Technological progress is an exciting time for all aspects of IT, not just the headline-grabbing innovations. Particularly, there are plenty of opportunities to grow and evolve the help desk. In an article for InformationWeek, Andrew Froehlich discusses the variety of new opportunities there are to expand the capabilities of your help desk right now.
Better Help
For one thing, a significant portion of the help desk experience can be virtualized now for anywhere assistance. At the least, users can submit the details of a ticket themselves, and in the best case scenario, AI and automation will render the solution users need. APIs are also enabling third-party customer relation tools to integrate into collaboration platforms, expanding possibilities. The result of that is all channels for communicating technical problems can become centralized under the same roof, which in turn speeds up response times. Froehlich adds this:
… some IT departments are moving in the direction where the first line of response isn’t a human technician, but an AI bot that is programmed to act as a virtual technician. Bot platforms have made tremendous strides over the past couple of years. They are now fully capable of handling repetitive tasks far faster than human counterparts. Additionally, a single IT admin managing a bot platform can perform the work of several front-line help desk employees. Bots also never take a day off. Gartner Research claims that 20-30% of help desk requests are for password resets. If those resets could be handed off to a bot, that alone can significantly free up support staff to take on more challenging issues.
One more thing that modern help desks can take advantage of is advanced proactive monitoring of issues, such that they get resolved before users realize there is a problem. Such monitoring is being built in the cloud, to monitor resources on the corporate network and also in other clouds.
These are some of the ways that help desks can transform dramatically. For further discussion, you can view the original article here: https://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/it-strategy/the-next-generation-it-help-desk-is-achievable-today/a/d-id/1329879
