Chatbots aren’t just for customers. They can provide useful support throughout a business, including your service desk.

Service desks are the hub of your support. The service desk team not only supports your customers but also manages internal IT. They’re busy handling tickets, maintaining office network infrastructure, speaking to customers, and dealing with all manner of technical difficulties your departments could find themselves facing.

A tech support chatbot is just the thing to support a stretched service desk. From organisation, to simplification, to satisfaction, we explain some of the benefits of using a chatbot to build a smarter service desk.

Organisation

Chatbots are great at keeping your service desk organised. They can help with:

• Categorising tickets

A chatbot makes for a speedy ticket mediator. Bots can categorise tickets based on the type of issue, such as a hardware problem, software error, or authentication issue. Likewise, a bot will route tickets based on sender information, sorting by department, customer status or location. The bot can chat to the user to identify and categorise their issue, and smoothly direct them through next steps. So, one of the most simple but effective benefits of using a chatbot is in quick, fluent categorisation. Your agents save time on fact-finding, and your service desk is clearly segmented and ordered.

• Supporting self-service

A chatbot can direct users to relevant available content. By taking in keywords and understanding syntax, bots are then able to suggest useful self-help resources. The user can attempt to solve the issue themselves, rather than submitting a ticket and waiting for help. Facilitating an easy self-service option with a chatbot means fewer tickets. Plus, it helps customers feel capable. When people can help themselves, they’re less likely to request help for simple queries.

• Optimal transfers

Another of the key benefits of using a chatbot in your service desk is the slick tag-teaming between AI and agent. If the chatbot can’t supply an answer, it will transfer the ticket to the best team member for the job. Your smarter service desk will see an increase in efficiency, as the chatbot helps queries get solved faster. It can deal with the basics, then seamlessly hand over to your team members when the user gets to the nitty-gritty.

• Boosting productivity

All this means boosted efficiency. A chatbot removes the pesky hurdles stopping your service desk team from getting on with higher-ranking jobs. Productivity is increased because your team isn’t held back by repetitive queries or tedious long processes. So, a chatbot-fuelled smarter service desk means your team can make the best use of their time more often.

Simplification

Simplification is one of the other major benefits of using a chatbot in your service desk. A bot can:

• Handle process driven answers

If an answer involves slugging through long processes that are often repetitive (internal hardware requests, for example), a chatbot can take care of it. By taking these queries away from agents, the chatbot prevents team members from getting tied up in script.

• Offer answers to common questions

A support chatbot can answer common or simple questions immediately, meaning that the user can implement the advice and get on with their day quickly. Instant gratification like this often means increased loyalty.

• Reduce the number of tickets

By taking the simple, repetitive and process driven actions away from the service desk, the only tickets the human team deals with are the ones that need the most attention – and are the most challenging. The robotic tasks are left to the robots.

Satisfaction

Finally, chatbots can drive satisfaction for customers and colleagues alike. A chatbot helps with:

• Employee satisfaction

The benefits of using a chatbot as part of your smarter service desk extend into employee welfare. Simply, a supported support team is more satisfied. The better organisation of tickets coupled with the reduction in ticket volume results in less stress for an over-stretched team. Plus, the automated handling of tedious tickets increases job satisfaction by keeping tasks interesting and challenging.

• Improved satisfaction across service desk users

A chatbot incorporated into a smart service desk means smoother overall service. It helps reduce wait times – with simple queries getting immediate responses. Plus, problems are solved by the best person every time. All this amounts to great user satisfaction.

Benefits of using a chatbot: the weigh-up

The benefits of using a chatbot within your service desk are undeniable. But to build a truly smart service desk, you should also ensure that your chatbot works alongside other materials and tools, not apart from them.

The best chatbots integrate with your human agents, your CRM, and your self-service resources. They’re carefully implemented and fine-tuned to create a seamless journey that’s consistent with your other customer service channels.

A chatbot will infuse your service desk with automated efficiency and artificial intelligence. With a smart approach to how, and what, you automate, this can lead to very real support improvements.

Useful links

The WhosOn chatbot

Chatbots: what are they good for?

The impact of AI on customer experience