30 Mar
How Chatbots Can Help IT Helpdesk Teams Hit SLA Target
30 percent of tickets are password-reset related despite the fact that 69% of support teams allow their customers to reset at least some of their passwords without contacting the IT helpdesk
– HDI
Ensuring that an IT help desk or service desk is running hassle free at all times is an ongoing challenge for enterprises across the world. IT is the backbone of the modern organization – all employees are highly dependent on efficient running of IT services. It is, therefore, not surprising that they expect an instant resolution for the IT issues they run into on a frequent basis.
Especially towards the end of holidays, complications seem to arise at a faster pace and at greater volumes. As employees return to work, there is a barrage of requests for password resets. Sounds like a simple task, but owing to its repetitive nature when multiplied by the number of employees across the organization, this endeavour becomes rather challenging and time-consuming.
A BRIEF LOOK AT THE CHALLENGES FACED BY IT HELPDESK TEAMS:
Employees waiting endlessly on call to get in touch with the IT team.
Manually creating tickets for every issue that occurs across the organization
Ticket dispatch to route all incoming tickets to the relevant technicians. As service requests can come from a variety of channels, such as emails, calls, chat, ticket dispatch can be challenging
Incident management, which is closely aligned with the helpdesk. The service desk is challenged with resolving any disruptions and restoring normal services as quickly as possible.
Lack of streamlined communication with end users on the status of the ticket. Too much time is wasted on operating across too many communication channels, such as email, chat, call, etc.
Several help desks are still stuck using legacy systems and outdated tools, which further complicates achieving efficiency and providing quick support. Both users and IT help desk staff are left fighting an uphill battle.
Interesting though, most IT helpdesk tickets are actually low-value items and typically repetitive. Often, they are issues related to password resets, or the VPN not working, etc. These are not issues that require extensive expertise to resolve, but they are still time-consuming and detract from your helpdesk from issues that require their deep-seated attention.
When your helpdesk is busy resolving low-value issues, it greatly diminishes the productivity of your employees as well as helpdesk teams. The subsequent outcome is that SLAs are often missed and the cost per ticket rises rapidly.
What organizations will need to consider strongly is finding a way to enable their support teams to spend more time on addressing complex issues and high-value tickets.
IT HELPDESK SLA BEST PRACTICES – CAN IT SELF SERVICE PORTALS HELP?
In an effort to address this challenge of the IT helpdesk expertise not being leveraged efficiently, several organizations have deployed IT self-service portals for automation.
However, they come with their own set of challenges:
Flaws in user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) across most of these portals has resulted in low adoption rates
End users find it bothersome to have to fill out the same information repeatedly, when creating an incident report
Checking ticket status can also be challenging due to inefficiencies in navigation
While a few portals have successfully overcome issues related to information accessibility and workflows, they still haven’t been able to set in motion a streamlined and collaborative method of ticket resolution
Learn more: Why Your Employee IT Self-Service Needs Bots Instead of Portals
HOW TO IMPROVE SLA PERFORMANCE -CAN CHATBOTS BE THE ANSWER?
Forward-thinking organizations are increasingly turning to chatbots in order to equip their IT helpdesk teams to perform with greater efficiency, as well as provide employees with a true self-service option.
WHAT CAN CHATBOTS IMPROVE SLA PERFORMANCE:
Employees can interact with the Bot to resolve most of the common issues without any intervention from Helpdesk staff, thereby effectively reducing the number of tickets
Bots can help employees raise a ticket which then can be routed to the right agent or the bot can seamlessly handoff the conversation to an agent if there comes a point where it can’t help the user any more: maintaining employee experience
Bots can help the agent resolve more requests by making all the relevant information available – Effectively reducing the time spent on each ticket
Agents motivation will be high as they can spend more time on high-value issues while the bot answers repetitive questions and resolves low-value requests.
Chatbots enable employees to raise tickets, find out ticket status and get their issues resolved, all by simply sending natural language questions to bots.
Below is a glimpse of important use cases that bots help accomplish:
Creating tickets and updating their status on an ongoing basis
Providing status updates and relevant details to the end user
Enabling lookups for access requests
Sending alerts for instant action and resolution
Enabling the bot to address frequently asked questions across various channels, such as live chat, Skype for Business, Email, and so on
Bots help save time and effort for the IT helpdesk staff, by addressing and resolving all basic queries from the knowledge basis. They also provide the option to raise a ticket, in case an issue is not resolved or even connect to a live support agent, in case of urgent and complex queries. Bots can be made to be available 24*7 to help employees across a variety of channels, such as Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, Slack and so on.
As bots handle all day to day IT issues, a lot of time, money and effort is saved for your organization, which enables your helpdesk staff to concentrate on resolving queries that require deep expertise. As your staff becomes more productive, your cost per ticket diminishes by over 25%.
This is a particularly efficient solution for when your organization scales as well because the helpdesk would still only be approached for complex queries.
An efficient IT Helpdesk bot increases productivity, minimizes disruptions and keeps employees aware of ticket status. However, in order to truly harness the value, a bot can bring to your organization, ensure that it integrates with all of your current applications. This element of integration will further amplify employee engagement and collaboration across these platforms.
Are you considering leveraging AI bots for your IT helpdesk? Our AI-Powered IT helpdesk chatbot might interest you.
If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.
Rakesh Reddy is our co-founder and a serial entrepreneur. A mechanical engineer by education, his business vision and direction as Chairman & CEO drives us to excellence. An avid team player, he works with his executive team to trigger growth for Acuvate across geographies and business areas. His business acumen, strategy and planning skills catalyzed the growth of Acuvate since its inception. A natural leader, he has been able to successfully bootstrap his companies, help win customers and successfully constitute the company’s board and a robust leadership team.
Rakesh Reddy