As someone deeply embedded in the fast-paced world of IT services, I've witnessed firsthand the profound transformations reshaping our industry. At Collinson Group, where I work as an IT Service Operations Manager, we're on the cusp of a significant shift—one that promises to revolutionize the traditional service desk model for the better.
Collinson Group is a large payment technology company that works with over 1,400 banks, 90 airlines and 20 hotel groups worldwide. We deliver market-leading airport experiences, loyalty and customer engagement, and insurance solutions for over 400 million end consumers.
Experience lies at the heart of our business, not only for our valued customers but also for our dedicated employees. As we embark on the ambitious endeavor of transitioning our outsourced help desk operations in-house, it's natural to feel a tinge of apprehension. After all, with the ascent of AI, ChatGPT, and LLM technologies, it sometimes feels like we’re innovating beyond our control.
Despite the predictions out there forecasting the demise of the Service Desk, I think it will be different. Ultimately, it’ll evolve to combine the best of tech and human capital, freeing L1 and L2 agents to focus on more creative work and problem-solving.
Yes, the number of frontline agents may decrease, but this isn't cause for alarm. Former agents will have the opportunity to ascend to higher positions or repurpose their roles, engaging in more creative and intellectually stimulating tasks. Having personally traversed the ranks in End User Support to my current role, I can attest to the transformative nature of these changes.
Why am I so optimistic?
Because at its core, this evolution is driven by a fundamental human desire: the thirst for creativity and purpose, and that’s the promise that these new technologies bring. The DEX technologies we use at Collinson are able to pull information that paints a clearer picture about the employee experience than we could in the past. We’ll soon be able to chart our own tools and processes and start automating away the annoying manual work.
We’ll be able to ask smarter questions and become more proactive—taking on problems like:
- Why do we have to manually run a script every time someone leaves/joins the company?
- What would it mean if we gave back just one hour of time to our colleagues that they currently spent troubleshooting their own IT problems to be creative and innovative?
- How can we remove obstacles, no matter how small, so our employees can be their most engaged, creative selves?
- What makes someone proud of their work and how might I impact that outcome?
- How can we at the Service Desk be quieter, lighter, and smarter? For example, could we send notifications when someone is using too much memory and ask them if they want to make a change now or later?
Yes, it might seem like the entity called the service desk, the one we know today is taking a step backwards, offloading its work to AI, but that’s a narrow point of view. The service desk is evolving for the better, it’s giving agents the chance to repurpose their roles and tackle bigger, more meaningful questions, and that’s a future we should all be excited about.
