The Future of Employee Experience Is Found In Self-Made Heroes

The new work-from-anywhere culture means we’re setting up computers at beaches, rural towns, and everywhere in-between. Unfortunately, not all departments always have an easy time coming along for the ride.

People are stretched thin with technology since the pandemic — especially those behind-the-scenes in human resources (HR) and information technology (IT). Tickets, troubleshooting, computer crashes, and other pressing needs spring up in this new global transition to virtual.

Help people help themselves with a self-service help desk

So how do your teams keep pace? When HR and IT departments need to be everywhere all at once, the solution is to put the power back in the hands of the employees.

Think of the last time you had a quick question about something technology-related. Maybe it’s “How many PTO days do I have left this year?” or “Where do I go for VPN troubleshooting?” Simple questions like these can be answered without needing to send an email. Instead, IT and HR leaders can empower their people through:

• Centralized knowledge search
• Chatbots
• Priority ticketing
• Dynamic, tailored content

When employees are able to help themselves, it frees up your people leaders’ time for more complex solutions. In 2020, the top chief information officer (CIO) business initiative was to increase operational efficiency. One way to achieve this is by automating complex processes with a library of ready-made solutions. This helps prevent HR and IT bottlenecks and lets your entire company run more efficiently. Not only does this increase company productivity but 62% of tech leaders also see it as a benefit to their overall employee experience (EX).

The best employee experience tools bring efficiency and results

A help desk is a centralized place where employees can search for answers on their own. Employees are automatically led to the conclusions they need for any questions ranging from onboarding to “Are my pets insurable?”

Here at Salesforce, we built an internal help desk called “Concierge.” Since employees were able to search for answers on Concierge, the IT department saw 40% fewer cases and increased their response time by 41%. Because of this success, we thought: How can we re-create this level of support for our customers? How can we walk out our value of Customer Success and share these proven tools? And so, Employee Concierge was born. Much in the same way “concierge service” will bring a coffee straight to your door, every answer can be brought to your teams’ fingertips because of a help desk that searches across digital departments for an answer.

Digital employee experience must be multi-dimensional

If, for whatever reason, the employee cannot find an answer using this centralized search, artificial intelligence (AI) can come in like a sidekick. The best help desks have a built-in chatbot at-the-ready if the employee needs extra assistance.

Chatbots provide tailored support when it comes to answering frequently asked questions or directing people to a relevant channel to complete a request. Because chatbots are customized with language that suits your company’s voice and tone, employees will feel like they are receiving support from a helpful colleague. It is as if someone from the IT department is sitting there right next to them, walking them through real-time answers, based on their dynamic feedback and responses.

Prioritize requests for better employee experience management

Once help desk and chatbot options are explored, it’s time for employees to turn to IT teams for one-on-one support. There are always going to be answers that only IT can provide, but by this point most of them have been filtered through employees’ own self-service.

When an employee can no longer solution-seek on their own, effective help desks always include an option to contact IT support. Departments across the country have been flooded with requests since the pandemic, which means prioritization is a must to make the best use of time. If the help desk includes a standard way to triage requests, it can automate the workflow and lift the load for IT departments to streamline requests in the most efficient way possible. You multiply the reach of your efforts, enabling your teams to do more with less.

Likewise, for HR there are certain times where only talking with another human can resolve an employee’s needs. But if HR specialists can still use productivity tools, built-in AI resources, and knowledge from a dedicated console to help search for answers — then the technology and people work in tandem to drive results.

Having the right integrated tools such as those at Work.com can duplicate your efforts as a company to be in all places at once. With the ever-changing needs of a digital environment come ever-changing technology and requests, so equipping employees to be their own best problem-solvers is the first step toward long-term success.

This piece is part of our series, Employee Experience Reimagined, where we explore how company leaders are instrumental in building employee experience through technology.