

Employees that are treated by the management as a part of their family always give their 100% to the company. It is important for an organization to make their employees feel included in the team and valued enough to get all their problems solved in the best way possible. 

Once your employees feel special and cared for by the company, you can retain the talent pool that you cultivated and create a healthy and happy work environment. Such an atmosphere not only makes your existing employees happy but also helps potential candidates to become a part of your organization. 

Once you start focusing on your employee services, you can solve a number of problems faced by your employees as well as the senior management. However, it is the approach to providing employee support that matters the most and helps you obtain the desired results. 

The Application Of AI In Employee Services 

All the needs discussed above (and many more) can be fulfilled by using the modern employee service desk for providing employee services. These service desks make sure that you cater to every need of every single employee working in your organization. Right from answering basic questions to automating repetitive processes, these service desks help your employees make their work easier and find wholesome support. 

The highlight feature of a modern service desk is the use of AI. When you combine service automation with AI, you can make your service desks think like a support agent and be more vigilant than an actual one! An AI service desk helps you eliminate agents from the first level of support, bringing them in only when needed. 

Otherwise, AI chatbots help your employees navigate through the service desk and provide them with all the solutions required. 

Conversational AI With Chatbots 

The modern service desks make use of artificial intelligence to facilitate the streamlined interaction of your employees with virtual assistants. These chatbots accompany employees throughout their journey of navigating through the serviced desk provide all possible support to them. 

The use of conversational AI allows you to bridge the gap between technical finesse and human interaction. While the AI chatbots are quick enough to provide personalized solutions in a matter of seconds, they also communicate with your employees and understand exactly what they are looking for. 

These virtual assistants replace support agents at the first level of support. Here, your employees can obtain answers to some basic questions and get their issues resolved without having to wait for a support agent to get to their case and provide them with a solution. Many cases are resolved at this stage after which the employees can go back to work hassle-free. 

However, there may be cases when an employee is not happy with the support provided by the chatbots. In such cases, these virtual assistants route the concerned case to a suitable support agent. As opposed to the traditional service desks, agents are not overburdened with service requests, thanks to the AI chatbots handling the first level of support. This also allows the agents to look into individual cases and provide personalized solutions to employee issues. 

Automated Ticketing System 

One of the biggest drawbacks of the traditional employee service desks was that of the manual ticketing system. It is important to understand that not every employee in every organization is comfortable with using ticketing software. Employees who are not too technically sound often find it difficult to create, track, and close support tickets. 

Owing to this difficulty in managing tickets, employees often chose not to use a ticketing platform and resort to other ways (calls and emails) to seek help from suitable resources. 

However, when you carry out service automation with the help of AI, you can automate the ticketing system as well. As opposed to employees having to create and manage their support tickets, the job is done by the AI chatbots. When your employee is not happy with the L1 support and wants to get their case routed to an agent, the chatbot would automatically create a support ticket without the employee having to make any effort. 

This ticket is then managed by the chatbots until the case reaches the concerned agent and the issue is resolved. Finally, the virtual assistant would close the ticket and lodge the details into the database for future reference, 

This makes the entire ticketing process invisible for your employees, getting their work done with a few simple clicks as the entire burden is shouldered by the AI service desk.

A Single Integrated Support System 

In the case of traditional employee support, there was no single unified platform to provide support to the employees working in all the departments of an organization. While the majority of the support IT needs were provided by the It service desk and HR support was provided by the HR help desk, most of the other departments often faced difficulties in streamlining their support services. 

However, the modern AI-based service desk provides an integrated approach to employee services. A single platform acts as an IT service desk, HR help desk, marketing/sales help desk, finance help desk, and even for organized project management purposes. Instead of an organization having to spend on implementing different platforms for providing employment services to different departments, a single Ai-based service desk would cater to every employee in a single implementation. 

Understanding The Employees 

The future of employee services is definitely the use of service desks that understand them and their individual needs. When you use an AI-powered service desk, it keeps a track of all the interactions made with the employees and stores all valuable information about them in a database. This information can is used for providing context-based support to the employees. 

In simple words, when your employees ask a question to the service desk, the chatbot is already aware of their past interactions, the issues solved, and the solutions that worked for them in the past. This allows the system to provide solutions and suggestions that are unique to the concerned employee, helping them obtain wholesome employee support in no time. 

Also, when a case is routed by the AI chatbots to an agent, the agent is provided with the context of the issue and all relevant information about the employee to help them resolve the issue in the best way possible. 

Automated Employee Onboarding 

Apart from resolving the issues faced by your employees, service automation allows you to streamline your onboarding processes as well. The initial few months of an employee in an organization are very critical and the management should take all possible measures to onboard them in a suitable way. 

With the help of an AI-based service desk, you can automate specific onboarding processes such as emailing the new employees with a personalized message, company policies, their login credentials, and all the important resources that they might need to perform their job conveniently. Also, you can send a link to a virtual orientation program as soon as an employee joins your organization, making them familiar with the company and their peers. 

Integration With Online Collaborative Platforms 

Since the onset of the COVID situation, organizations across the globe have adopted online collaborative platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack, and many more. These platforms allow companies to set up virtual workspaces, interact with the employees, and ensure that everyone is on the same page. 

You can improve the experience of your employees working remotely by integrating your automated service desk with the collaborative platform used by your organization. This prevents your team from switching between platforms whenever they need to get their issues resolved or automate specific processes. A single UI would allow them to get their queries answered and implement the solutions to the work they are doing. 

Moreover, integrating a service desk with an online collaborative platform allows the platform to make use of the vast enterprise knowledge base stored within the system. This system stores answers to almost any question an employee might have and information about every employee that can be tracked to provide improved solutions. 

Getting Your Employees Trained 

Finally, an automated employee service desk can be effectively used for getting the employees trained. If you want your employees to get trained in specific micro-skills or provide them with alternatives to improve their skill-set, you can add relevant training resources to the knowledge base and let your employees train themselves without taking anyone's help. 

The Final Word 

Looking at the applications of service automation with AI, it is safe to say that the future of employee services lies with AI-powered service desks. It is advisable for organizations across the board to make the switch and witness higher employee engagement and productivity.