AI-powered Employee Helpdesk 101

Introduction

The role of employee helpdesks

Employee helpdesks are a central hub for addressing employee support inquiries, issues, and requests within an organization. They provide assistance across various domains, including payroll support, HR inquiries, tax questions, benefits information, and much more. These helpdesks are critical for maintaining a productive and satisfied workforce. However, as businesses grow and evolve, the usage on these helpdesks increase, often resulting in longer response times and reduced efficiency so every business and HR leaders have to think about using an AI-powered solution  like Atomicwork for providing an efficient employee self-service support and ensuring a great employe experience at workplaces.

The rise of AI in modern employee support

The adoption of AI technologies in employee helpdesks is on the rise, and for a good reason. The GenAI has the potential to revolutionize how organizations handle employee requests and internal knowledge base. A modern employee-friendly internal helpdesk unlike traditional HRSD solution like Servicenow can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness, resulting in faster issue resolution and improved employee satisfaction.

In this guide, we will delve into the various ways AI can be harnessed to transform your employee helpdesk to deliver a great support and HR case management.

Benefits of using AI in employee helpdesks

Improved efficiency and responsiveness

One of the most significant advantages of AI in internal helpdesks is the improvement in efficiency and responsiveness as you can support employee requests using their profile context and tapping into the existing internal HR policies and knowledge base. AI-powered virtual assistants like Atom from Atomicwork can provide immediate responses to employee inquiries, 24/7. This eliminates the need to wait for human agents to be available, reducing the first response times and ensuring that employees get the help they need when they need it from your collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack.

Cost reduction in HR case management

Adoption of AI for HR case management can deliver significant cost savings for organizations by reducing the repetitive requests and known cases workload on human agents. You can leverage AI to automate the routine service requests and repetitive tasks like employment letters, allowing your people operations team to focus on more complex and strategic business issues. This leads to a more efficient use of human resources talent and reduced operational costs for the business.

Enhanced employee experience

A better employee experience is a fundamental goal of any HR department and people operations team at growing organizations. AI can help in achieving this by providing personalized and timely support based on the employee location, department, work profile and their recent requests. Modern AI-powered employee helpdesk systems like Atomicwork can remember past interactions and use that information to tailor responses, creating a more personalized experience for each employee while reducing the need for visiting multiple sites and searching across documents.

Data-driven insights for employee productivity

AI can also provide valuable insights into the common employee support issues and trends within an organization that are impacting their productivity. By analyzing the data from employee support and HR case management interactions, organizations can identify areas that need improvement, plan for better automation, and make data-driven decisions to deliver fast support to unblock productivity challenges.

AI-powered solutions for modern employee support

There are several AI technologies and LLM solutions that can be applied to employee support helpdesks.

Intelligent virtual assistants beyond chatbots

Traditional chatbots don't have intelligence that modern AI virtual assistants like Atom from Atomicwork to use human like conversational approach to engage with employees in natural language. The intelligent virutal assistant (IVA) can handle a wide range of inquiries from end users, from password resets to answering employee policy questions to payroll tax issues. These AI-driven intelligent virtual assistants can be integrated into employee websites, intranet portals, or messaging platforms like Slack/MS Teams, ensuring their accessibility and ease of use convenience.

Natural language processing (NLP) for intent recognition

NLP is a subfield of AI that focuses on the interaction between computers and human languages. NLP can be used to power intelligent virtual assistants like Atom from Atomicwork for detecting the intent of end user message, sentiment analysis, request tone and language translation, all of which are invaluable in employee support when you have people spread across multiple countries, locations and timezone.

Advanced machine learning for HRSD ticket routing

Machine learning can be used to automate the routing of employee inquiries to the appropriate department or agent in the HR Service Delivery(HRSD) solution for employee support. By analyzing the content of a request, advanced machine learning models can determine whether it should be directed to IT, HR, Finance, or any other relevant department based on the dynamic detection of relevant categories. This not only speeds up the resolution process but also ensures that requests are handled by the right experts in respective departments to provide exceptional employee support.

Modern knowledge base management

With the adoption of Microsoft Teams or Slack as internal messaging systems, the enterprise knowledge base management has become very complex and dynamic unlike the tradtional KB systems. You can leverage AI and vector databases to index, organize, and retrieve relevant information quickly. The modern employee support systems can empower employees and support agents by providing easy access to FAQs, policy documents, training materials, Slack threads, Microsoft Team channels and other resources, ensuring that they have the information needed to address the employe support and HR case requests effectively.

How to implement AI in your employee helpdesk?

Implementing AI in any companies employee helpdesk is a strategic endeavor that requires careful planning and execution. Here are the six key steps to follow:

Assessing the employee support needs and goals

Before implementing AI, it's essential to assess the specific needs and goals of your employee helpdesk based on the last 12 months of support requests and HR cases. Consider what types of HR inquiries are most common by location, department, role and tenure in the company etc so you can determine where AI-powered solutions like Atomicwork can make the most significant impact. Understanding your organization's unique support requirements is the first step in selecting the right AI solution that can be customized for your HR department and business needs.

Data collection and knowledge preparation

Modern AI systems like Atomicwork require data for knowledge training and decision-making. You need to gather historical data related to employee inquiries and HR case interactions. Once the data sources are identified then you need to clean and pre-process this data to ensure that it can be used to train employe support AI models effectively.

Choosing the right AI tools for automated employee support

Not all AI solutions available in the market have the required security and compliance needed for your business so it's very important to evaluate and select an AI helpdesk for employee support that align with your business needs and HR department goals. Consider factors such as the scalability of the solution, ease of integration with your existing HR systems, support for employee messaging tools like Microsoft Teams/Slack and the ability to customize the AI solution behavior with verified answers and ground truth to suit your organization's unique requirements.

Customizing the AI models for employee helpdesk

Once you have selected the right AI-enabled HR service delivery solution, you need to customize the AI model input and outputs for sensitive data processing and restricting the categories of information that can be obtained as GenAI and LLMs can emit information across variety of topics. This process involves configuring the AI helpdesk system with the guardrails for processing employee personal information, limiting access to topics like politics and ensuring that answers come from only your enterprise data, not from trained data of AI models.

Integration with existing HR and IT systems

To ensure a seamless transition to a modern AI-driven employee service desk, you need an out of the box support for integration with your existing HR solutions and IT systems. This might involve connecting AI-powered helpdesk with payroll systems, employee databases(HRIS), or other relevant tools. Using the  enterprise integrations allows for a holistic approach to employee support.

Employee onboarding and training

Once the modern AI-powered employe helpdesk system is in place, it's crucial to plan for first time onboarding of end users and train your employees on how to interact with AI-powered tool effectively. Employees should understand the capabilities and limitations of AI, know how to initiate HR support interactions, and be aware of when to escalate to human support. This onboarding and training process is essential for a great user experience and to maximize the benefits of using AI solution for employee support.

AI challenges and considerations for internal support

While AI can bring substantial benefits to employee support helpdesks, there are challenges and considerations that organizations and HR departments must address:

Ensure privacy and data security

AI systems often have to handle sensitive employee data for providing support to employees so it's critical for them to provide a built-in data safety and privacy to mask sensitive information. Also during knowledge base ingestion and document uploads, it's critical for AI solutions to implement robust data security measures to protect this information. You need to ensure compliance with data protection regulations, and regularly validate the compliance audits of vendor and review their operational security practices.

Employee resistance

Some employees may resist the introduction of AI in employee helpdesks due to concerns about job displacement or discomfort with technology. Communicate the benefits of AI clearly, offer training, and address concerns to gain employee acceptance.

Ethical and bias concerns

LLM based AI systems can inadvertently perpetuate biases present in the data they are trained on from the web. It's essential to monitor AI for potential bias and take steps to mitigate it during your evaluation phase before rolling it out to end users. Ensure that your selected AI solutions are designed and tested to be fair and unbiased.

AI models response monitoring

AI systems require ongoing monitoring of their responses for end user requests to detect any AI drift issues and keep them remain effective. Regularly review some of the automated AI interactions,  collect user feedback, and fine tune the model behaviour as needed. AI is not a one-time implementation; it's an evolving technology.

The future of GenAI in employee support

As modern AI or GenAI technology continues to advance, the future of employee helpdesks holds exciting possibilities for both end users and businesses:

Personalized predictive support

AI will become even better at personalizing support based on individual employee profiles and preferences. Predictive support will anticipate employee needs and provide assistance even before they even ask for it during the key moments of their onboarding, cross-boarding and offboarding etc.

Enhanced multilingual support

AI-powered solutions will continue to improve their language capabilities, enabling organizations to provide support in multiple languages, regions and facilitating global operations.

AI-enabled HR workflows automation

AI will automate increasingly complex tasks, further reducing the load on HROps agents. This will lead to faster response times and more efficient support.

Integration with augmented reality (AR)

The integration of AI with AR can revolutionize employee support. With AR glasses or devices, employees can receive real-time support, with AI providing visual guidance for tasks such as equipment maintenance or troubleshooting.

Conclusion

Leveraging AI in employee helpdesks is a strategic move that can bring significant benefits to organizations. It enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and improves the employee experience. However, successful AI-powered employee helpdesk implementation requires a careful assessment of needs, ethical considerations, and ongoing monitoring.

As AI technology continues to advance, organizations that embrace it in their employee support and HR service delivery strategies will have a competitive advantage. By investing in the right AI tools for HR support, training employees effectively, and addressing potential challenges, organizations can create a future where employee helpdesks are more responsive, efficient, and tailored to individual needs. The result is a more satisfied, productive, and engaged workforce, which ultimately contributes to the overall  success of the organization.

To explore how Atomicwork can help streamline and enhance your organization’s employee support using AI, schedule a personalized demo today!