The coronavirus has upended the traditional workplace, forcing companies to abruptly shift from office to remote work. What can companies learn about employee needs from this widespread work-from-home (WFH) transition? We explored the key lessons in a recent webinar, Reimagining the Post-Pandemic Service Desk, featuring guest speaker Mike Hamilton, Head of IT at Databricks, and atSpoke CEO Jay Srinivasan.
Service Desk Insights for Workforce Success in a Remote-First World
Webinar Key Takeaways
- Remote-first success requires an enterprise-wide command center for internal support.
- IT teams need to build a “front door” experience for employee requests.
- Automation, AI, and chat have a significant impact on team efficiency.
atSpoke Data Methodology
As a modern service desk solution, atSpoke is uniquely positioned to surface how the transition to remote working impacted employees and the teams that support them. We aggregated and anonymized atSpoke customer ticket data from January 1, 2020 to June 30, 2020. Using our natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning models, we parsed tickets for terms related to COVID-19, then ran the tickets through our machine learning aggregation tools to group employee requests by question category, as well as by company function, focusing on HR and IT. Then we analyzed the response and resolutions times, by channel and team, to understand how internal support teams fared.
Service Desk Analysis Highlights
- HR teams shouldered the brunt of employee requests in the first initial months of the COVID crisis. HR tickets spiked significantly in April, then settled to 10-15% below normal, pre-COVID volume.
- IT teams saw a small spike during the weeks going into WFH. Interestingly, while traditional support desks experienced a 157% spike in support calls, we saw only a small increase of around 10% higher volume than pre-COVID levels. For organizations already using a service desk solution with chat and AI for auto-resolution, employees were significantly more self-sufficient.
Mike Hamilton on Building a Front Door to Internal Support
According to atSpoke customer Mike Hamilton, Head of IT at Databricks, the role of IT is to provide the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of individuals through efficient triaging. Achieving this requires an internal support foundation that’s easily accessible, especially given today’s remote working realities. Hamilton’s approach is as practical as it is powerful:
“Access to IT should be a simple front door for employees.”
For Databricks, the front door to IT is a simple search bar powered by atSpoke. Hamilton credits the intuitive and efficient employee experience to atSpoke’s automation and AI capabilities. atSpoke enables employee self-sufficiency for standard, repetitive requests and delivers intelligent routing and resolution for more involved requests.
Hamilton’s key takeaways:
- IT is a company’s circulatory system. Successful organizations embrace IT as a trusted, high-exposure resource.
- IT teams should continuously look for opportunities to improve employee experiences through automation and AI.
- The most important metric is the overall IT experience. CSAT scores are more important than metrics like first call resolution and total ticket count.
Watch the Webinar for In-Depth Insights
For more detailed insights on our COVID service desk study, as well as additional wisdoms from Mike Hamilton – watch the webinar.
