Customer requests are often prioritized over internal requests, however, leaving internal requests to collect dust often leads to inefficiencies in the workplace, wasted time, and negative employee experiences. Deploying an internal helpdesk to assist internal teams will empower people with the support they need and prevent important requests from slipping through the cracks.
Helpdesks enable teammates to help themselves.
If you already have a repository based on frequently asked questions, it’s easy to make level 0 support accessible through an internal helpdesk. Moreover, choosing a helpdesk with a built-in chatbot would enable employees to get instant answers without getting up from their desk, searching through a repository, hopping on the phone, waiting for an email response, or lighting a distress flare.
We’ve noticed that our customers often use Capacity to answer frequently asked questions that revolve around benefits, company policies, open enrollment, updating personal information, etc. However, there are many more use cases for internal helpdesks.
For example, here’s a list of information that you upload into your helpdesk’s an internal knowledge base:
- Regulatory and compliance information
- Employee handbooks
- Onboarding material
- Details about tech updates
- Operational metrics
- Current customer lists
- Marketing collateral
- RFP responses
Internal helpdesks keep extra cooks out of the kitchen.
Placing a designated teammate or team (based on the size of your organization) in charge of the knowledge that supports a helpdesk is a helpful practice that can ensure your organization has access to clean and consistent knowledge. In other words, this eliminates the possibility of duplicate information and simplifies the process of updating knowledge. These people act as the keepers of your org’s knowledge—AKA, “CoPilots.”
Above all, one of the most important responsibilities of CoPilots includes responding to unanswered inquiries. If the CoPilot knows the answer, they’ll respond and add that new information into the knowledge repository for future reference. However, if they don’t have an answer, they can simply forward the question to a subject matter expert. The CoPilot or expert will ensure the answer is accurate and the process is streamlined. The rest of the organization will remain uninterrupted.
Helpdesks make it easier for everyone to streamline their work.
When there’s a lack of information and direction, it’s easier for a team to go rogue and create makeshift solutions to problems that have already been solved. Not only does this waste time, but it detracts people from focusing on their primary roles and responsibilities.
With a helpdesk, the team members who ask the questions don’t have to jump through hoops to get an answer. They have multiple layers of support and they know exactly where to get accurate and resourceful information. For instance, when a question gets escalated to a subject matter expert, the person who asked the question can see exactly where their request lies in priority and who is working on coming up with a solution.
Experts and CoPilots alike can also simplify their workload with an internal helpdesk because every question is clearly escalated through requests. An added bonus is the fact that they will never have to answer the same question twice. For instance, once an expert or CoPilot provides an answer, it will live in the internal helpdesk’s repository moving forward.
An internal helpdesk promotes employee satisfaction.
Essentially, enabling a team with support and simplifying processes meet two out of three expectations of the modern workplace. Our CEO, David Karandish, spoke about these and the third in a recent webinar with HR.com.