The service desk has to change to deal with a new generation of informed users.
First, the service desk should be a place of helpful expertise, delivered with the same eye to customer experience you would find in any other customer-facing operation.
It will continue to be an entry place for support, but will likely see a step-change in how it operates. It’s a destination that will increasingly be about technology and convenience as much as it is about resource and know how.
One major shift will be the degree to which users can self-serve. It’s a desire seen with consumers in every other sector, and there is no reason that the service desk should be any different.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can be used to aid repeatable processes. For example, chatbots can act as the entry point within the service desk and be trained to have ‘intelligent’ conversations with users.
The end user could go to the service desk portal with a problem and the chatbot would mine its knowledge base to pose intelligent questions in order to diagnose it. The user would then receive a self-help form or self-help video that would guide them to resolving it.
There is still work to be done. While the technology is there, integrating it all together successfully is still in its infancy, but it holds real promise, especially when linked to a layer of RPA that would let a chatbot not only diagnose an issue but also fulfil a request.
RPA via chatbots means a rapid response for the user whilst freeing up the ‘humans’ on the service desk to spend more time focussing on the problems not so readily solved. This enable a service that can run quickly, consistently, 24 hours a day.