Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 10 | Page 99

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Today , AI can accelerate the entire process further to the point where in some cases , no interaction with a human is required at all . Rather than relying on engineers , AI chatbots can assess what the problem is by asking questions and then offer solutions that can be carried out by the employee – which could be as simple as pointing them to a self-help resource or knowledge-base article with the answer in .
An AI chatbot in this instance empowers users to resolve the problem themselves – which can be much faster than having to work through the IT department . Where issues persist or are more complicated , the AI chatbot can escalate the issue to the IT team to send out an engineer . AI chatbots have a further major advantage over traditional IT support – they are available 24 / 7 , meaning help is on hand even outside traditional office hours . Moreover , IT is not the only areas of the business where AI chatbots can help .
Modernising human resources
Modern businesses are frequently global and diverse , meaning employees are scattered all over the world . Being spread across different regions does introduce challenges in achieving a holistic HR approach – due to differing policies , processes , regulations and systems . No two companies are alike ; thus , employees have many questions and HR staff have a lot of their time tied up in answering them . This challenge can be exacerbated when an organisation has offices around the globe which frequently use different policies in each region . The complexity grows when you add in questions about holidays , grievances and pension plans – among many other topics – from potentially thousands of employees .
In the past , any enquiry had to be dealt with by a human , taking up valuable time for both the employee asking the question and the person trying to respond . Even the simple act of finding out how many days holiday someone has left can result in multiple emails sent across an organisation . AI chatbots can now take a lot of the pressure away from HR departments by answering questions about policies , or even telling employees how many days holiday they have left and helping to book it . This process is much faster than a human dealing with each request , meaning HR teams can focus on important issues such as recruitment , updating policies and employee training .
Facilities empowerment
In some ways , the facilities department are doing their job best when no one knows they are there , but the truth is that most employees will run into problems at some point or another . When we think about how facilities services could be delivered more effectively with
Mark Flexman , DXC Fruition Practice Lead , DXC Technology
the help of AI , our thoughts might drift to autonomous robots that can turn up and carry out maintenance by themselves .
Though we might still be a few years from that reality , AI chatbots can already help to organise repairs – whether it ’ s getting maintenance teams to come and fix an AC system or replace a lightbulb . In addition , they can also help employees to request new IT or other equipment such as POS terminals , as required and help to get these items approved with minimal email traffic . In addition , AI systems create a lot of data which can then be analysed to spot trends – for instance recognising when downtime occurs and amending maintenance schedules to minimise these occurrences .
Tangible benefits
The first and key benefit that most businesses will be interested in are the potential financial savings made possible through AI chatbots . Streamlined processes can save vast amounts of time , for both those accessing and those delivering internal services . So clearly , these benefits can ’ t be ignored , but they aren ’ t the only reasons businesses should be improving internal services . The fact is that doing so will increase the usage of available resources and increase employee satisfaction , boosting productivity even further in the long term . • www . intelligentcio . com INTELLIGENTCIO
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