COVID-19 has had a far-reaching impact on IT, how it functions and how the business perceives it. Whether it’s to help organizations move quickly to a ‘crisis-mode’ when the pandemic hit or to drive their digital agendas, IT has played a central role.
At the same moment, IT in itself went through a massive transformation in the past two years. It embraced remote working models, got more agile and adopted modernization. IT support centers and help desks too evolved along with this trend. Once considered cost centers that were almost always late in providing solutions and answers, IT help desks had to quickly adapt to the change and bridge the gaps in productivity and employee experience.
“The pandemic presents an opportunity for infrastructure and operations leaders to accelerate the IT service desk evolution. Even as some workers return to offices, new IT service models will enable enterprises to embrace the hybrid workplace of the future.”
Chris Matchett, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner
Remote support and the added pressures
The evolution of the IT help desk was essential in delivering the right employee and customer experiences all of a sudden. With this opportunity came a massive responsibility which has put IT services organizations under great stress. The need for remote support will continue to be a growing requirement as organizations go for hybrid work models. Today, IT help desks are expected to be anywhere, anytime and resolve issues quickly. They also have the challenging task of ensuring security, flexibility and control of the highly distributed end-user ecosystem within the enterprise.
Almost all organizations want remote support to handle at least half of the tickets raised on a daily basis. And, IT help desks must meet these growing needs as they scramble to deal with talent shortage and legacy approaches. Quite predictably, IT help desk teams are more stressed as compared to the pre-COVID days.
65% of IT help desk teams throughout the U.S are reporting an increase in the number of team members reporting unsustainable levels of stress, according to Splashtop’s 2022 State of Remote Support Market Trends Report.
94% of respondents say that their help desk function has been impacted by hiring challenges, retention issues, and/or skill shortages over the past 12 months. As a result, 67% report challenges with maintaining IT support goals.
The Great Resignation, for example, had about 30% of organizations admitting that there is an uptick in the number of support staff reporting unsustainable stress or burnout “With many employees working remotely on a regular basis, IT and help desk staff face higher ticket volumes, more diverse set of devices to support, and greater security challenges,” said Philip Sheu, co-founder and CTO at Splashtop.
Rethinking Service & Support
Shifting goals and talent crunch have pushed IT service automation as a key priority for CIOs in the last couple of years. Automated and more streamlined service & support ensure efficiency and agility. Organizations of all sizes are adopting technologies like AIOPs, conversational AI and machine learning to effectively modernize IT service and support. Creating a smarter service desk is critical in minimizing service disruptions in today’s always-on enterprises.
In the near future, augmented reality (AR) is expected to further enhance IT support. 42% of respondents surveyed in the State of Remote Support Market Trends Report believe that the ability to visualize end users’ environments via IT support leveraging AR has had a dramatic impact on resolving issues.
The end goal of every IT leader is to create a proactive service desk that has the ability to predict future disruptions and prepare the organization for the unexpected. Emerging technologies and renewed strategies will be critical in meeting this goal.
[…] before business became technology and vice versa, the CIO was just the custodian of technology. IT departments were the slow-moving bureaucratic lot. But CIOs and their teams have travelled quite far from that […]