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There was a time when IT service desks had to deal with a set of complex processes that did not provide sufficient benefits to all employees in an organization. We must acknowledge that the concept of a service desk has evolved and become simpler due to the widespread adoption of digitization. The service desk automation revolution involves adopting a unified AI-powered platform. Being a service desk manager, I want to point out that conversational AI allows an IT service desk to automatically handle issues for your employees with a few simple clicks. This saves your staff time and effort while providing continuous help from an AI-powered IT service desk. You also know that organizations cannot afford long IT downtimes in today's fast-paced business environment. IT service desk automation is crucial for reducing long helpdesk lines and accelerating the response and resolution of support events and requests while maintaining quality. 

I believe a modernized and high-performing service desk is critical to the seamless execution of business operations. However, a pandemic-fueled perfect storm of remote employment, massive digital transformation programs, and excessive reliance on technology make help desk support more challenging to get right than ever. 

In order to fully comprehend the components of the IT service desk automation revolution, it is essential to comprehend the critical disadvantages of traditional service desk solutions that drove the revolution. Continue reading this blog to understand more about IT service desk automation and its benefits. But before we begin, let's understand more about traditional service desks. 

Why Are Traditional Service Desks Failing?

1. Lack of an Integrated Platform
   
   The traditional IT service desk tools often provided employee support that was fragmented. They did not provide all employees with a single platform to obtain all IT support. This required different employees to use different platforms for obtaining support from the agents.
   
   
2. Lack of Personalized Support
   
   The traditional service desks often failed to understand the context of the issue faced by the employees. This results in the service desks providing generic support that adds little value to the solutions provided. Especially in emergencies, employees cannot rely on traditional IT service desk to get their issues resolved and carry on with their work.
   
   
3. Delayed Support Due to Overburdened Agents
   
   The traditional IT service desks put support agents in the first level of support. This results in all the cases getting routed to the agents, making them overburdened with work. In such cases, the focus of the agent shifts from providing insightful solutions to getting the caseload cleared as soon as possible. This results in delayed support and degradation in the quality of support provided to the employees.
   
   
4. Performing Repetitive Tasks
   
   IT employees often spend a lot of their time catering to repetitive requests such as changing or resetting passwords. This results in the employees being distracted from their actual work while performing these tasks. As these requests keep pouring in from different employees all year round, it keeps your IT employees occupied instead of performing the tasks that matter.
   
   
5. Lack of Knowledge Base Optimization
   
   The traditional service desks were hardly able to optimize the valuable treasure of the enterprise knowledge base. They did not allow organizations to extract relevant data from the knowledge base according to the issues raised by the employees, resulting in an inadequate support system. 
   
   

What is Service Desk Automation?

We all are aware that service desks were developed to minimize the time employees spend on routine tasks and assist businesses in meeting their primary goal of providing seamless and personalized employees support and experience. Many employees still complain: "The system is always overwhelmed with tickets." And “There is a long wait before our issue is resolved”. 

To avoid such complaints, corporate companies must enhance their service desk capabilities and replace them with automated services. Why not fully utilize AI capabilities and make the most of them for business growth? Service desk automation streamlines every time-consuming manual process and removes the need for human intervention. 

Automation reduces the time service desk technicians take to resolve incoming tickets. They can assign and escalate problems, send and receive automatic notifications for specific tickets, distribute automated survey emails, and much more. All of the challenges of traditional service desks highlighted above can be efficiently addressed by adopting your organization's modern IT service desk. These service desks are AI-powered and comprehend the context of each issue addressed. It enables you to personalize the assistance to the exact needs and preferences of the individual in question. 

Integrating a sophisticated service desk with collaboration platforms is one of the most important aspects driving the IT service desk automation revolution. It is estimated that most IT service desks handle at least 1,000 incidents every month, with 17% handling more than 7,000 incidents, according to the Service Desk Institute . Rather than logging incidents manually, you can save a great deal of time if you log them automatically.

Integrating your AI service desk with your collaborative platform allows you to provide seamless and automated help to your employees on the same platform they use for work. This stops them from switching platforms to remedy their difficulties.

Read More: Routine Tasks That Are Killing Your Work Hours 

How Does Service Desk Automation Resolve Employees’ Issues?

Conversational chatbots are one of the most notable features of a modern IT service desk. As reported by Auxis, intelligent chatbots can handle around 20% of service desk issues and reduce operational costs by 30%. Not only does this reduce the pressure on human service desk agents, but it also boosts end-user happiness by allowing users to connect with the service desk and perhaps resolve the employees’ issues without waiting for a dedicated agent to look into the issue. To provide the initial level of employee help, these virtual assistants take the position of a support agent. They also assist your staff in navigating the site and doing a variety of tasks based on their preferences. 

The following are the crucial steps in obtaining automated support via AI chatbots: 

1. Ensure First Level of Support
   
   Instead of directly contacting support professionals, AI chatbots give your staff a seamless first level of support. Your employees can get personalized answers to all their basic queries about the company or their job right here.
   
   After feeding your knowledge base with relevant materials, the AI chatbots scan the platform for the best possible answers to the difficulties your employees are experiencing. When a query or an issue is posed, the chatbots respond with a personalized response in a matter of seconds.
   
   
2. Relevant Cases Will Be Routed to Right Service Desk Agent
   
   Service desk automation offers your staff a perfect blend of automated and dedicated help personnel. If an employee wishes for a support agent to address their matter, they can start a chat and issue the necessary command. This would allow the chatbots to route the relevant case to the most appropriate agents, who would investigate the situation thoroughly. The chatbots will notify the staff when the problem is rectified by connecting the two.
   
   
3. Connect with Live Agent
   
   Ultimately, if an employee wants to interact with the service desk agents, an automated IT service desk would enable them to start a chat on collaborative platforms like MS Teams and Slack. This allows your staff to communicate with support agents via chat or phone.
   
   As a result, the wave of service desk automation ensures that any issues encountered by all of your employees are resolved in the best possible way. An automated service desk helps your employees every step of the way in obtaining personalized support, from acquiring the automated first level of support to facilitating real engagement with the agents.
   
   
4. Invisible Ticketing System to Resolve Issues
   
   Getting ticketing systems automated is another major step leading up to the service desk automation revolution.
   
   A modern service desk automates all stages needed in a ticketing system so, employees will feel less lost and confused. Rather than going through a lengthy process, automated service desks enable employees to create tickets invisibly, conversing with AI chatbots. They can create support tickets and route them to an agent using a simple chat. The chatbots communicate all critical information about the situation to the appropriate agent. This gives them enough context to provide appropriate answers to the employee's needs.
   
   
5. Conversational Microlearning Approach to Employee Training
   
   Service desk automation goes beyond resolving issues reported by your employees. An automated service desk may also assist you in training your teams in specific skills through the conversational microlearning method. Microlearning provides the right training and knowledge about certain topics to your staff in the form of bite-sized content. Instead of exhausting them by making them read manuals and handbooks, microlearning allows you to train your personnel in as little as 15 minutes every day. Breaking down a topic into smaller chunks allows you to keep up with employees' limited attention spans. It is much more likely that your employees will remember the lessons if they grasp tiny bits of information every day. 
   
   

Conclusion

I hope this blog post has provided you with relevant information about how service desk automation can help your organization optimize its processes and provide employees with comprehensive support. There is no doubt that service desk automation can help your support team and employees boost their overall performance and organizational ROI.

A modern service desk provides teams with win-win benefits by increasing productivity, removing monotonous manual tasks, lowering costs, eliminating errors, streamlining processes, and offering fast, smooth, and seamless employee support experiences matched with customer requirements and availability. Taking repetitive, process-driven tasks off the service desk dramatically reduces ticket numbers, allowing service desks to become proactive, high-performing teams instead of reactive firefighters.

If you want to know more about service desk automation, read our blogs here