Editorial
Your IT help desk may not be as helpful as you think. In fact, a productivity survey found that 40% of employees never report their technology problems.
These employees are your “silent sufferers.” They suffer from laptops that crash and tablets that won’t stay connected — yet they remain silent, rarely reporting any tech issues to the help desk. Why? Maybe they’ll try to fix it on their own (which isn’t ideal since doing so can cause additional problems) or they’ll ignore the problem entirely (which is often worse). So it’s no surprise these employees are less satisfied and less productive.
There are many reasons why these silent sufferers stay silent. Maybe they think they can solve the problem themselves. Perhaps they’re introverts, or don’t want to make waves. Regardless of their good intentions, their silence can cost your company countless hours (and dollars) in lost time and subpar business outcomes. So what can you do about it?
Using Tech and AI to Redefine the IT Help Desk Experience
New technology including AI can improve the relationship between your employees and the IT help desk by taking the emotion out of IT. AI doesn’t have a bad day or play favorites — it simply runs 24/7/365. Here are a few ways companies take advantage of technology to transform the IT help desk experience for silent sufferers, IT staff and entire organizations.
1. Provide Automated Self-Service That Empowers End Users
Many silent sufferers are silent because they prefer to solve problems on their own. You’re probably not going to change how they think, but you can give them automated, tech-based solutions to help users help themselves.
For example, some AI-based products combine real-time device insights with approved automation, enabling users to fix recurring issues themselves without ever having to contact the IT help desk. In one case, a multi-national bank identified a high number of service desk calls requesting a specific recovery key. The IT staff automated a solution and avoided an estimated 800 calls per month.
We’re also seeing more “self-healing” IT, with AI and other tech tools proactively addressing issues. After all, if we know what the problem is — and what the fix is — it makes sense just to fix it rather than waiting for the user to call IT (especially given that silent sufferers don’t typically want to interact with IT). Having the right IT scripts lets you quickly scale solutions, give employees the quick answers they need to get on with their jobs and reduce the burden on your IT staff.
Related Article: Can Your IT Team Support Multiple Generations in the Workplace?
2. Fill Knowledge Gaps With AI-Based Intelligent Support
Your silent sufferers (and others throughout your organization) are probably wasting a surprising number of hours looking for answers to their IT questions. Even your top IT experts can’t always identify the cause of IT issues right away, especially with more and more devices in the workplace, as well as nearly countless variables in device specs to network configuration. Whether your employees are scouring the web, searching your intranet or asking colleagues how to solve a problem, every minute they spend trying to get answers is lost productivity.
Silent sufferers often don't call the help desk because they don't want to wait for IT support to research and identify the problem. An intelligent support co-pilot will dramatically reduce the time the help desk has to do this research or even find the resolution to the problem. With an AI-driven help desk like this, the IT agent simply asks a question in their natural language about the end-user's IT problem, and quickly gets an answer. AI that is fed high-quality data can exponentially improve the knowledge base of IT support, while making that knowledge more accessible to more people.
3. Allow For Predictive, Proactive Issue Identification and Resolution
“If I make this change, will it break something?” That’s one of the most common (and most frustrating) questions for anyone who works in IT. And until recently, there hasn’t been a good way to measure the impact of potential changes. But now, with AI that can process vast amounts of data, recognize correlations and predict conflicts and crashes, IT platforms can prevent many of the digital disruptions that cost your company time and money.
AI also lets you help the silent sufferers — even if they’re not asking for help. In one case, an organization received two help desk tickets about a slow network. But when the IT staff started exploring the issue, they realized there were actually 800 users who had the same slowdown — but simply hadn’t reported it yet. AI-driven technology lets them “see” these unreported tickets, resolve the issue and let the silent sufferers (and everyone else) get back to work.
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If finding anomalies in your tech environment feels like searching for a needle in a haystack, think of AI as a magnet that quickly draws out each anomaly so you can examine it. An AI-based anomaly detection platform constantly scans your tech environment, comparing it to your current and historical data. With unparalleled (and unprecedented) visibility, you can address issues proactively — and avoid having to call the CIO at 2 a.m. because of a system-wide problem.
Related Article: Building a Partnership Between IT and Digital Workplace Managers
Making Life Better for Silent Suffers — and Everyone in Your Organization
Silent sufferers deserve the same IT support as everyone in your organization. Now, thanks to new technology, you can give it to them. By using AI to reimagine the IT help desk experience, you can automate self-service, give people better answers at their fingertips, and prevent problems from happening in the first place. And that’s something everyone can shout about.
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