IT self-service portals may be on their way out, but the need for self-service is growing, particularly as the hybrid workforce increasingly relies on immediacy and removal of friction.
This is according to Rohitkumar Nair, director, segment marketing at Freshworks, speaking ahead of this week’s Freshworks webinar on IT self-service.
“Research in recent years has shown that IT self-service portals have failed to deliver the expected benefits and are dying out," says Nair. "Among the areas where these portals failed was that they did not deliver consumer-level experiences, as employees may not have known where to find them or how to use them, and they were often designed with cost reduction – and not employee experience – in mind.”
However, this doesn’t mean that the need for self-service capabilities is dead: in fact, it is growing, Nair says.
“IT support, and self-service capabilities, are all the more important as a remote and hybrid workforce depends on digital technologies to remain productive. At the same time, IT departments are again having to do more with less. Traditional self-service portals have to be replaced with intelligent self-service channels to meet these needs.”
Traditional self-service portals have to be replaced with intelligent self-service channels to meet these needs.
Rohitkumar Nair, Freshworks.
Smart technologies, easily accessible from your mobile, enhanced with intelligent automation, integrated self-service capabilities within digital environments, can now deliver on the promise of self-service that actually improves employee experiences and business outcomes, he says.
Nair notes that Freshworks believes every employee should be able to receive assistance at any time, self-serve on any channel, and receive instant resolutions for at least simple queries.
“We take IT support to where employees are. IT teams are leveraging Freshservice’s Virtual Agent, powered by Freddy to provide a best-in-class digital experience to their employees with an intelligent and predictive conversational AI solution,” he says.
“Requesters can now chat with Virtual Agent in the most natural way possible to get work done. Virtual Agent uses natural language understanding (NLU) to provide users with relevant articles based on their query. The Virtual Agent also points users to the incident form to report the issue, if users find the suggested article is not matching their query."
The pre-trained Virtual Agent can be deployed without any additional cost or loss of agent hours, deflecting tickets and automating tasks right from day one, he adds.
"With Virtual Agent, take self-service to your employees, 'meet' them where they are, and provide a delightful employee experience.”
Discover how to drive IT efficiency and agent productivity
Freshworks, in partnership with ITWeb, is hosting a live one-hour webinar about the changing face of IT self-service, on 19 May at 11am
Experts and practitioners will present insights on the emerging shift-left strategies being adopted to improve employee satisfaction and agent productivity.
To find out more and register for this free webinar, go here.
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