It’s a truth universally acknowledged that an employee support team is always on the quest of bettering request deflection to reduce workload.
While an AI Assistant like Atom can go a long way in answering questions using the company’s knowledge graph and continuous learning from Slack and Microsoft Teams, a lot of automatable requests might still make their way to IT, HR and other workplace teams. A few service desk tweaks and process reviews can make a world of difference to reduce team workloads and resolution times for employees!
Here are our best practice recommendations:
View the breakdown of requests by channel
What is the channel that produces the most number of requests? This will help you decide your deflection strategy because while the Assistant can deflect requests on Slack and Microsoft Teams, email and the portal are not supported channels for the Assistant.
You can pull up a list by navigating to Analytics > Request (in the workspace you're measuring) > Overview and choosing Source as a filter.
Top channel is email and portal
If email or portal is your most popular request channel, you need to drive adoption for Slack/Microsoft Teams as a request channel. You can do this by setting up an engagement journey to help familiarize your employees with Slack/Teams as a support channel so they learn to ask Atom questions first before emailing IT or navigating straight to the portal.
You can also do this by populating your knowledge base or verified answers with content on how to use Atom and Atomicwork, including FAQs like "How do I add Atom to Teams/Slack?", "What services can Atomicwork help me with?" etc. If you’d like some assistance with this content, please reach out to us.
Top channel is Slack/Microsoft Teams
If your most popular request channel is Slack/Microsoft Teams, you need to review your content to figure out where the gaps are. You can review what questions are not being deflected by the Assistant by exporting the Assistant Accuracy report.
Do this by going to Analytics > Accuracy> clicking on the “Unhelpful” tab. This will give you a thematic overview of everything Atom is not answering. You can double click on themes to see the questions employees are asking, specific to that theme. You can also click "Export as CSV" to get an email of this spreadsheet (with PII removed to protect privacy).
All questions marked as unhelpful are worthy of review because they could be:
Questions that the Assistant could not answer
Questions for which the employee raised a request
Questions that were marked as unhelpful by the employee
When do you setup a workflow versus write documentation?
Workflows are best for automated, multi-step processes with ongoing tasks, tracking, and approvals. Documents are best for distributing static, reference material or guidelines that don’t change frequently. So, review your list of questions and then choose wisely!
Deflecting with documentation
Armed with the list of questions, it’s useful to review them through the lens of whether it exists already in an FAQ or a policy document. Here is a list of documents that different teams have found useful to maintain in their knowledge repository.
Some of these can be FAQs, (the answers need to be produced verbatim), or documents in a knowledge management platform (these docs will be updated frequently). Depending on their category, your team needs to create this documentation.
Here are some common documents that can help improve deflection rates for different teams in your organisation -
Department | Documents |
IT | Security protocols, acceptable use policies, instructions for setting up laptops, desktops, printers, and other office equipment. Instructions for employee self-service actions such as installing new apps, resetting one's own password for different tools, troubleshooting common IT issues, etc. |
HR | Employee handbook, employee benefits, Leave & time off policies, Onboarding checklists, performance review guidelines, training & development resources, workplace policies |
Finance | Expense reimbursement policies, invoice submission procedures, budgeting guidelines, payroll calendar & policies, travel policies, vendor payment terms |
Sales | Sales playbook, pricing guidelines & discounts policy, commission structures for different sales org members, lead qualification guidelines, product information & FAQs, key sales collateral templates (NDAs, SoWs, common RFP responses, CRM training guides |
Engineering | Coding guidelines & best practices, DevOps procedures, version control (Git) guidelines, software architecture diagrams, incident resolution playbooks, API documentation links |
Workplace management/facilities | Office layouts & maps, booking procedures for meeting rooms, health & safety guidelines, building access policies, office supplies ordering procedures, cleaning & maintenance schedules |
Management support | Onboarding Guide for Managers, Leadership Development Handbooks, Performance Management Guides, Remote/Hybrid Work Policies, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Guide, Compensation and Benefits Guide, Compliance and Legal Guidelines, etc. When adding this content, you can restrict audience settings to only employees that are in management roles. |
Deflecting with workflows
Step one is identifying the high-volume, repetitive tasks that require minimal human intervention. For example: expense report approval, simple HR queries like leave balance. This also includes identifying the systems you have to integrate to provide a smooth, autonomous user experience.
Once you do, you can set up:
Skills for common scenarios so that employees can complete certain tasks themselves, end-to-end with approvals baked in. Atomicwork comes with 10+ skills out of the box!
Workflows that facilitate quick resolution by performing certain repetitive tasks on its own
Service catalog items to collect all the information agents need to quickly resolve requests
That brings us to the end of this deflection guide. If you have any questions or suggestions to improve this guide, please reach out to us at [email protected]! We’re always happy to help.