As businesses and enterprises look to trim support costs, IT and other departments seek to improve the free lower tiers of support through the adoption of chatbots and open source information, saving higher levels of support for more serious issues.

Workers are turning to many different avenues for help and support

Perhaps it was the hold music on the IT support phone queue, the lack of an email or “instant” message response. But, more and more workers are finding their own technical support solutions for IT, mobile, printers, web problems and other issues. This is good, as it can free up the IT support for more complex issues, but it can also be bad if the user finds the wrong solution, or damaging if they vanish down some dark web fake support site.

Whatever the cause, an increasing percentage of users are taking things into their own hands when it comes to solving support issues. Rather than consider this a relief, support business and department leaders should ensure that workers have access to an instant and free tier of support, with the chatbot in pole position to take up the role.

Chatbots can be built for free within a business environment using dedicated cloud solutions like the free-to-use SnatchBot or increasingly as part of Google, IBM and other cloud offerings, or even Facebook for Business. The bot can be built based on existing IT support scripts, FAQs, collected knowledge and other official resources.

They can also feature custom help and advice gathered from across the business, allowing many workers to contribute to the project and to better understand that the chatbot is there to help the business and is not a threat to jobs or career progression.