Supporting employees in any company is often a challenging task due to the number of questions and problems needing to be addressed. Otherwise known as a helpdesk, those involved in these roles frequently get overloaded with request tickets, sometimes leading to employee burnout.
When support happens manually, it is labor-intensive and can result in slower workflows. This often happens with technical mishaps employees need to solve to avoid productivity issues.
The solution to this is support automation. What is this exactly? Let’s take a look at how automation tools are changing support departments.
What is the exact definition of support automation?
A helpdesk is a centralized team that works internally in any company. They help solve problems for employees and customers alike. And they often use some kind of organizational platform to communicate with those requesting help.
These employees spend most of their day on the phone or working through emails, and they have to listen to employees or customers explain a problem. Sometimes those problems are complex and may initially baffle the helpdesk attendant. When it’s something overly technical, the explanation of the problem can sometimes create more slowdowns.
On top of that, a customer or employee with a question may need to wait a day or more before they get their problem solved. Helpdesk employees sometimes get frustrated with this process and turnover can be high in these roles.
Your own company may be experiencing high turnover in helpdesk year after year. Automation tools can reinvent how support works. Rather than depending on humans for everything, you can implement a support automation platform.
Why automation doesn’t replace employees.
One of the biggest problems that develop in helpdesk/support departments is backlogged or delayed help tickets. If it’s taking more than 12 hours to solve general problems, it’s time to consider using automation as a fallback.
The same applies if you find your support staff is answering many of the same questions far too often. Forcing your support staff to answer things found in common FAQs can also make the job turn to drudgery.
Trying to find information is also a challenge on the support side. Sometimes this means having to consult multiple sources to find the data they need. Information silos can be very complicated to manage, only making it harder to find information in a hurry.
Automation takes care of this role by using machine learning. This means artificial intelligence being able to call up information at will without manual searches.
Using automation in live chats.
Part of what makes automation a great assistant to your support staff is how it can escalate to live chat when necessary. Artificial intelligence plays a big part here in creating a new kind of live chat experience.
Things have evolved considerably in AI recently. Now it’s nearly as intelligent as a human being, including mimicking the sound of a real person. Many people can’t tell the difference between chatting with an AI bot in a live chat from chatting with a human.
Fully integrating a live chat portal with a knowledge base saves your employees from spending time on repetitive questions. They only get looped in for complex issues when the AI chatbot cannot instantly answer the question.
How does natural language processing fit into support automation?
Another form of technology that works in tandem with artificial intelligence is NLP, or Natural Language Processing. Use of this technology enhances the live chats above to a new plateau.
It makes live chats even more intelligent to a point where it you can converse with the chatbot as if you were talking to a co-worker or friend. Capacity’s NLP is able to answer most complex questions over 84% of the time without human involvement.
Statistics like this are quite the eye-opener for many companies when they probably think AI still has limitations. When combined with machine learning, NLP also learns how to react to employees and customers based on its own experience. It analyzes user sentiment to a point where it recognizes certain combinations of words to react appropriately.
Capacity integrates with many third-party applications, which makes it all the more essential as a support automation tool. Being able to acquire information based on its connection to platforms like Salesforce or Gmail means virtually any type of question can be answered in seconds without the need to login to disparate sites.
The use of “human in the loop” technology to expand support automation.
As you can see, automation is already changing how support works in all organizations. The use of support automation makes human employees’ jobs more meaningful as well. Support automation frees up human employees’ time so they can accomplish more important tasks that require higher-level thinking. Using technology like Human in the Loop (HITL), the automated live chats above automatically escalate a customer or employee to a real person if the bot can’t answer the question.
In turn, AI allows humans to be more successful in their roles while enhancing job performance and employee satisfaction in the process.