Service desk chatbots: A jump-start guide for 2024

In business, helping to fix a customer or employee issue is kind of like solving a mystery. First, a customer or employee presents you with a problem. Then, you gather clues in order to solve the mystery, finding a solution for everyone involved. And to solve these mysteries quickly and efficiently, put a service desk chatbot on the case.

Think of your service desk chatbot as your lead detective—it quickly responds to the scene, gathers clues, and uses the information to find the solution, taking your service desk experience to the next level.

And like any good detective, a chatbot will bring in the right experts whenever a mystery requires extra help, ensuring a fast and smooth resolution for customers and employees alike.

In this guide, we’ll cover why service desk chatbots are important, their use cases, their benefits, and how they can be valuable to your support and IT teams.

• Why is a service desk chatbot important?
• Use cases for service desk chatbots
• Benefits of using a service desk chatbot
• Boost employee and customer satisfaction using service desk chatbots

Why is a service desk chatbot important?

A service desk chatbot is important because it is a valuable extension of your support team. By using artificial intelligence (AI), a service desk chatbot acts as a virtual agent and elevates the service and help desk experience. Whether an employee needs to report a tech issue or a customer is having some trouble with your product, a chatbot can quickly answer their questions and direct them toward a solution, improving the customer and employee experience (EX).

These fast resolution times are important, as 72 percent of customers want immediate service, according to the Zendesk Customer Experience (CX) Trends Report 2023.

By implementing a service or help desk chatbot with service desk software, you can provide immediate service to customers and employees, improving support interactions and keeping your internal operations running smoothly.

Use cases for service desk chatbots

Much like a member of your team, service and help desk chatbots can help your business with multiple things, from AI-powered customer service to proactive messaging. Let’s look at some common use cases for service desk chatbots.

Answering customer and employee questions 24/7

A service desk chatbot allows your business to provide 24/7 support to employees and customers, even when your agents are off the clock. For example, an IT service desk chatbot can help an employee troubleshoot a tech issue with your IT department or direct a customer to a self-service option like a knowledge base.

Deploying a service desk chatbot designed for 24/7 support helps deflect tickets and frees up your agents while allowing customers and employees to get help on their own time.

“Bots handle all of your repetitive questions and tasks, meaning your agents are freed up to focus on the complex issues that require a human touch. When agents are needed, bots can intelligently route conversations to the right team with all the useful context from the conversation.”

–Lauren Hakim, Group Product Marketing Manager at Zendesk

Collecting key information upfront

Service and help desk chatbots can collect important information upfront, such as an individual’s email, location, order number, and other details related to the issue. Bots can use these details to automatically routing customers and provide valuable context to the correct agent with the help of AI. This allows the agent to quickly provide support without asking repetitive questions, helping save time and improve agent productivity.

Offering multilingual support

Your customer base likely extends to countries where English isn’t the primary language. And even if your business doesn’t operate globally, you’re likely dealing with customers who speak another language. (There are over 350 languages spoken in U.S. households.) Plus, 71 percent of consumers believe it’s “very” or “extremely” important that businesses promote and support their products in customers’ native language.

Service and help desk chatbots can help you provide multilingual customer (or employee) support by automatically translating information and transferring service requests to support agents who speak that language. This can help enhance both the employee and customer experience, allowing employees and customers to communicate effectively across languages and the globe.

Providing proactive messaging

While service desk chatbots respond to messages, chatbots can also engage individuals, contacting them first, in real time, with proactive messaging. For example, a support chatbot can automatically suggest self-service resources based on user behavior. Additionally, a chatbot can help increase customer engagement with custom greetings and targeted messages based on past interactions.

“Bots can help you get ahead of customer asks by reaching out with meaningful, timely, and personalized interactions that drive engagement and retention and increase sales and conversion rates.”

–Lauren Hakim, Group Product Marketing Manager at Zendesk

Benefits of using a service desk chatbot

After reviewing common use cases for service desk chatbots, you might wonder how using one can benefit your business. Read along to learn more about the benefits of implementing a chatbot with help desk software and how it can help your employees and customers.

Save time and reduce support costs

Service desk chatbots can help your agents save time and reduce support costs by automatically fielding and answering questions from customers and internal team members. This helps free up your support team, allowing them to spend their time tackling the issues that matter most, leaving repetitive tasks, like troubleshooting tech issues and performing password resets, for your chatbot.

“Bots are a super cost-effective way to manage [a] high volume of support requests because they can serve more customers without the business having to add agents or additional costs.”

–Lauren Hakim, Group Product Marketing Manager at Zendesk

Enable support capacity to scale

Adding a service or help desk bot to your support arsenal is like increasing the size of your support team overnight. No matter the time of day, your service desk chatbots are working behind the scenes to reduce ticket volume and serve more customers and employees.

Plus, using chatbots for customer service enables your business to help multiple people simultaneously, allowing you to solve issues at scale without hiring additional human agents.

Increase customer and employee satisfaction

Using a chatbot for support can also increase customer and employee satisfaction, as it helps you better meet their needs. According to our CX Trends Report, 70 percent of consumers want conversational AI experiences. On top of that, 66 percent want support interactions that don’t interrupt whatever they are doing.

With service and help desk chatbots, you can provide just that, enabling your customers and employees to get help that best serves them, all while providing a positive experience and boosting satisfaction.

“Bots can deliver instant answers 24/7 across your service channels. Your customers get personalized support without having to wait, leading to higher satisfaction rates and increased loyalty.”

–Lauren Hakim, Group Product Marketing Manager at Zendesk

Boost employee and customer satisfaction using service desk chatbots

Now that you know the benefits of AI chatbots and how a service desk chatbot can improve your employee and customer experience, it’s time to get started.

Our end-to-end customer service and employee experience software is built with CX in mind and designed to scale, ensuring you deliver meaningful support no matter how fast you grow. Try Zendesk for free and solve customer and employee mysteries on day one.