Heading

The events of the last couple of years have provided new momentum and urgency about elevating the discussion around employee experience and engagement. Although CIOs and CEOs always talked about employee experience, it was not one of the top priorities and influencers in decisions. In mid-sized or larger organizations, a person was often designated as head of the employee experience – however, this person was often not a decision-maker in key technology or other decisions that affected employee experience. Rather this person was supposed to coordinate with various internal stakeholders and enable a better employee experience. When it came to decision time, other criteria like technology stack, commercials or vendor partnerships were often viewed as key – and employee experience was not the determining factor.  

However – all that has changed in the last two years. Let us have a quick look at why this seismic shift is essential in a service desk context and what features a decision-maker needs to evaluate a product fitment from an employee experience and engagement perspective.  

What is employee experience and engagement?  

Employee experience is what an employee feels about his/her transactions as a service consumer. Employees need enterprise support in many ways and times – and all of those transactions cumulatively reflect on what the employee feels about the level of service the enterprise provides it. As per the report of Bonfyre, around 80% of HR and corporate business leaders believe that employee experience and employee engagement was “important” or “very important” to them. The survey found that only 22% of these leaders believed their organization had excelled at establishing differentiated employee experiences.  

Here are some examples of what constitutes employee experience: 

• Employee onboarding
  
  
• Provisioning software and hardware
  
  
• Access to enterprise knowledge needed to do your day-to-day job
  
  
• IT service desk assistance
  
  
• HR service desk assistance
  
  
• Any other relevant service desk (Finance, Facilities etc)
  
  
• Understanding and working through complex business processes
  
  
• Getting updates on enterprise policy or strategy
  
  
• Upskilling/reskilling
  
  
• Employee offboarding
  
  Based on how these transactions/activities are conducted, employees start to form an opinion about the enterprise service.
  
  

Rezolve.ai views employee engagement by two outcomes

1. Does the enterprise understand employees’ issues, concerns, aspirations, plans etc.
   
   
2. Does the employee understand enterprise strategy, direction, targets, and objectives- and their own role?
   
   The tools for employee engagement are used to both formal and informal. Examples include:  
   
   1. An office outing with boss and co-workers
   
   2. Management of townhall
   
   3. Email describing a policy change
   
   4. New application training
   
   5. Employee Survey
   
   6. Appraisal
   
   

The pandemic and hybrid work have reduced the informal channels/opportunities of employee engagement – thereby creating fragility in employee engagement. A report by Haiilo, employee engagement boosts employee productivity in the workplace. An engaged workforce outperforms a non-engaging workforce. Employee engagement is associated with 21% higher profitability for companies. It is more important than ever to use the right and modern tools to foster employee engagement.

The changing ownership of employee experience and engagement

Traditionally employee experience was fragmented and inconsistent. Employees had to use different sources/departments for their needs – emails, phone calls, different applications, intranet and so on.  

Channels like Microsoft Teams and Slack are changing that becoming the new water cooler, the new town hall – providing a simple, easy, unified channel for all employee needs. Additionally, many enterprises have been moving away from individual service desks to enterprise service desks. Subsequently, employee experience responsibilities are shifting to the Enterprise Service desk. Over the next few years, we expect to see “employee support & engagement” as a single shared services function, providing a consistent experience and “one-stop-shop” experience to employees.  

Desired employee experience features

1. Primary channel MS Teams or Slack
   
   A modern service desk should be available on channels like MS Teams or Slack for easy access. There is no need for employees to go to the old-fashioned ticketing system anymore. Ticket creation, ticket updation, interacting with the agent – all of this can be achieved within MS Teams.
   
   
2. Virtual assistant 24*7
   
   Employees work odd hours now a days – and need a service desk without time limits. An AI-powered service desk like Rezolve.ai remains available 24*7, auto-resolving many of the issues and queuing up others.
   
   
3. Human experts for more complex issues
   
   More complex issues are smartly rerouted to the right service desk agents OR subject matter experts (SMEs). This is done either via assigning tickets, or Live chat – or both.
   
   
4. Most issues are resolved within seconds
   
   Traditional ticketing systems are used to “Track” tickets. Modern service desk solutions like Rezolve.ai auto-resolve 40 to 65% of issues. This provides instantaneous resolution for most issues – freeing up the time for support agents.
   
   
5. Multi-department (ESM)
   
   Although many traditional systems are still trying to become “Enterprise Service Management solution – Rezolve.ai started the journey as a multi-department solution. Any kind of employee support is provided from a single app and routed correctly to different departments.
   
   
6. Easy access to enterprise knowledge
   
   A mature enterprise knowledge management solution wedded to the virtual assistant (VA) is a must-have in a modern service desk to auto-deflect employee issues. This smart KM should be able to auto-learn and organically grow. The content should be available in small bite-sized pieces – and in multimedia (text, images, video etc)
   
   
7. Automated employee onboarding/offboarding
   
   Inefficient employee onboarding and offboarding is a known pain-point for most enterprises – and helps new employees formulate all-important first impressions about the organization they are joining. A new employee support solution should come with a built–in with a modern service desk – not something that needs to be designed from scratch.
   
   
8. Automated software provisioning & desktop support
   
   Many employees are not working on the same premises as the service desk agents. An AI-powered service desk may help you automate desktop-level automation. Rezolve.ai’s integrations with third-party and open-source RMM tools allow virtual assistants (VA) to perform actions previously unimaginable – like configuring a new laptop, troubleshooting one drive, installing software, restarting outlook, kicking off Powershell scripts and more.
   
   
9. Personalized responses
   
   How nice would it be if different users get different and appropriate responses based on their profile, geolocation, roles, employment status, project roles etc.
   
   
10. Help with complex business processes
    
    An employee sometimes needs to navigate through multiple complex business processes. Examples include – requesting access for some application, submitting expenses, applying for leave, changing W-4 details or address, harassment reporting, submitting proof of vaccination, performing annual security testing of an application, preparing for an audit – and the list goes on. A virtual assistant (VA) can help the employee navigate through these processes and provide handholding.
    
    
11. Notifications and surveys
    
    Products that allow you to engage employees are at a premium now a days – however, these functionalities need to be integrated into a single employee support and engagement platform instead of being a stand-alone product. Employees love getting quick notifications within MS Teams or even responding to a pulse survey that takes a minute or two about a topic important to them.
    
    
12. Microlearning
    
    While traditional learning management systems are good for long-form training on (largely) static training material – a microlearning system within MS Teams allows the enterprise to update, upskill, and reinforce employees’ knowledge about key topics. As part of the employee support and engagement platform, employee benefits from learning through the same channel where they get support or get other help.  
    
    

Conclusion: Your roadmap to better employee experience & engagement  

While evaluating your next employee support product, we recommend looking at the bigger picture. Enterprises have too much software, and many tech leaders are pushing to simplify the application landscape. Employees love a single channel/location with a conversational interface that can bring help and engagement to them, no matter what. Enterprise might not start at a place where they use all the features mentioned above at the beginning – but they can reach that desired state in time. Design a roadmap that works for your organization based on your needs while being a catalyst of change.