What is an Employee Experience Platform?
Leveraging AI to automate the resolution of IT issues has become all the rage. Espressive is the pioneer in AI for enterprise service management, and we are leading the market in redefining how employees get help. Our customers are experiencing a significant reduction in call volume because employees are getting immediate, personalized answers to their questions – and that is driving up employee net promoter scores.
Given this is a relatively new space, I am frequently asked by customers what is possible when you leverage AI. I think many people immediately think of a chat interaction, and how a chatbot could be used to answer common questions. While conversational interfaces have value, answering questions represents only a fraction of what help desks deal with every day. Delivering exceptional employee experiences requires a platform that not only provides immediate, personalized answers to questions, but also automates service requests and helps employees complete tasks.
Example of a Broken Employee Experience
Imagine a situation where your employee’s laptop was up for refresh and they needed to acquire a new one. If all you have is a chatbot capable of a conversational interface, it would look something like this:
Employee: I need a new laptop.
Chatbot: Which type of device are you looking for, Windows or Mac?
Employee: Mac
Chatbot: In order to purchase equipment, you need to go through the service catalog on our portal and acquire it here.
Clearly, no one would consider this to be an awesome employee experience. First of all, an employee has to explicitly request the refresh. This is generally true since conversational interfaces do not proactively reach out to employees to complete tasks. Further, since device acquisition and fulfillment cannot be done within the confines of a conversational platform, it becomes a frustrating and time-consuming process for employees.
Then when employees want to know the status of their orders, what do they do? Call the help desk. For most help desks, agents are already struggling to keep up with the deluge of tickets. Requiring the help desk to track down orders is both disruptive and costly while increasing agent frustration.
Example of an Exceptional Employee Experience
Barista, our AI-based virtual support agent, is not just another conversational interface. Barista is an Employee Experience Platform. Let’s take a look at what that means using the laptop refresh example.
With Barista, your employees receive a proactive in-app notification on their mobile devices informing them they are up for a laptop refresh. Upon swiping the notification, they see a card informing them they are up for a refresh at the top of their personalized activity feed.
Now your employees can begin their personal shopping experience within the Barista platform. In this example we are providing the employee with options that are based on their role in the company.
I am cutting the experience short, but you get the point. Barista delivers an exceptional employee experience that cannot be reproduced with a conversational interface. But this is really only the first part of the shopping experience, as the employee will want to check order status and know when it will be delivered.
In order to do so, we create a card in the employee’s feed that allows them to track the order. Just as with Amazon, we provide real-time feedback as the order progresses through the fulfillment process – all the way through to delivery. In fact, this same card can also be used to interact with the team responsible for the delivery of the item as seen on the image to the right below.
Why is This Important?
The market is looking for ways to reduce call volume and automate as much of the resolution of issues coming into a help desk as possible. Over 60% of the calls going to help desks are related to service requests (e.g., add me to a distribution list, reset my password, I need equipment or software). This means any solution that only provides an FAQ-style conversational interface will inherently limit call deflection rates. Any service requests would send employees off to figure out how to get those tasks completed, delivering a poor employee experience that will never maximize adoption. Only an accessible, intuitive employee experience platform can accomplish that.
What is an Employee Experience Platform?
In this blog, I showed you the power of an employee experience platform. With such a platform, you can deliver virtually any employee experience, from laptop refresh to password reset or even requesting PTO. Having a platform that allows you to take any mundane process and create an exceptional and engaging experience is what an employee experience platform is all about.
We believe a conversational interface with immediate, personalized answers to employee questions is critical in gaining employee adoption. However, this is just the first step in revolutionizing the employee self-help experience. You need to have an employee experience platform like Barista to do the rest. Happy to give you a tour.