If you talk to any Service Desk agent, they will agree there has been an explosion in IT tickets since the transition to remote and hybrid work. Even now, there are growing challenges preventing them from being able to reduce IT incidents. In the last year, average ticket volume has risen by 16% since the pandemic, stressing already overtaxed help desk agents. This increase in tickets has led to wasted resources, poor IT service delivery and frustrated employees. 

But this unwieldy and never-ending pile of IT tickets doesn’t have to be the new normal. IT team can take new approaches and strategies to dig themselves out from under the backlog and set up a new workflow that proactively addresses issues, creating a better digital experience for employees, and a more productive work environment for IT teams.  

Benefits of IT Incident Reduction  

If Service Desk agents rely only on tickets to understand digital experience issues, the end result is inevitable: a growing pile of tickets that doesn’t represent all the issues impacting employees.  An IT incident reduction strategy that considers the full digital employee experience can help Service Desk agents go from reactive ticket remediation to proactive incident resolution. And this kind of IT approach can have myriad benefits for the entire enterprise. 

A proactive approach to IT can not only reduce the pile up of existing tickets but can reduce the number of recurring tickets coming into the Service Desk. With Service Desk agents spending less time reactively solving IT tickets one at a time, they can better allocate their resources to proactively identifying issues and solving them at scale for all impacted employees before a ticket is submitted. As a result, agents are more efficient, resources are better allocated, and employees are less disrupted. With every automation and fix at scale, Service Desk teams can point to the man hours saved due to IT incident reduction.  

How to Reduce IT Incidents  

With Service Desk teams stretched thin, it is no wonder the top goal for these teams is, “Improve my team’s productivity through the use of automation,” according to the 2021 State of Service Management Report. 

Automation is one of the many tools that Service Desk teams can use for incident reduction. The five tips below show how your organization can identify and fix issues proactively and solve them at scale before any employees are impacted.

1. Holistic Visibility in the End User Experience

If your Service Desk team is looking at one ticket at a time, they are missing the big picture. In order to achieve incident reduction, your team needs a clear view of what your employees are experiencing to properly identify and/or fix it.   

By providing Service Desk agents real-time insights and data about the devices, applications, and networks in your digital workplace, they can monitor drops in technical performance as well as employee-reported sentiment. With this data, your team can quickly identify issues that could become major incidents and drill-down into these red flags to determine the source of the issue and resolve it before it becomes a problem.  

{Read more: How One Company Detected an Unreported Issue Across 190 Devices} 

2. Scale Incident Management Across All Devices

Don’t let recurring issues hold your Service Desk team back. Repeatedly solving the same issue wastes time and resources hurting the productivity of both the Service Desk agent and the employee. Instead, once an L1 agent spots an incident, they should take the time to proactively drill-down and immediately identify every device with the same problem. Instead of solving one at a time, they can scale the fix across every impacted employee. No help desk ticket or appointment needed for incident reduction. 

{Learn how: Scale Your Service Desk}

3. Embrace IT Automation

Automation is the top goal of Service Desk teams for a reason. Although it takes more work up front, setting up smart automation resolves issues quickly and effectively with single-click fixes and investigations. By setting up a remote action from behind the scenes, your team can solve issues without disrupting employees. For example, an American multinational information technology company used 15 automated remediations to close 105,000 tickets and saw productivity gains of over 47,000 hours. As this technology company saw, automations resulted in significant incident reduction making it easier and easier to spot further opportunities to use them.   

{Learn More: Proactive IT: Automated Remediation}

4. Utilize Self Service

Employees want a resolution as fast as possible, and a self-service portal or chatbot can do that by avoiding unnecessary IT-employee interaction. Instead of researching a fix themselves or submitting a ticket and waiting for someone to reach out, employees can immediately access the help and support they need through a chatbot and/or self-service portal.  

For example, if an employee is experiencing one of the recurring IT issues your team resolved through automation, you can add this to your self-help portal so that when employees log in, they are given the option to resolve the issue themselves in a single click. This same 1-click fix can also be available through a self-help chatbot, which presents the solution to the impacted employee. Both examples provide an incident reduction without having to interact with IT, saving man hours and allowing for resources to be better allocated to more pressing issues or projects.  

{Read More: How One Enterprise Solved 78% of Issues with 1-Click Self Service} 

5. Targeted Employee Communications

Not every fix can be resolved in the background. Some fixes require employee consent. For example, you wouldn’t restart a computer  or clear their disk without employee sign off. In these instances, you need to get the employee’s attention so they can quickly take action to resolve the issue.  

But helping while not disrupting is a fine line. Rather than a batch and blast email, your team can send a targeted pop-up notifications to impacted employees only, which ensures a high response rate and issue resolution, without having to schedule a one-on-one appointment. With this proactive approach, your team can drive significant incident reduction by solving the issue before the employee submits a ticket. 

{Learn More: 400% Increase in Employee Adoption in 1 Month with Engagement Campaigns}

Conclusion

Incident reduction is integral to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Service Desk and the five steps above will help you scale your Service Desk and save man hours. However, these productivity gains have another key benefit, improving the employee experience. Less disruption, less time lost, less frustration: all of these digital employee experience factors contribute to the success of your business. In the post-pandemic workplace, IT can lead the way, architect a new state of workflow in the digital ecosystem, and bring the success of their employees and business with them.  

{Keep Exploring Proactive IT}

The post 5 Ways to Reduce IT Incidents Before Your Team Succumbs to the Ticket Backlog appeared first on Nexthink.

Today’s a very special day here on the DEX Hub – as we’re celebrating our one-year anniversary!

One year ago today, we launched the DEX Hub with the mission to deliver the most engaging and valuable content about everything happening in the world of Digital Employee Experience. From futuristic technology to corporate sustainability to digital workplace trends and everything in between, we’ve spent this year striving to bring you the stories you need to build a happier, more productive, more successful workplace.

And we couldn’t have done it without the help of so many fantastic contributors. In addition to the 15+ Nexthinkers who have published great content on the Hub, we’ve been so honored to welcome 17 extraordinary contributors from some of the world’s leading digital workplaces!

These business leaders and industry experts have offered their unique, firsthand perspectives on the trends and strategies that are revolutionizing every facet of DEX. To everyone who has contributed to the Hub over this past year, we can’t thank you enough!

Before we turn the page and usher in Year 2 of the DEX Hub, we’d like to show our appreciation by looking back at some of the fantastic content our contributors have produced so far:

ITQ’s Johan van Amersfoort on Future-Facing VDI Use Cases:

“When these businesses see how far VDI has come, those concerns vanish. Today, virtual desktops have the ability to massively improve experience without sacrificing flexibility. You’ll see that when you read these three unique VDI use cases – stories that prove why virtual desktops will play an essential role in supporting future workplaces.”

Johan van Amersfoort, author and Technologist at ITQ, delivered this fascinating piece on the many innovative ways virtual desktops are being used today – from gaming to hosting complex virtual reality technology.

Siemens’ Rainer Karcher on Real-World Green IT: 

“At Siemens, though, we’re trying, really trying, to be green inside and out. Want proof of this (you should)? We’re firmly committed to achieving net zero carbon by 2030 for scope 1 and 2 and by 2050 for scope 3 emissions. This means analyzing everything we do, and thinking how we can effect changes that can help us reach that goal.”

Rainer Karcher, Global Director of IT Sustainability at Siemens, penned this vital and timely breakdown of the benefits of sustainable IT and the steps companies can take to create an effective Green IT strategy.

IGEL Technology’s Ben Ward on Technology’s Impact on Employee Expectations:

“Though we may not realize it, the way technology is presented to us, the way we consume it and – perhaps most importantly – our expectations of the technology we use have changed beyond recognition.”

In this entertaining and engaging piece, IGEL’s Senior SE Ben Ward uses the smartphone as a starting point to discuss the ways in which employees’ expectations of the workplace have been impacted by their personal technology.

Slater & Gordon Lawyers’ Jon Grainger on Network Issues and Employee Experience:

“At Slater & Gordon, ‘connection’ has been our guiding principle during the pandemic era. We made sure employees had new avenues to connect with each other and collaborate virtually – but we also placed an added emphasis on network connectivity and the steps we could take to prevent slowdowns from plaguing employee productivity.”

We’ve been fortunate enough to collaborate with Jon Grainger, CIO at Slater & Gordon Lawyers’, on a number of great projects – including this illuminating article about the many ways IT teams can proactively avoid network issues to improve experience for remote and hybrid workers.

Mary K. Pratt on the Increasing Market Value of Employee-First IT Professionals:

“Delivering that best possible digital experience requires a new kind of IT team – one that includes technologists experienced in this area. It’s an investment that more organizations are willing to make: Our research shows that executives are paying a premium for professionals with DEX-related skills.”

We were so lucky to welcome award-winning tech journalist Mary K. Pratt to the DEX Hub this year! In this piece, she offered her expert perspective to explore the reasons employee-experienced focused IT workers are earning higher salaries than their peers in today’s increasingly DEX-driven business world.

Thanks to all of our incredible DEX Hub readers!

The above stories are just a small fraction of the amazing contributors we’ve worked with this year – and we’re incredibly thankful for each and every person that has made the DEX Hub the publication it is today.

And last but certainly not least: none of our success would have been possible without you, our DEX Hub readers! We’ve been blown away by the responses we’ve gotten since launching the publication a year ago. Your support has inspired us to make this next year even bigger and better, and we can’t wait for you to see the amazing content we have in store for you!

Before you go, we can’t fully celebrate the DEX Hub’s anniversary without shouting out the Digital Employee Experience Show! Hosted by Nexthinkers Tom McGrath and Tim Flower, this podcast has welcomed more than thirty brilliant guests from around the world, and each episode has been packed with illuminating (and fun!) discussions about every aspect of digital experience.

That’s a wrap on Year One of the DEX Hub! Keep reading, keep listening, and we’ll keep delivering you the most impactful stories to help you stay up-to-date on everything in the world of digital experience.

The post Celebrating the One-Year Anniversary of the DEX Hub! appeared first on Nexthink.

• The future of mobile handsets with 5G and WiFi connectivity 
• How technology impacts businesses and the way they work
• The balance between sustainability made devises and demand 

The post The DEX Show | Podcast #36 – Revolutionizing Workflow Integrations w/ Rami Husseini appeared first on Nexthink.

How a US-based consumer goods company reduced ticket count related to performance issues on macOS devices using Chrome as part of their digital collaboration platform.

Thanks to digital collaboration tools, the world continues to evolve and accept new hybrid working styles. Today, reliance on these instant messaging, video calls, and conferencing tools has turned collaboration solutions into the lifeblood of modern business productivity and collaboration.

The Downside of Digital Collaboration Tools

The problem is that employees are helpless when their collaboration tools fail. Their productivity grinds to a halt until IT can fix the issue. What’s more, collaboration tool failure doesn’t just affect the application or device owner – it negatively impacts every collaborator connected with them. Ultimately, impacting business outlook.

{Got collaboration tool woes? Get our Top 5 Tips for Eliminating Collaboration Tool Issues}

Collaborating on Google Workspace

Every organization uses its own collaboration tool portfolio, with different sets of applications for different use cases. For most, Office 365 comes to mind, but there are other solutions out there, notably Google Workspace.

And that was the case for this US-based consumer goods company that had implemented a fully flexible and hybrid working style for its employees. Employees relied on Google Workspace as their primary means of collaboration, with Google Chrome as their gateway to all their productivity applications and Google Meet as the go-to video call solution.

Getting to the Source of a Ticket Spike

The problem started the same way most IT problems start: a sharp increase in tickets related to Google Workspace.  More specifically, this consumer goods company noticed they were receiving more complaints from macOS users about overheating application crashes and, more importantly, poor Google Meet performance. These issues were seriously impacting employees’ ability to successfully collaborate remotely.

As similar tickets rolled in, the IT team made this a number one priority.

To investigate the cause of the issue, IT first opened their Google Workspace performance monitoring dashboard within Nexthink. This dashboard gave them an instant, birds eye view. Of the problem. Within moments, they identified a key source of the issue: macOS devices using Chrome applications were experiencing abnormally high CPU—some as much as 300%—with high memory usage to boot.

To better understand the root of the issues, IT drilled down into a single device’s timeline. Again, the problem was abundantly clear: Nexthink was warning them of abnormally high CPU and memory for this device.

But they needed deeper insights. They now had an idea of the source, but what was the true root of the issue? Nexthink provided a detailed view of the applications running, including Google Chrome, Meet, and a third potential culprit: Google Helper.

Contrary to its name, Google Helper was, in fact, not helping at all. This application was eating the device’s CPU, resulting in poor device and application performance, and driving the poor collaboration experience that prompted employees to submit tickets.

A bit of research showed that, indeed, Google Helper has a known issue that appears with a specific version of Google Chrome.

Looking at their Nexthink dashboard, they accessed a Timeline view of all application installs within employee devices. This timeline view allowed them to pinpoint the moment they installed the new Chrome binary—and they could clearly see that it corresponded to the moment the device’s CPU started going through the roof.

Resolution with Minimal Disruption

Now that they had identified the root of the problem, they could investigate every other device with the same binary to see if other users were experiencing this issue or were at risk of running into it. They could have pushed out a remote action, instituting the fix immediately. But, IT didn’t want to disrupt the flow of their employees any more than they needed to.

Instead of pushing out a disruptive remote fix to all identified employees experiencing the issue, IT instead sent out a quick Nexthink Engage campaign. This popup campaign unobtrusively informed employees of the issue and the coming fix. The campaign let employees choose between fixing the issue in the moment, or waiting 10 minutes, giving them time to finish what they were working on before the Chrome restart. IT fixed the issues, and employees avoided unnecessary disruption.

Using the Nexthink platform, the IT team proactively identified a complex issue with their main digital collaboration solution, automated the remediation across many devices and prevented future tickets from coming in about this issue.  As a result, the impacted employees’ productivity was restored along with every other collaborator who tried to connect with them.

Watch the full Nexthink Google Workspace Troubleshooting Demo in this 3-minute video:

The post Trouble with Google Chrome and macOS: When Google Helper isn’t Helping appeared first on Nexthink.

Learn how one Financial Institution stopped a flood of recurring IT tickets in its tracks with an automated 1-click fix 

When an L1 agent faces a mounting pile of IT tickets, it is hard to be anything but reactive. They need to resolve the issue as fast as possible and restore employee productivity. But when it comes to resolving the same IT ticket over and over again, no Service Desk team should have to do that more than once. Instead, Service Desk agents need to scale incident management across every device in their landscape to reduce or even eliminate recurring IT tickets. 

But, Service Desks are often stretched thin, leading to wasted resources, poor IT service delivery and frustrated employees. With IT incidents reaching critical mass, your Service Desk needs to stop repetitive incident management and “Fix one, Fix for all.” 

What is “Fix One, Fix for All” When it Comes to Proactive IT? 

When the Service Desk resolves common recurring IT issues once and for all through contextual automation, employee self-help, and one-click fix strategies, and utilizes direct integration into ITSM solutions to prevent IT issues from ever becoming IT tickets in the first place.  

{Learn More: How to Stop IT Issues Before They Impact Employees}

One Team’s Mounting Recurring IT Ticket Problem 

A US-based financial institution’s L1 service desk team was facing a high ticket count – but the real problem was it was often the same issues! 

Since the Service Desk had to wait for employees to report issues to fix them, they often had to resolve the same, recurring incidents across different devices repeatedly. Instead of increasing their budget to bring on more resources to keep up with the rising tickets, they used the Nexthink platform to implement a Fix one, Fix for All approach. 

How Nexthink’s Device Timeline View Identified the Root Cause of the Issue 

When the Service Desk team received a ticket from an extremely frustrated employee complaining about their MS Teams crashing during customer calls, the L1 agent accessed Nexthink’s device user timeline to view and identify that this frustrated employee’s device experienced recent crashes on MS Teams.   

In the device user timeline, the L1 agent could clearly see that these crashes started occurring after the Service Desk installed a new binary of Teams on employees’ devices.  

Implementing the “Fix One, Fix for All” Approach 

With Nexthink, the fix for the L1 agent identified the simple fix– a software rollback! 

But, instead of fixing it for just this employee who submitted the ticket, the L1 agent could—in a single click—identify if any other devices had the same issue with this executable.

And, as expected, the L1 agent sees a lot of other employee machines with the same Teams crashing problem!  

These employees either did not notice the issue yet or did not report it and were suffering in silence. Either way, the issue would impact employee productivity, and it was only a matter of time before employees submitted more tickets for the very same issues.  

The L1 agent knew that the “Fix for One, Fix for All” approach of fixing the issue for everyone impacted was the only way to prevent more incidents, tickets, and employee frustrations. 

{Download the free eBook: Evolving from Reactive to Proactive IT}

Targeted 1-Click Fix Resolves Hundreds of Issues in a Matter of Hours 

Instead of scheduling individual appointments with each impacted employee or sending an email they may not read, the Service Desk agent sent a targeted pop-up notification to all these impacted employees.  

This targeted campaign included a one-click fix, so if the employee clicked yes, Teams would be automatically rolled back to a previous and stable version. The quick notification provided minimal disruption to the employees impacted and enabled employees to resolve their issue and get back to work quickly. 

Resolved Issues, Reduced Recurring Tickets, and Happy Employees 

Thanks to Nexthink, the Service Desk team gained instant visibility over hundreds of non-reported issues and resolved them before employees could be negatively impacted or submit a ticket.  

With this Fix One, Fix for All approach, the number of incoming tickets dramatically reduced, giving the Service Desk a much-needed reprieve and the opportunity to more efficiently use their time to resolve the top issues impacting employee experience. 

{Learn more about how Nexthink enables your IT team to move from reactive to proactive.}

The post How to Get Ahead of Recurring IT Tickets (Use Case) appeared first on Nexthink.

How this global investment company identified a problematic MS Teams update and quickly resolved it before it impacted every employee 

If your employees’ collaboration tools are out of date, they are out of luck. As employees continue to work remotely, they, as well as hybrid and in-office employees, heavily rely on digital collaboration tools. Picture it. If all the applications on your device went down, the first ones you would notice would be your digital collaboration tools. So, if they crash, employees will be impacted almost instantly. And these days, it’s not a matter of “if” because collaboration tools are now the leading source of IT incidents and widespread employee frustrations. 

In order for IT teams to prevent these crashes and disruptions to employee productivity, they must carefully monitor the collaboration tools’ updates to ensure compliance and versioning.  

Why Do Compliance, Versioning, and Compatibility Matter for SaaS Apps? 

Faulty updates and compatibility issues are a leading cause of collaboration disruption, leading to performance and security problems. And with the dependence on SaaS applications, updates are frequent and necessary, making version control more critical than ever.  

{Download Now: Top 5 Tips for Eliminating Collaboration Tool Issues}

One IT Team’s Compatibility Problem 

A global investment company received an alert of a major issue impacting employee productivity with MS Teams, their main collaboration solution.  

Something was up. The L1 Agent needed to quickly identify the cause of the crashes and determine how many employees it impacted. First, he drilled down for further diagnostics and saw abnormal behavior, and the issue was marked “High.”

With a high level of confidence, Nexthink intelligence pinpointed versioning as the culprit, and even the specific binary was causing hundreds of crashes. 

Further drill down into the details confirmed that the installation of a new binary was followed by the application crashing. A rollback to the previous version and removal of the latest version was needed. With a single click, the agent could investigate every device with the same problem and create a list of employees experiencing the MS Teams crashes. Rather than schedule an appointment with each impacted employee, the L1 agent deployed a targeted fix across all of them.  

They opted for a self-help solution to avoid disrupting collaboration with a forced rollback to a previous version. 

{Read More: How One IT Team Saved 100 Hours with a Self Help Campaign}

Targeted Self-help for Personalized IT Support 

Using the impacted employee list and resolution the L1 agent identified, the IT team sent a targeted Nexthink Engage campaign to all affected users with 1-click fix to uninstall the outdated version of MS Teams.

This pop-up notification with a 1-click fix resolved the issue in minutes, quickly resolved the disruption, and prevented any impacted employees from submitting a ticket to get help. 

With modern SaaS applications requiring frequent security and quality releases, it is very easy for key updates to fall through the cracks across thousands of devices and cause serious collaboration issues. Fortunately, this IT team used the Nexthink platform and received a proactive alert about the crashes and used the dashboards to diagnose and see everyone impacted and send them a smart automation to resolve the crashes restoring employee collaboration.   

Watch this 2-minute Video to See How this Organization Rapidly Resolved its Collaboration Issues

Want to learn how Nexthink can help prevent collaboration tool failures? 

Let’s Talk 

The post How to Quickly Fix Collaboration Tool Crashes After an Update (Use Case) appeared first on Nexthink.

How one North American Tech company received a 73% participation rate on their Zoom training despite initial employee resistance 

If the Service Desk sees IT tickets pile up around a particular application, their first thought will be to identify and troubleshoot a recent issue or bug. However, employee frustrations aren’t always from technical failures and those tickets can be much harder to diagnose and resolve.  

How Big of a Problem is Employee Adoption? 

Since employee adoption problems are not as immediately apparent to IT teams, they often lurk below the radar of Service Desk because if employees aren’t using a tool, they aren’t submitting a ticket for it. Don’t be fooled because even without rising ticket counts, the employee adoption issues negatively impact IT teams and their digital transformation projects. According to McKinsey, 70% of all digital transformation programs fail due to employee resistance.  

And that risk of failure is exactly what this North American tech company’s IT team faced when they rolled out Zoom for video conferencing for any employees returning to the office. 

{Read Now: 5 Tips to Speed Successful Web Application Adoption}

How a North American Tech Company Overcame Employee Resistance  

Previously, this company’s employees only used MS Teams for digital collaboration. And while employees were used to using Teams for internal collaboration and video calls, the IT team needed to use Zoom for all in-office conference calls.  

Since Zoom was a new collaboration tool to the organization, employees were unfamiliar with it and saw it as redundant to Teams. So, when employees received the email from IT announcing Zoom as the selected tool for all in-office conferencing, they did nothing. They ignored IT’s email with Zoom instructions and very few visited the Knowledgebase for more information.

Unfortunately, the low readership and engagement on company emails is a growing trend as employees face increasing distractions including competing notifications from SaaS applications and their coworkers on collaboration tools like Slack and MS Teams. In an A/B test, a leading life sciences company tested the engagement of email versus a Nexthink Engage campaign. The results were astounding. The pop-up notification from Nexthink achieved 2,214% more views than email. 

{Please Read! How to Get 10x Higher Response Rates than Email}

This unfamiliarity resulted in a spike in IT tickets and employee frustration. Employees could not figure out how to use video conference calls properly from the office resulting in missed meetings and frustrated users. And those who were able to host video conference calls in Zoom, weren’t fully utilizing the features available to them such as recording the meeting or file sharing. As a result, the number of urgent IT tickets related to launch Zoom climbed.  

When the Service Desk agents investigated the tickets around the reported poor Zoom experience, they couldn’t identify any bugs or issues to address. Instead, it became clear employees needed further employee enablement and training on the new tool.   

Using Nexthink to Directly Engage Employees to Drive Adoption 

To prevent any more disrupted, delayed or missed meetings, the IT team acted quickly and sent out a Nexthink Engage campaign. The campaign targeted employees with a pop-up notification who frequented the offices and any employees who submitted a ticket with a Zoom complaint.  

Each employee received a notification prompting them to watch a 3-minute training video on how to best utilize Zoom.

As a result of this targeted and relevant campaign, the IT team saw a 73 percent response rate from employees and a complete stop to any IT tickets related to usage issues with Zoom.  

A sudden flood of IT tickets did not cause this IT team to panic. Using Nexthink, the IT team was able to quickly rule out any IT issues and identify the true cause of employee frustration with Zoom. By sending additional training to the struggling employees, they prevented further IT tickets and drastically increased adoption of the newest collaboration tool. 

{Dive Deeper: Eliminating Collaboration Tool Issues}

Watch this 2-minute Video to See How this Organization Overcame Poor Zoom Usage and Adoption

Want to learn how Nexthink can help prevent collaboration tool failures? 

Let’s Talk 

The post No Bug, No Problem: Solving Employee Adoption and Usage of Zoom (Use Case) appeared first on Nexthink.

How a Northern-European car manufacturer dramatically reduced incoming tickets related to low disk space using 4 key automations.

Incident tickets are an unavoidable, routine aspect of working in IT. But failing to identify and solve the root cause of the issue behind repeated tickets will cause unresolved tickets to pile up, creating a huge disruption for IT and employees.  

In most organizations, Service Desk teams wait until an employee submits a ticket to begin the incident management process – but by then, it is already too late. While the Service Desk works to resolve that individual ticket, the root issue is impacting several other employees, repeating over an over. More and more employees report the issue, the tickets continue to get resolved one at a time. But the tickets are coming in too fast for the Service Desk to keep up with, and now that organization is identified as a “top call driver.”

In most organizations, a “top call driver” is a nightmare scenario: time is wasted, tickets are escalated, employees are frustrated and L1 agents are burnt out as the entire Service Desk team tries to solve an issue that could have been avoided easily.  

Proactive IT: Visibility and Automation  

This is why IT needs to be proactive and leverage preemptive analytics.  

A proactive IT strategy allows IT and Service Desk teams to detect and resolve the root cause of incidents before too many tickets are submitted. Or, better yet, before these issues can impact the digital experience of too many employees.  

We already know that proactive IT starts with pre-incident visibility, as discussed here.  

But, being aware of an issue is one thing. Being able to fix it quickly and prevent it from impacting more employees is another. This is where automation becomes a core component of proactive IT. And it’s exactly what a Northern-European car manufacturer did when they were faced with mounting piles of unresolved tickets.

Red: Incidents are only resolved once an impacted employee has submitted a ticket causing the incident to become a top call driver
Green: Proactive automation is applied at the incident’s nascent stage to prevent it from escalating into a nightmare scenario

From reactive to proactive 

Like many organizations today, this Northern-European car manufacturer realized that although they had invested a large amount in their Service Desk, employees continued to submit tickets. Their Service Desk team was continusouly resolving similar issues and the infamous nightmare scenario of “top call driver” was a reality.  

This was one of their main reasons for implementing Nexthink as a key IT solution – proactive visibility and automation. They wanted to reduce the number of IT incident tickets coming in, and get ahead of the next “top call driver” nightmare before it happened. 

Very quickly, the manufacturer gained the proactive visibility they needed to identify the root cause of their high ticket count. And more importantly, they saw how to resolve it quickly and effectively.  

Reducing IT incident tickets with a 4-part automation strategy 

One of their top call drivers had been “slow PC” with tickets continuously coming in from employees complaining about their laptop feeling slow or dragging.  Every time an employee submitted an issue, an L1 agent would open the ticket and contact the employee to perform individualized troubleshooting – nothing too complex, but time-consuming nonetheless.  

After deciding to become more proactive in their IT processes, a quick Nexthink drill down from their Experience Optimization dashboard confirmed “slow PCs” as the main source of frustration and, more specifically, that these slow PC issues were clearly related to devices running out of disk space.  

To prevent this issue from recurring and reaching the Service Desk, IT implemented 4 quick and efficient automations:  

1. Targeted, Contextual Engagement and Automated Fix  

As a first step, the Service Desk team fixed the issue for every single user in the organization with low disk space. Because they could not perform a deep disk clean without employee approval, they leveraged Nexthink Engage to send a targeted engagement and single-click fix feature. 

IT set a threshold of an 80% used disk space so that any employees above this percentage would receive a timely pop-up notification to inform them of the issue and recommend performing either a disk clean or deep-clean. A single click from the employee triggered an automated remote action to clean their disk on the spot.  No IT-Employee communication or ticket submission required. 

The Service Desk initially sent this campaign to resolve all the open tickets. But as a proactive step, they also set up a recurring  campaign to send to any employees reaching the 20% free space threshold in the future.  

2. ServiceNow Self-Service Portal Integration  

The next step was to give employees the means to resolve the issue themselves before ever having to submit a ticket. They did this by integrating the same disk clean remote action into their ServiceNow Self-Service Portal. 

Any employees with low disk space on their devices (20% remaining) who visited the portal would be presented with a warning and a single-click fix to immediately remediate the issue – without IT interaction.

3. Chatbot Enrichment  

After the self service portal integration, the IT team turned their attention to the company’s recently deployed chatbot. Since the company had included a strong focus on self-help enablement in the chatbot strategy, IT also added this disk cleaning solution to their virtual agent.  

Nexthink’s chatbot integration allowed the IT team to offer much faster and smarter chatbot responses leveraging key Nexthink data. The chatbot could prompt a disk clean single click remote action: employees asking the chatbot about slow pc related issues would get prompted with the same disk single-click remote action, directly accessible as a single click fix straight from the chatbot. 

4. Single-Click Fix in L1 Checklist in ITSM solution 

And, finally, in the event that tickets did come through, the Service Desk team integrated the disk clean remote action as a single click fix into L1 agents’ L1 checklist, integrated directly into their preferred ITSM tool (ServiceNow for this specific manufacturing company).  

This dramatically simplified the L1 agents’ troubleshooting and accelerated their time to resolution by immediately detecting if low disk space was the issue and triggering the remote action and engagement feature, if necessary.

And that’s just one! 

By making these fixes instant and accessible to employees, the IT team dramatically reduced their ticket count related to slow PC and low disk space to near 0. And if a ticket did arise – L1 could confidently resolve it within seconds.  

Soon one of the most common IT issues was no issue at all.  

And that’s just one issue! The company is now applying this method across a wide range of other common incidents to seriously reduce inbound tickets and, ultimately, better allocate the service desk’s time and resources. 

Watch the full demo here: 

The post How One Company’s IT Service Desk Used Automation to Reduce Incident Tickets appeared first on Nexthink.

Standardization (treating everyone the same) may work for IT, but it does not work for employees. If IT gave each employee the same device and tech stack, what would be the result? Some employees wouldn’t have the tools they need, others would have too many. Every employee would be confused and unsatisfied with their work setup. Not exactly the recipe for a productive enterprise with cost effective IT, is it? 

To equip employees with the right technology without ballooning the IT budget, IT is caught between two difficult extremes:  

1) deliver the best service and support to everyone so they happy  

2) optimize efficiency to avoid massive cost over-runs 

That’s where tailored IT personas enter the conversation. 

What Are Tailored IT End User Personas 

Tailored IT personas take the traditional static approach to IT personas and update that to a more dynamic approach. With tailored IT personas, IT groups employees by common requirements (workstyle) and deliver suitably tailored services that map to those distinct workstyles. 

Good enough to delight, but cheap enough not to break the bank. 

Many organizations have tried persona management to bridge the gap between standardization and the personal needs of employees. Persona is the only real way to deliver onboarding, the right support and the best services without massively over-spending. 

This issue is that personas traditionally have failed as they have been based on shallow criteria such as job title, department, location and are compiled once in a static fashion, never to be updated.

Personas should not be for the start of projects. Personas must continuously evolve to be useful 

Personas should be more than just demographics and application usage. The full spectrum of an employee’s digital experience must be analysed, from the operating system and applications, to the services and network usage, through to, and let’s not forget this, how the user feels; what they are lacking and how are they impacted today..  

At Nexthink, we get it.   We help customers drive cost-efficient personalization across many use-cases. Let’s cover a  few.  

How End User Personas Can Help Optimize IT Costs  

Device Provisioning   

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” (Rolling Stones) 

How can IT best decide what device to provision for each employee? Do you give employees exactly what they want? Maybe, if budget isn’t an issue. But when is that ever the case? 

I must admit that in the past, I have been guilty of going for expensive choice when it came to my work device. As a MAC user, the last 20 years have seen me receive a new MacBook Pro every 3 to 5 years. In my case though,  I need the resources and tools that a MAC offers. However, most people with basic computing needs do not need all the extra bells and whistles, and yet they are given the top of the line, highest cost MAC anyway.  

Asking users what they want, often from three options, typically results in people asking for more than they need. IT needs to find a better solution, one that still delights employees, but doesn’t give them a more expensive and higher-powered machine than they really need. 

{Read More: Personalized IT: What Every Tech Department Needs to Know}

Understanding the reality of what users do and how they use tech allows IT to make informed decisions when provisioning devices. Matching the device to the workstyle can toe the magical line of keeping employees happy without breaking the bank.   

This allows customers to renew with cheaper lower-powered devices or better yet, repurpose existing devices that are good enough. All while not putting poorly performing devices in front of users. 

So, they may not always get what they want, but they just might find they get what they need. 

Onboarding Employees When They Have Evolving Needs

The most important aspect of personas is that they must be dynamic.  The way people work changes across many factors including location, offline vs online, involvement in new projects requiring new tools, and many more.  

Their workplace IT persona therefore must also change along with their workstyle. In order for employees to have the equipment they need to be productive and drive business outcomes, their IT personas must be dynamic. 

This is particularly useful in understanding when someone’s workstyle has changed. Wouldn’t it be great if IT could proactively offer new devices or workspace configurations to employees based on observed behaviour rather than waiting for their device warrantee to expire or for them to raise a ticket? Waiting for employees to tell you that they need new equipment actually ends up costing IT even more time and money in the long run. 

But tailored IT personas, the kind that are dynamic and adaptable, can actually help optimize IT costs over time. 

Here’s an example of how a European Retail company used Nexthink to do just that when they optimized onboarding for their developer team: 

Conclusion  

Traditional IT personas fall short of achieving IT’s goals in the modern, dispersed, digital workplace. Adopting tailored IT personas that are dynamic and multi-dimensional increase employee happiness and productivity, promote business success, and optimize IT costs. It’s a win, win. 

Learn more about how to develop and implement tailored IT personas to reduce IT costs and provide a better digital employee experience here. 

The post How to Optimize IT Costs with Tailored End User Personas appeared first on Nexthink.

The past several years have proved that productivity and business growth do not rely on employees going into the office every day. But are the more intangible benefits of in-person work being lost in today’s remote/hybrid workplaces? That’s the question on the minds of a lot of business leaders, particularly as they weigh the pros and cons of a “back to the office” policy. 

Some executives (particularly those who embraced remote work only because there was no other option) believe that a company cannot promote the shared values, goals, and practices that characterize a healthy culture without employees being present in the office. 

Meanwhile, other leaders recognize that getting rid of remote work options puts their business at risk of losing top talent – as the Great Resignation has shown today’s employees are more than willing to leave their employers for companies whose policies more closely reflect their own preferences. 

So what’s the right solution? Before answering that question, business leaders must face a hard truth: executives’ sentiments about returning to the office is very different than those of their employees. 

High-profile businesses have invigorated the debate around workplace mandates. 

While employees have enjoyed the newfound flexibility and freedom of remote work, executives at many companies have been eager to see employees back in the office. The argument for returning to the office hinges on the fact that remote work simply cannot replicate the sense of community, interpersonal connection, and engagement that employees experience in face-to-face settings. 

The debate around back-to-office mandates caught fire in the past month, as high-profile business leaders like Elon Musk have taken a firm stance against their staff continuing to work remotely. 

“Remote work is no longer acceptable,” read the subject line of a leaked memo Musk sent to Tesla’s executive team in June. The email went on to state that corporate employees would be required to spend at least 40 hours per week in the office or risk termination. 

Now, Musk’s controversial stance is far from the mainstream standard – only 4% of employers are requiring all employees to return to the workplace full-time. But the now-infamous Tesla memo points to a larger problem that’s emerged in the gray area of post-pandemic work: the “executive-employee disconnect”. 

If you believe executives and employees are in sync when it comes to returning to the office, consider these statistics: 

• Three-quarters of all executives reported that they want to be in the office three to five days per week. 
• Only one-third of employees want to come to the office three or more times per week.

Furthermore, as many as 40% of workers say they would leave their job if they were no longer allowed to work remotely. Employees’ support of continued remote work options has been so strong that other large corporations have reversed course on their planned back-to-office mandates.  

For example, Apple – who originally shared Musk’s stance on mandating in-person work – quickly delayed those plans because of employee pushback. The company modified their policy to include an opt-in option for their return-to-work program. 

Can companies maintain a thriving culture while continuing to offer remote work options?

When the remote work era began, many executives feared the impact it would have on productivity and their business’s bottom line. This fear proved to be unfounded: employees who work remotely or in hybrid settings report the same or slightly higher performance than in-office workers. 

The trickier question is about company culture and engagement. It’s undeniable that remote work makes it more challenging for businesses to build tight-knit teams of employees who collaborate well and know each other as people rather than colleagues on their laptop screens. 

It’s clear that the solution to this problem is not to force employees back into the office. These mandates may lead to employees becoming closer to one another and their work, but that benefit is offset by the negative sentiments that arise from employees being told their preferred methods of working are not acceptable. 

The problem can only be solved through compromise, as we’ve seen with the hybrid work policies of other major companies like Reddit, Airbnb, Spotify, and countless others. These corporations have enacted policies that promote flexibility, allowing employees to balance work and life through a combination of remote and in-office hours. 

But that doesn’t mean organizations have to sacrifice company culture for flexibility. In order for a remote or hybrid workplace to foster a thriving culture, business leaders must adopt the following priorities: 

1. Flexible collaboration technology. 

Can technology truly replicate the culture-building benefits of in-person work? Of course not. However, ensuring that employees have access to the right technology will go a long way in building community among dispersed workforces. 

Business leaders must prioritize employee feedback when deploying solutions such as project management platforms and communication tools. When employees enjoy using their collaboration technology, they’re far likelier to use it effectively – driving productivity, of course, but also encouraging engaging and fun interactions between employees. 

It’s important to also remember that “non-work conversations” are a critical part of in-office communication. Collaboration technology should be flexible enough to also encourage these figurative watercooler interactions. Chat apps that include different channels for personal discussion – like sharing vacation stories, pet photos, discussing sports and pop culture – might not seem like a key priority for business leaders, but they can have a huge impact on both company culture and employee happiness. 

2. Scheduled culture-building activities. 

Prior to the pandemic, team outings and all-company events were considered to be nice bonuses to reward employees for their hard work. In a remote or hybrid workforce, these culture-building activities should be seen as key priorities.  

When planning for the year ahead, business leaders should make a concerted effort to schedule semi-regular events for employees to connect with one another outside of their traditional work responsibilities. Whether it’s an all-company party or scheduled happy hour or dinners among specific teams and departments, these fun events not only help to minimize employee burnout but also bring workers much closer to their colleagues. 

In between these more elaborately planned events, companies can also encourage community-building through remote events – like team trivia, virtual happy hours, interactive cooking classes, and so on.

Lastly, it’s important that culture becomes a measurable priority. IT and HR should join forces to establish a strategy for how technology and community-building activities will work in unison to improve culture. From there, they can continuously gather employee feedback, paying close attention to how responses to these efforts vary between in-person, remote, and hybrid workers.  

The post Will ‘Back to the Office’ Mandates Help or Hurt Company Culture? appeared first on Nexthink.

•  How standardization helps the few not the masses 
•  The consumerization of digital transformation
•  Why the employee experience and user experience is the future of IT 

The post The DEX Show | Podcast #37 – Delete the Distance: Greeting a True Employee and User Experience w/ Adam Harding appeared first on Nexthink.

What’s your web browser of choice? Ask an office full of workers that question and you’ll get a few answers, sure, but one has emerged as a clear favorite: Google Chrome. Holding a collective 60% of the market share in 2021, Chrome has separated itself as the preferred web browser for the general public and modern employees. 

Here’s the problem: a majority of businesses still set other browsers (predominantly Safari or Firefox) as the default browsers for their employee devices. This isn’t because these businesses are out of touch with the times – rather that they consider these browsers to be more secure than Chrome, which has been labeled the most vulnerable of the leading browsers. 

At first glance, this might seem like a minor issue. Web browsers are all pretty similar, right? But look beneath the surface and you’ll recognize that this issue highlights a much more significant disconnect between the tools employees want to use and the tools their employers believe are the best options. 

Employees have more control over their technology experiences than ever before. 

A decade ago, an employee’s preference for a tool as a simple as a web browser would’ve been a relative afterthought at most companies. But times have changed considerably – we’ve come a long way from the days of employees adopting whatever tools they’re given without having a voice in those decisions. 

Today’s employees arrive at a company with far greater digital dexterity than ever before; they’re familiar with many different tools and they know which ones best suit their needs and working styles.

{Read More: How to Foster Digital Dexterity In Your Workplace} 

Simultaneously, the digital workplace has become increasingly employee-driven. Employees have gained autonomy over where they work – and more importantly, how they work. If their employer doesn’t listen to their voice, make decisions based on their feedback, and equip them with the tools they need to be as successful as possible, employees have shown an increasing willingness to leave that company to pursue more favorable experiences elsewhere. 

All of this raises the question: can a compromise be made? What is an employer to do when their employees want to use a certain tool, but they have a good reason – especially a security concern – to set standards that don’t include that preferred tool?  

How IT Can Build a Bridge Between Employee Preferences and Company Priorities 

Employee expectations aren’t the only thing that have changed in the workplace over recent years. The function of the modern IT department has also evolved – and IT plays a critical role when it comes to this issue of compromise between employees and employers. 

Ultimately, it’s IT who is largely responsible for understanding and managing the technology employees use, and the way employees interact with and feel about those technologies. 

Let’s look at three critical steps IT can take to facilitate that compromise – using the issue of web browser preference as our example. 

1. Analyze Shadow IT usage. 

If an IT team doesn’t have access to DEX management tools, ones that enable them to visualize how workplace technology is being used on a day-to-day basis, they’re unlikely to ever know that shadow IT is a problem. But with these real-time technical data points, they’re able to see how many employees are ignoring the default web browsers and using a tool like Chrome instead.

From there, the IT team can dig into this data even further. Is there a commonality between employees who use Chrome instead of the default browser? Are younger workers more likely to use Chrome compared to older generations? Remote workers vs. in-office workers? Looking for trends in technology usage and shadow IT will help an IT team understand employee experience in greater depth.  

2. Bring DEX findings to leadership. 

Now, IT leaders have tangible data that they can show their executive team to illustrate a potential disconnect that might negatively impact DEX.  

At the end of the day, securing executive buy-in is critical for any decision related to technology deployment and usage. With actionable DEX data, IT has a seat at the table with leadership and significantly more sway when it comes to business decisions.  

3. Deploy targeted engagement and education campaigns to employees. 

If employees are relying on shadow IT on a day-to-day basis, IT has two main options. They can block the unapproved application or tool from being used on employee devices, or they can go directly to employees with engaging and personalized information about these solutions.

The former option is a surefire way to harm the overall digital experience across an enterprise. When an employee is accustomed to using a certain tool and then lose access to that tool entirely, they’re guaranteed to become disgruntled with IT and leadership and more disengaged from their work as a whole. 

Here’s the alternative. Let’s say an IT department realizes that a large percentage of employees are using Chrome rather than Firefox, which is their default browser. Executives don’t want to make Chrome the default because they’re worried what precedent it might set in the face of their legitimate security concerns – but they also don’t want to anger employees by blocking Chrome. 

In this scenario, IT can deploy educational campaigns targeted towards Chrome users. These campaigns serve the purpose of explaining the differences between Chrome and the default browser – recognizing why employees prefer one over the other, but also enlightening employees about the vulnerabilities that could pose risks with their preferred tool. 

These campaigns will be successful if they provide Chrome users with specific steps to minimize security risks, warning signs that they should look out for, and additional support for users who are willing to transition from Chrome to the default browser. 

On the backend, there are additional security measures that IT can take to mitigate risk, from deploying additional protections to proactively monitoring Chrome activity to notice security issues before they make an impact. But these methods must go hand-in-hand with direct engagement between IT and employees. 

When workers are able to look behind the curtain and see the processes behind the technology they use, they become more in sync with IT, more understanding of their leadership team’s perspectives, and more satisfied that their opinions are actually being considered and acted upon. 

And when IT leaders are equipped with in-depth DEX data, they rightfully earn a seat at the table with leadership, elevate the department’s status within the business, and can become advocates for employees while influencing business decisions related to DEX.   

The post Employees Love Using Google Chrome – But Do Their Employers Want Them To? appeared first on Nexthink.

Welcome to a brand new DEX Show series, named “Reality Bytes”. This new show-within-a-show brings together Nexthink’s brightest minds from both the journalist/analyst and technology fields – providing listeners with two distinct perspectives on the topics that matter most in the world of DEX.

In this episode, DEX Hub contributors Sam Holzman and Megan Brake and technologist Dina Elshawaf join forces with Tim and Tom to discuss the following juicy topics:

1. Chrome in the workplace
2. IT & the Flow State

For more amazing DEX content, including podcasts, articles and exclusive research, head over to the DEX Hub (dex.nexthink.com)

To hear more interviews like this one, subscribe to the Digital Employee Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Digital Employee Experience in your favorite podcast player.

The post The DEX Show | Reality Bytes #1 – Browsing for Your Flow appeared first on Nexthink.

In the last few years, we’ve seen an awakening across the IT space of leaders working on one skill: empathy.

The past outlook of IT, is that it’s a business sector focused on solving problems from employee submitted tickets. A face behind a computer. No need for anything beyond this.

Our guest, Mary Patry, CEO, Executive Coach & IT Advisor at ITeffectivity, LLC, shares that the modern approach, led by CIO leaders, is to focus on employee engagement, experience and emotional health.

We discuss:

1. 1. Moving from the triage approach of IT needs to prescriptive and preventative
   2. Why it’s important for CIOs to learn to lead with empathy
   3. The importance of company values, culture and connections

For more amazing DEX content, including podcasts, articles and exclusive research, head over to the DEX Hub (dex.nexthink.com)

To hear more interviews like this one, subscribe to the Digital Employee Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Digital Employee Experience in your favorite podcast player.

The post The DEX Show | Podcast #38 – The Power of The Team w/ Mary Patry appeared first on Nexthink.

Managing the digital experiences of an entire workforce isn’t easy. But that’s what today’s IT professionals are tasked with: as DEX has become an essential priority in our increasingly digital workplace, IT jobs now require service teams to deploy the strategies that ensure employees remain productive, engaged, and happy. 

But what about IT workers themselves? What about their employees experiences? 

After all, IT workers are employees too! This might sound obvious, but it’s too often neglected when we talk about the relationship between IT and employee experience. And the quality of IT employees’ experiences is just as important and multilayered as the experiences of the workers they provide service to. 

So today, we’re giving the employees in IT some much-needed shine. If you think the ideal IT job couldn’t possibly exist, read on.  

Businesses must consider the impact IT has on employee happiness – including IT employees themselves. 

Let’s face it: a lot of IT professionals have a thankless role. When they do a great job, they often don’t get credit for the part they play in keeping the workplace flowing. Otherwise, most employees only really think of IT when something goes wrong – and if those problems happen frequently, it’s IT who ends up bearing the brunt of the criticism.  

Consider that just 32% of employees say that their corporate technology is working efficiently. The other 68% likely experience a lot of technology-based headaches, and too often the blame falls on IT’s shoulders. 

In reality, frequent technological issues don’t happen because IT workers are performing poorly, working too slow, failing to communicate, or ignoring employees’ needs. These problems keep occurring, in most cases, because an IT department doesn’t have access to the tools they need to properly manage DEX.  

When IT workers have access to real-time experience data and deep visibility into employees’ day-to-day experiences, they’re able to proactively solve problems before they occur, communicate effectively through targeted engagement messages, and automate solutions so that the technology employees use is continuously improving. The result? Employees have smoother experiences and become much happier at work. 

But that’s not the only benefit. The ability to effectively manage DEX is just as much of a game changer when it comes to IT employees’ happiness. 

5 Ways Improving DEX Also Improves IT Employees’ Experiences 

When a business fails to understand, monitor, and improve DEX, there’s a negative impact on the entire organization – including IT teams, who become swamped with support tickets and an employee base that increasingly loses patience with them. 

Now let’s look at the bright side. Here are the benefits IT teams enjoy when they do have access to powerful DEX management technology:

1. Improves their reputation with leadership.

When employees suffer technological issues that impact their productivity, there’s a tangible impact on the business’s bottom line. Executives see these results and often develop a negative perception of IT – they invest money in the department and don’t understand why so many problems still occur. 

On the other hand, within organizations that utilize DEX management strategies IT workers have a much better reputation. They’re able to deploy initiatives that make employees more productive and, as a result, make the business more money. And they have access to tangible experience data that proves how effective these DEX initiatives are – data that they can bring to the C-suite and rightfully earn a seat at the table when it comes to technology decision-making.

2. Frees time for more innovative and creative projects.

IT professionals are exceptionally smart individuals: they have tons of great ideas to improve workplace technology, study and adapt to the latest innovations in the industry, and build projects that will truly excite the employees they work with. 

Unfortunately, IT workers who are constantly playing catch-up don’t get the opportunity to act on those ideas. Without proactively managing DEX, they’re faced with a steady stream of issues to solve – and just about every one of those issues is urgent and complex. 

The horizon truly expands, then, when manually solving repetitive issues gets taken off of IT workers’ plates. Proactive IT teams can detect these issues and deploy automated solutions that prevent them from reoccurring. This frees up a massive amount of time – time that these intelligent and creative professionals can spend on innovation projects that actually make the workplace better.

{Read More: 1 Click Fixes Save $20k and 380 Service Desk Hours}

3. Reduces burnout across IT teams.

We’ve spoken at length about employee burnout and its consequences. It’s cited as the #1 challenge facing today’s organizations by 36% of HR leaders. Burnout has a negative impact beyond reducing employee happiness, as it can also hurt an organization’s ability to retain talent.  

IT workers are perhaps more susceptible to burnout than any other role. The past few years have put an unprecedented strain on support teams, as they’ve been tasked with keeping the workforce up and running through a period of major upheaval. IT leaders report up to a 50% increase in support tickets since the start of the pandemic. For IT workers who don’t have the tools they need to keep up with constant change, any given day can become an uphill battle of pressure and stress.  

Automating the menial issues that plague employees every day alleviates much of this stress on IT departments. They’re no longer faced with an endless pile of tickets that need to be resolved. And they no longer have to worry, when they log in to work, whether today will deliver a new disaster that throws them into crisis-solving mode. As a result, they’re able to set healthier personal schedules, focus harder on the tasks in front of them, and provide great service that doesn’t come at the cost of their own wellbeing.

4. Enables closer relationships with the employees they work with.

In the outdated mode of IT support, service workers are largely invisible to other employees – except for when there’s a problem. The majority of IT interactions go something like this: 

Employee: “Hi, there’s a problem with Outlook and I can’t access my email.” 

IT: “I’m sorry to hear that. Looking into this for you now.” 

Then IT solves the problem, and that’s it – until that employee runs into another issue. 

An effective DEX management strategy completely changes the IT-employee relationship. For one, the above interactions take place much less frequently, as IT’s able to solve this sort of issue before it even impacts the employee. Instead, it’s often the IT worker who initiates contact with the employee to tell them about an issue they already prevented on their device. 

DEX-driven IT professionals are also able to engage with employees outside the realm of issue remediation. They have deep visibility into how each employee’s device and applications are performing. This visibility enables them to reach out to employees with educational, personalized messages that offer tips and teach them best practices to get the most out of their technology. 

These kinds of personal, helpful interactions facilitate much better relationships between IT and employees. They make IT workers feel like they have a positive impact on their colleagues’ work lives. And they show employees how much their peers in IT really care about helping them be as productive and happy as possible.

5. Redefines the purpose and mission of an IT department.

All of the above benefits – from reduced burnout to improved reputations – positively affect the day-to-day experiences of individual IT workers. But becoming DEX-driven also has a big-picture impact on the foundational purpose that drives an IT department as a whole.  

In a reactive support model, IT’s mission is to solve and prevent as many issues as possible, as fast as possible. If they’re able to innovate and improve the digital workplace on top of that, great – but when urgent issues occur every day, they become the department’s only true priority. 

A DEX-driven IT department operates with a much deeper purpose: architecting a thriving, one-of-a-kind digital workplace filled with productive and engaged employees. 

They’re able to become more agile and efficient as they develop and deploy innovative solutions. They work more closely with HR and other departments to manage employee experience from every angle. And they gain more influence among decision-makers, leveraging their unique insights to make DEX a company-wide priority. 

I’m sure we can all agree that’s a much more invigorating mission than solving the same problems over and over again. So whatever your definition of a “comfy” IT job might be, one thing is clear: with DEX management technology, the IT worker’s dream of a satisfying, rewarding, and inspiring job becomes a reality. 

{Find your comfy IT job on our DEX Jobs Board} 

The post The Two Sides of Experience: Does the ‘Comfy’ IT Job Really Exist? appeared first on Nexthink.

We all know the story by now: we’ve entered a new era of work. And no, we’re not just referring to the pandemic, which forced businesses to accelerate digital transformation projects at an unprecedented speed.

That major upheaval led to even more impactful shifts: like the Great Resignation, great reshuffle, great whatever-you-want-to-call-it, which challenged businesses to prioritize employee experience in order to keep their employees engaged, satisfied, and determined to stay with the company rather than seek better experiences elsewhere.

Now the state of the global economy is bringing even more changes to the workplace. Facing rapid inflation and a potential recession, businesses are restrategizing to weather the storm of tighter budgets and limited resources. As a result, many organizations are scaling back their emphasis on employee experience in order to focus solely on keeping profits high. After all, the tighter employment market means employees have less leverage, right?

Not so fast. Digital employee experience (DEX) shouldn’t take a backseat during times of economic instability – in fact, managing DEX is more important now than ever. Let’s take a look at two reasons why.

Reason 1: Prioritizing DEX improves the bottom line.

A majority of business decisions hinge on one single question: will this help our company grow and earn more? Whether the economy is up or down, organizations are always seeking to maximize stability, growth, and profits.

But there’s a common misconception when it comes to the relationship between managing DEX and driving profits. Too many businesses believe that investing in DEX management solutions and making DEX a key priority comes at the expense of the bottom line. They think they have to make a choice between two options: make our digital workers happier, or drive profits.

However, improving DEX and driving growth are not mutually exclusive priorities – they actually go hand in hand. First, consider the issue of hiring and developing new talent. This is one of the most expensive aspects of running a business, and one of the most important to get right. If you lack the technology to provide a stellar onboarding experience for digital workers, you’re likely to suffer through an increase in employee turnover that will send IT and HR costs skyrocketing. On the flipside, efficient digital onboarding cultivates highly engaged and productive employees, faster.

But what about the current employees who have been working at the company for months, years, or even decades? Keeping these workers engaged is equally important. And we don’t just mean for the sake of keeping them from pursuing opportunities. When employees are feeling productive, motivated, and engaged with their work, there’s a tangible impact on business growth. In fact, recent studies show that companies with a highly engaged workforce have 21% higher profitability than organizations with a disengaged workforce!

Reason 2: The digital workplace is still employee-driven.

Let’s dispel another myth: the idea that a struggling economy and slower job market means that companies are now “taking the power” back from employees.

Yes, the job market has slowed since the boom that ushered in the age of the Great Resignation. But workers leaving employers who provide less-than-stellar experiences did not just do so out of pure opportunism. No – the changes that occurred due to the pandemic led to a fundamental shift in the way employees think about work. And this new philosophy isn’t going to disappear simply because the economy is taking a hit.

Digital employees have developed new expectations during the past several years. They expect to have autonomy over how and where they work. They expect their feedback to be taken seriously by their business leaders. And most importantly, they expect their employers to provide them with the tools and resources they need, when they need them, to be their most productive and satisfied selves at work.

If these expectations aren’t met, employees will continue to seek more positive experiences elsewhere – even if the job market isn’t what it was in the early days of the Great Resignation. And becoming an employee-driven workplace isn’t a change that can be undone by a temporary period of economic uncertainty.

Navigating the storm of a recession or economic downturn requires businesses to use the resources at their disposal as efficiently as possible. They need to do more, with less. Managing Digital Employee Experience (DEX) isn’t about spending money to make employees happier at work. It’s about becoming a DEX-driven business that is agile, efficient, and filled with highly productive, satisfied workers.

DEX management technology helps companies provide only the right tools to the right people. It helps them uncover inefficiencies and technological blind spots that have become hurdles to productivity and growth. And it helps them hire, train, and retain the best talent their industry has to offer.

In our post-pandemic, hyper-digital world, prioritizing DEX is essential to remaining competitive and profitable in the long-term – especially in times of economic uncertainty.

The post Why Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Matters During Economic Downturns appeared first on Nexthink.

Welcome to the second installment of “Reality Bytes”, which brings together Nexthink’s brightest minds from both the journalist and technology fields to give listeners with both perspectives on the topics that matter most in the world of DEX.

In this episode, DEX Hub producer Kathryn Shea gets on the mic for the first time, joining technologist Dina Elshawaf, as well as Tim and Tom, to discuss the following juicy topics:

1. Flexible workplace preferences
2. Personas, HR & IT

For more amazing DEX content, including podcasts, articles and exclusive research, head over to the DEX Hub (dex.nexthink.com)

To hear more interviews like this one, subscribe to the Digital Employee Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Digital Employee Experience in your favorite podcast player.

The post The DEX Show | Reality Bytes #2 – Across Disparate Clouds appeared first on Nexthink.

We’ve got exciting news: The Forrester Wave™: End-User Experience Management, Q3 2022 report has been released – and Nexthink has been named a leader in End-User Experience Management!

In case you’re unfamiliar, this report provides a comprehensive evaluation of the nine most significant end-user experience management (EUEM) providers by one of the world’s leading research and advisory firms. Forrester has researched, analyzed and scored these EUEM providers for the purpose of helping operations and experience professionals make informed technology purchases.

In all three high-level categories – current offering, market presence, and strategy – Nexthink has received the highest ranking!

“Nexthink delivers a deep, holistic, and consumable approach to experience management,” the report states, adding that Nexthink “sustains its momentum through excellent market execution, strong commitment to R&D, and sole dedication to EUEM.” The Forrester report goes on to note, “Nexthink continues to release new product functionality to drive EUEM innovation and fill historical gaps, such as Nexthink Accelerator, Nexthink  Application Experience, and AI-based correlations to drive root-cause analysis (RCA).”

Helping Our Customers Build an Innovative and Incident-Free Digital Workplace

Here at Nexthink, we’re always grateful and inspired to see the impact our products have had on digital workplaces around the world. But that’s particularly true in these dynamic and often challenging times we’re living in today.

IT professionals have shown such tremendous resilience and ingenuity as they’ve adapted to the total redefinition of the workplace as we know it. We’re honored to have played a role in helping our incredible customers become more agile and cost-efficient as they navigate these unprecedented times.

The next few years will see even more change, as businesses ramp up digital transformation efforts in order to keep pace with their rapidly evolving industries. We believe Nexthink’s placement in the Forrester Wave report is proof of our dedication to a singular mission: guiding our customers towards a future workplace that is incident-free, engaging, and more profitable than ever before.

With our amazing teams hard at work on even more innovative solutions, I can guarantee that the best is yet to come!

If you want to read the full Forrester Wave™ report and see how Nexthink measures up in the field of end-user-experience management, access it here.

The post Nexthink Named a Leader in Forrester Wave™ Report! appeared first on Nexthink.

What happens when employees leave jobs they’ve had for years in order to pursue new opportunities – and then realize they’ve made a mistake? That’s the question many workers are faced with in 2022, as the Great Resignation has paved the way for a new trend in the labor market: the Great Regret. 

In 2021, when the job market restabilized more than a year after the pandemic began, we saw a massive uptick in workers leaving their employers for new jobs. The Great Resignation forced many companies to reconsider the quality of experience they provided to their employees and job candidates – as it became clear that employees will have more power than ever before in the post-pandemic workplace.  

Employees feeling more empowered in their career trajectories was undoubtedly a positive development. But for many, pursuing new opportunities has come with consequences: recent studies reveal that one in five employees who left their job during the Great Resignation regrets their decision. 

What’s driving this regret? Are employees simply unsure of what they want in today’s strange and constantly-changing workplace – or is there a major blind spot that’s keeping employers from retaining talent? 

The Impact of the Great Regret: Job-jumping is on the rise as employees struggle to find footing in new positions. 

The Great Resignation sent many organizations into crisis mode, as they experienced unprecedented employee turnover during an already complicated phase of pandemic-era reacclimating. The Great Regret poses just as many challenges.  

On the surface, there’s an obvious productivity downside to hiring employees who end up unhappy in their new roles. Onboarding is expensive, particularly in the digital workplace era, and struggling to get new hires engaged in their roles results in slower time-to-productivity and ultimately higher HR and IT costs. 

But there’s another major consequence: the Great Regret is only exacerbating the issues brought about by the Great Resignation. According to recent LinkedIn research, the share of workers who had been at their previous job for less than 12 months when they took a new role rose by 6.5% last year. In other words: employees are jumping from one job to another much faster. Gone are the days where workers believe they must stick with a new job for more than a year, even if it hasn’t lived up to their expectations.  

To solve this problem, we must first look at the reasons behind this employee regret – and what employers should consider during the hiring and onboarding process to mitigate risk.  

Employers must set clear expectations for hybrid work to avoid the consequences of “shift shock”.  

The Great Resignation was driven by employees who no longer felt fulfilled, properly compensated, and connected with their current employers. Their expectations evolved, and their employers did not evolve to meet those expectations. The Great Regret, conversely, is being driven by employees whose new employers immediately fall short of their expectations. 

The Muse, a job search site, recently conducted a study on more than 2,500 workers who have left one job for another in recent years. More than 72% of these employees have experienced “shift shock” – the feeling of surprise or regret that comes with starting a new job and realizing that it’s different than they expected. 

The study goes on to reveal that 41% of employees would only give a new job two to six months if they experienced shift shock, and 80% believe it’s acceptable to leave a new job before six months if it doesn’t live up to your expectations. 

The question is: why are so many of today’s businesses failing to meet the expectations of their new employees?  

The answer is twofold. For one, today’s employees – particularly younger generations – have vastly different expectations than workers did in pre-pandemic times. A recent study by Zety found that while candidates still consider the predictable factors, like competitive salaries and benefits packages, there are many new expectations driving their decision-making: 

• 62% want to work for a company with “values that match their own”. 
• 61% expect their employer to have a purpose “that goes beyond merely making a profit”. 
• 49% want to work for companies that have “a strong brand reputation”. 

These expectations aren’t exactly earth-shattering secrets – yet modern businesses struggle to meet them, particularly as they adjust to so many new challenges in the era of hybrid work and rapid digital transformation. 

That’s why it’s more important than ever for employers to be transparent during the hiring and onboarding process. If a company hasn’t fully figured out their philosophy around flexible work, for example, the worst mistake they can make is promising a new candidate that they’ll have total freedom over how and where they work.  

Oversimplifying and overpromising might land a company a fantastic new hire. But within six months, that new employee will likely be casting their sights on the job market once again because their expectations were not met. 

Companies cannot transform overnight or change their core values to keep candidates and employees happy. But as they do evolve over time, they can increase employee satisfaction and decrease turnover by cutting out the empty promises and misleading job descriptions. As difficult as it may be to hire the right talent in an employee-driven market, it’s even more difficult to retain the right talent.  

A transparent hiring process tells candidates exactly what role they should expect, what working at the company will actually be like on a day-to-day basis, and what the company’s priorities for the future will be – no matter how dynamic and filled with change that future might look like. With these expectations established, businesses will be able to hire great employees who won’t soon develop a Great Regret. 

The post The Great Regret: Why Are Employees Leaving New Jobs So Quickly? appeared first on Nexthink.

• What lead to the Great Resignation, specifically in IT, and when will it end?
• Will there a Great Regret or a Great Reversal in our near future?
• The indicators that you should be looking for in the next few months that will determine the direction of the DEX hype cycle 

The post The DEX Show | Podcast #39 – The Great Reset: a Crystal Ball Emergency w/ Alan Nance appeared first on Nexthink.