Even before the coronavirus pandemic made our lives more complex and spurred the growing remote workplace trend, automation was already transforming IT service delivery and support. When done well, workflow automation can reduce incident queues and streamline processes, saving time and money, while improving the user experience. Now more than ever, as the world adjusts to the new normal, there is an opportunity for the IT service desk to further accelerate the adoption of workflow automation or Conversational RPA. Here are three ways Conversational RPA can support your IT services:

1. Workflow automation for self-service and self-help immediacy

If your company doesn’t use a self-service portal or self-help system, then you’re creating more work for yourself and your IT department. Self-service helps users to quickly troubleshoot and problem-solve—dramatically reducing the contact volume for the IT service desk. While in most cases, a good agent conversation might gain higher user satisfaction, being forced to contact the service desk for every issue or piece of information is tedious. Workflow Automation is also practical because, unlike humans, AI-powered systems don’t need breaks and are available 24/7, saving time and enabling users to autonomously resolve their issues or get accurate answers quickly.

2. Conversational RPA improves agent productivity

Repetition is a severe problem for every service desk or customer support center. Monotonous tasks can weigh down agents, making them lose interest and lowering job satisfaction. Imagine giving the same answer to every caller multiple times a day. It is not productive, nor does it put the training and skills of support agents to optimal use.

Conversational RPA can address this monotony in many ways. For one, Conversational RPA reduces ticket volume, since the user won’t need to register a ticket. Automating the handling of typical service desk contacts such as account lockouts, employee onboarding, or password resets can free up agents to focus on more critical and challenging IT problems. With a large remote workforce urgently requiring support for routine processes, self-service powered by Conversational RPA can make a vast difference in cost-savings, timeliness, and user satisfaction.

However, reducing agent workload is only the first step. With more free time on their hands, agents can focus on performing tasks that add value to both company and end-users. Most importantly, agents can now have more impactful and higher-value conversations with users.

3. Service desk automation reduces costs and overhead

Dedicating trained agents to answering repetitive calls creates additional operating expenses in two ways:

-The first is when rising ticket volume leads your company to hire more agents to undertake the extra work.

-The second is through employee attrition because of job dissatisfaction, resulting in the need to hire new employees, with consequent added training costs.

Automation of internal and external service desks saves the time and money you would have to spend on recruitment and training. By resolving user requests autonomously through the omnichannel (web portal, chat, email, voice and mobile app) companies can reach 65-80 percent self-service resolutions, with 30-50 second mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR). This can increase customer satisfaction scores by as much as 85 percent and cut related costs by up to 90 percent.

Service desk automation is a vital step in giving users a platform to become self-sufficient. It improves the service experience for users who have both simple and complex issues: simple problems are resolved with automation, while agents reserve time and energy to tackle complex issues.

Redefine your employee and customer experience with the world’s first AI-driven service desk. Aisera’s AI Service Management (AISM) solutions provide immersive, engaging user experiences with full omnichannel support.

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