Today, only 13% of employees are happy to work exclusively in the office: the remainder prefer to work either partly or fully remotely. However, while the morale and productivity benefits of a flexible work environment are beyond doubt, the technical and operational considerations continue to present major challenges, especially the employee IT support experience. When a fifth of employees claim tech issues and resolution times are the biggest challenges in their digital workplace experience, something is clearly wrong. While IT shares the employees’ view and wants to provide effective support, they often end up hindered by the volume of support tickets or lack of context needed to resolve problems quickly. This is where virtual support agents (VSAs) come into play: IT Helpdesk teams are increasingly adopting them so that employees can get what they need whenever they need it.
A virtual support agent (also known as IVA — Intelligent Virtual Agent) is a conversational bot that uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to understand user intent and context to prevent employees from creating support tickets. While chatbots use rule-based algorithms to answer questions, VSAs integrate with the existing systems so as to fulfill tasks for employees. But how do you know if your company needs a Virtual Support Agent?
At Gaspar AI, we ask potential customers and their IT leaders to share the below five metrics:
Monthly ticket volume
Most companies track this metric as it can be easily generated through the company’s IT Helpdesk tool. Over the last two years, monthly tickets created by employees have increased by 35% on average.
Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR)
Even a simple employee support request such as email password reset or group mail access might take hours to resolve because it requires human involvement. By implementing a virtual support agent, repetitive requests shouldn’t take more than 10 seconds.
Cost Per Ticket
On average, the cost per ticket is $29 compared to $26 two years ago. Adopting a virtual support agent can help you bring down this significantly and reduce operating costs.
Employee Headcount
If your organization is growing rapidly in terms of employee headcount, then you probably need to implement a virtual support agent to bring down your organization’s operational expenses and increase profitability.
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
The eNPS is a metric used to measure internal customer satisfaction. Employee IT onboarding and IT Helpdesk support play a vital role in employee satisfaction. Recent surveys show that high eNPS increases employee productivity and loyalty in the company. Adopting a virtual support agent can lead to higher employee retention and a great workplace culture.
Of course, there are other metrics that you may need to consider prior to implementing a virtual support agent, related to your employee digital experience goals, your budget and the size of your company.
If you wish to learn more and see how you can optimize IT support, please sign up for a demo to see Gaspar AI in action.
