Conventional helpdesk efficiency and cost of support
While many companies seem to be doing well (on paper) following a traditional helpdesk model, a considerable number of organizations include reduced helpdesk and IT support costs in their agenda. 35% of them have this under their list of initiatives for 2019, according to a survey conducted by GatePoint Research.
When referring to helpdesk costs, tickets, and support delivery are the areas that prove most challenging for most organizations.
Cost per ticket is a measure of how efficiently a helpdesk conducts its business. It has several key drivers, of which the most important are agent utilization and ticket handle time. Helpdesk support is a labor-intensive function with the vast majority of costs being personnel-related, and the cost breakdown for support is constant for countries and region to region.
Let's take a look at some of the costs that support incurs.
- The average cost per ticket of level 1 support is $22
- Industry experts have reported the cost of a single technical support call to be as much as $45
- The average hourly rate for Technical Support Analyst ranges from $25 to $32 with the average hourly pay of $29
To cut costs, most companies stick to confining help to a knowledge base to help resolve IT issue faster. A few companies now have chatbots that can fetch the information more quickly. But these come with the limitations to finding the right answers to resolve an issue.
Accessing a knowledge base always to resolve issues is by no means a quick method, and users would rather place a call to the helpdesk instead. This model would not support a reduction in the number of calls made to the helpdesk.
An innovative solution that combines AI + Automation to give employees the perfect virtual assistant that automates resolution.
Innovation plays a significant role in business, but cost to innovate can be prohibitive for companies. Also, many companies assume that increasing workforce resources is the solution, but this only ends up adding on extra costs. Organizations need an innovative solution that helps cut costs.
If companies embrace innovative solutions, they will be able to bring down the cost per ticket and keep support teams small. It will be a powerful impetus to companies that are constrained by small budgets for the IT helpdesk.
Workativ Assistant is an innovative solution that combines AI + automation, aiding in making self-service user-friendly. Furthermore, automating resolution empowers employees to resolve workplace issues autonomously. We would call this: new-age AI- driven self-service with automated resolution.
Why is self-service related to cost you may ask?
- Are your internal support requests outgrowing the capacity that your IT support team can handle?
- Is there a pile-up and backlog of unresolved queries/requests?
- Are your IT support agents handling repetitive requests every day? (e.g., password reset?)
If your organization has seen a decline in productivity due to long resolution times for requests, you would be looking for more cost-effective ways of delivering support. And, self-service has shown to be more efficient, saves costs, and provides a superior experience for employees.
Data shows that self-service program users attain a 3.0% annual decrease in service costs, compared to a 0.7% increase by non-users.
How can Workativ Assistant help you cut support costs?
The automated resolution capability of Workativ Assistant enables employees to resolve issues without contacting support agents.
Further, there are more ways in which to reduce costs by implementing Workativ Assistant for IT support:
Call deflection success
User-friendly, intelligent virtual assistant as a self-help solution instead of an online static helpdesk or knowledge base.
Improved ticket handling
L1 issues get resolved faster, autonomously.
Solving high-value problems
Agent utilization will improve
Helpdesk optimization
It does not require an increase in support resources and potential cost take out.
Companies can build virtual assistant with out of the box automation capabilities in a few days, to automate the resolution of common issues and requests. Automated resolution considerably reduces costs because employees will not be dependent upon internal support agents to solve issues. For every ticket automated with Workativ Assistant, you save in the range of 40-60% or so in a month depending on current help desk spend and ticket drivers.