4 Challenges Your IT Service Desk Faces Everyday

Integrations

Service desks are always stifled with requests and calls. Any service user reaching the service desk commonly complains of a negative user experience. This, interaction later hampers the relationship between the user and the service desk.

But this situation can be easily avoided using automation as a solution, and more specifically using a bot.

In brief – a bot is a simple conversational interface that interacts, captures and resolves a user’s request. These interfaces thrive on websites and/or messenger platforms.

Now, intrinsic to the Service Desk, an AI-driven bot can solve these 4 problems.

  1. Numerous requests that inbound the service desk
  2. Long resolution times and lost issues
  3. Recurring Issues
  4. Improper incident control and management.

Solving Problem #1 - Numerous Requests that inbound the Service Desk

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Statistics backs me, when I say that the average number of calls that a 10-employee service desk receives per day is more than 300. This call flow creates a situation, where users find it difficult to speak to an executive and find a solution to their problem; consequentially creating a negative user experience. And instead of adopting lean strategy, enterprises expand their Service desks, eventually ending up increasing their spends.

However, this situation can be avoided by adopting a “SINGLE” Service Desk Bot – since, agent deflection, and the ability to handle multiple calls simultaneously is one of the best benefits that come along.

The benefits again do not stop there – Cost reduction is also an advantage that crops up, almost instantly. Wondering how? Well, it costs about 1.60$/Minute to resolve Tier-1 queries via the traditional route, whereas a bot will cost the enterprise ~0.15$/Minute to resolve such queries.

Solving Problem #2 - Long resolution times and lost issues 

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As mentioned earlier, service desks receive a huge number of calls in a day. In such a work environment, certain tickets take a lot of resolution time or remain unresolved or lost. Again, this where a bot can be of great help.

After being integrated onto the enterprise’s ITSM tool (ServiceNow, Remedy etc.,) the bot will start handling interactions and seamlessly raise & assign tickets to the necessary work groups. The, workgroups later work on the assigned tickets and resolve the issues assigned.

Productivity is also a benefit that creeps in; since bots can streamline the process of ticket creation and assigning them.

Solving Problem #3 – Recurring issues

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A bulk of calls, that inbound the service desk are mostly to address Tier – 1 queries (tech specs of a product, assistance on account lock out etc.,), with them frequenting the most. Now, these issues cost anywhere between $5-$15 per resolution, enabling us to deduce that a bulk of costs are due to these call drivers.

Here, the bot can step in and resolve the queries through self-help options, such as sending account links to your mobile, answering FAQs and by raising tickets on your behalf (if the complexity is high). The result of this interaction; least IT ticket backlog, greater resolution & compliance

Solving Problem #4 – Improper Incident Control and Management.

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Most of the service desks now are reactive, rather than proactive. Owing to which they always receive a tide of calls every day.

Bots here can be real life savers, by bringing a method to the madness. Well, if you are wondering how, then I’d say through Analytics (which is a feature to be looked out for, while choosing a bot vendor)

Analytics or rather bot analytics will help you categorize the call types and the related tickets that inbound the service desk. This methodology will enable your business to create incident management lifecycles, further laying the foundation for a proactive maintenance.

With this I conclude how Service Desk bots can reduce the top challenges in a Service Desk. However, these bots are only the beginning and have actually paved way for better proactive systems called AIOps, which will change the way operation are being transformed.