Top Processes to Automate at Your Employee Service Desk Achieve greater employee productivity by implementing a modern AI-powered service desk.

Process automation is the key to performing a range of business processes in the age of digitization. Over time, processes have become increasingly complicated due to a high work volume within a limited period. This makes it difficult for organizations to stick to the traditional approach of carrying out tasks manually.

When it comes to providing streamlined and integrated employee support, modern service desks provide the right amount of automation to an organization. A good employee service desk is equipped with AI functionality to provide personalized support to the employees.

Unlike traditional service desks that require employees to manage support tickets and handle incidents manually, the modern service desks allow your employees to auto-resolve issues with ease and efficiency.

Before getting into the processes that a good service desk should automate, let's understand the importance of process automation in service desks.

Related: 10 Tips to Boost Employee Productivity and Skyrocket Performance

The importance of automation in employee service desks

• Faster resolution of issues
  There may be situations where employees need to get their issues resolved immediately, such as a system breaking down right before an important presentation, bugs encountered within software before a crucial meeting, etc. In these cases, organizations cannot afford to keep their employees waiting until their case is routed to an agent to be resolved.
  
  Automated employee service desks allow your employees to obtain quick, personalized, effective help as soon as they encounter an issue. The platform allows them to chat with virtual assistants and get help from experts without wasting any time.

• Saving money
  Going the traditional route, organizations spend a fortune, from hiring extra support agents and trainers to dedicating employees to carry out the repetitive processes. A traditional employee service desk would undoubtedly cost you a lot more than its modern counterpart. No extra agents or employees are needed when you have a virtual assistant or chatbot.

• Reduced scope of errors
  No matter how competent your team is, there will always be some scope of human error when you implement the traditional and manual approach to providing employee support. When you automate support processes using modern employee service desks, you can increase the accuracy of work and the assistance provided to your employees. Machines can be programmed to work a certain way without being altered, so you can leverage the precision of your business processes to a considerable extent.

• Increased employee engagement
  When employee issues can be auto-resolved, they feel genuinely driven to work for your organization. And this, in turn, increases employee engagement. Process automation allows your employees to obtain quick resolutions without having to knock on multiple doors and seek help from multiple sources.

• Increased employee productivity
  When your employees are more engaged at work, they tend to perform better and do their best work. This increases the overall productivity of your organization and motivates your employees to leverage their skills.

• Ensuring best practices
  When you automate processes carried out by your employee service desk, you can ensure that only the best practices are carried out to provide holistic support to your employees.

• Making your processes industrialized
  A process is said to be industrialized if it is a repeatable function that can execute with ease, deliver consistent results, and can be scaled for improvements in the future. Using an automated employee service desk allows you to industrialize your businesses to ensure ease of operation and high scalability.

• Improved task scheduling
  When your organization undertakes a plethora of processes daily, it becomes necessary to schedule tasks to keep all the processes on track. Automated service desks allow you to schedule tasks to be performed according to your requirements. This helps you keep track of all your processes without having to be consciously aware of them.

Related: Will a Chatbot Really Save Your Company Money?

Processes that should be automated in a good employee service desk

An excellent modern service desk should be equipped with AI and other process automation features that allow you to provide quick and personalized support to your employees. You and your employees can use these service desks to automate many tasks so you get the best results with minimal effort.

Here are some of the important processes that should be automated in your employee service desk:

• Resolution of employee issues
  Unlike the traditional service desks that route all cases to support agents, modern service desks automate the process of obtaining solutions to your employees' issues. This process is carried out with the help of conversational AI.
  
  Conversational AI allows your employees to interact with AI chatbots instead of talking to live support agents. The chatbots in modern service desks are designed to readily provide answers to all the basic questions your employees may have in a matter of a few seconds. Your employees can converse with these virtual assistants to explain their issues and find a personalized solution.
  
  An automated assistant engages your employees as soon as they log in to the service desk. They can chat with the bots and ask questions or raise issues they have been facing. This would prompt the AI chatbots to scan your enterprise knowledge base and return with the most suitable answers. Most employee cases are resolved at this stage as the virtual assistants provide many possible solutions and resources to employees.
  
  However, if your employees need a deeper perspective on the solution, they can choose to get their cases routed to a support agent. The AI chatbot transfers the conversation to a suitable support agent, providing all possible context to the agent to help them provide an effective solution.
  
  The AI chatbots handle all communication between the concerned employee and the support agent. Finally, the agent would provide a solution to the issue faced by your employee via chatbots, streamlining the entire support ecosystem.

• Automated ticketing system
  Traditional employee service desks use a ticketing system that allows employees to create, track and close support tickets by themselves. This often resulted in employees not well-versed with the platform finding themselves confused and lost. The inability to use a manual ticketing system can result in employees sticking to making calls and writing emails to find solutions to their issues.
  
  This is what makes it essential to make an automated ticketing system in the modern service desks. The AI-driven service desks make ticketing processes invisible to the employees by automating almost every action performed. When an employee decides to seek help from a dedicated support agent, the service desk automatically creates a support ticket and starts tracking the issue.
  
  The system sends automated alerts and updates as their issue gets resolved by the agent. Once the problem is solved and the employee is satisfied, the system automatically closes the ticket and logs all relevant details into the database for future reference. This way, your employees can get their issues resolved without having to go through the hassles of the manual ticketing system.

• Seamless microlearning
  If you are willing to train your employees in specific micro-skills, you can save the training costs by providing automated training to your employees through your service desk. If training forms an integral part of your work culture, your service desk should certainly automate microlearning. Here, instead of hiring trainers and organizing workshops, you can feed your enterprise knowledge base with necessary training resources. This allows your employees to learn new skills at their own pace and convenience.
  
  Automated microlearning features also make your employees self-reliant. Because they can train at their own pace, it gives them enough confidence and motivation to work harder and give their best. This increases the overall employee engagement and the productivity of your organization.

• Automated employee onboarding
  Onboarding is an activity that organizations often overlook. It is essential to understand that the first few weeks — or months — are critical for an employee to adjust to a new organization.
  
  You can use your employee service desk to automate the onboarding processes, especially if the employees are working remotely. You can send automated emails to welcome your new employees on their first day and provide them with details about their teams, leaders, login credentials, company policies and orientation/training events.

The final word

Over time, process automation has become an integral part of our lives. Automating some of these processes will help improve your support services and tend to your employees in the best way possible.