As we enter the “era of the conversation” and the workplace becomes increasingly digital first, it’s even more critical to ensure the support experience feels connected to (and even a part of) a company’s culture and not simply transactional.

Since Zendesk began the customer service experience evolution 15 years ago, we have learned that employees also need to feel seen and heard when it comes to navigating the internal support experience, and that internal support teams need to use best-in-class CX strategies to keep themselves — and their coworkers — satisfied.

That’s why we launched Zendesk for Employee Experience (EX), a new offering to help internal teams support their employees with the same speed and savvy they do for their customers.

Why do employee support teams need a conversational CRM?

At almost every stage of employee support — from recruiting and HR, to security, facilities and legal — leaders are recognizing that the well-being of their employees is essential to their operational success. In fact, our recent Employee Experience Trends Report showed that 68% of leaders recognize a direct link between employee experience and business growth. In addition, 54% of internal support team members say their visibility is higher with leadership than ever before.

Furthermore, employees are leaning on internal teams more than ever, and the pressure has never been higher:

• 70% of internal teams have reported an increase in employee requests, with employee-facing internal teams seeing the number of tickets they have to handle increase by 31% — significantly higher than that of external B2B and B2C teams.

• Meanwhile, more than 4 in 10 employees on teams providing internal support say they’re not treated as well as customer agents, and many believe they face significantly more pressure.

The stakes for inaction on employee experience are high. Another statistic from the report that’s imploring leaders to sit up and take notice: 1 in 3 employees providing internal support predict their churn rates will rise in the next year, and 42% of their managers agree.

How Zendesk for Employee Experience works

The good news is that all these statistics reinforce that businesses want to better serve their employees, and conversational experiences are the answer. To do this, they need to arm their internal support teams with simpler, smarter solutions.

The Zendesk for Employee Experience platform uses a streamlined approach that prioritizes data, insights, and technology to give teams the tools they need to deliver best-in-class employee experiences and improve their own.

Here’s how it works:

• A single source of truth for EX information: HR, finance, operations, IT, and other internal support teams can access requests and create policies from a single screen, without having to navigate between multiple tools or slow down response times.
• Increased automation: Internal support teams can address employee needs more quickly by building low-code automations and workflows that allow them to refocus on the human element of their roles.
• Simple access to self-service: Teams can create knowledge centers for HR, IT and more to help employees find the information they need, from help setting up multi factor authentication on their work devices, to filing for family leave. Internal support teams can also build in specific information about what tools to turn to for resources, such as Slack to HR-specific software, empowering employees to solve simpler problems themselves and saving internal support teams valuable time.
• Insights to understand emerging EX trends: Internal support teams need access to data analytics that help them keep pace with their employees’ evolving needs. Zendesk’s EX platform analyzes requests to identify trends, like the type of request or length of response times, and helps businesses fine-tune their employee programs.
• Easy integration with workplace tools: Zendesk’s EX platform includes full integrations with three technology solutions to improve the back-end employee experience: Myndbend and SweetHawk for internal process management, scheduling and approvals; as well as EXOfficeInventory for asset management and facilities tracking.
• Access to experts: As part of our offering, we connect customers to our own CX and EX experts, as well as to our partners at Accenture and Tata Consulting, in order to give extra EX support to enterprises who want it.

But don’t just take our word for it

Here’s how some of our customers have already benefited significantly from using Zendesk for Employee Experience:

OpenTable adopted Zendesk for Employee Experience to fine-tune its internal solution. Before, it was cumbersome for employees to submit support tickets to the company’s internal helpdesk. They had no idea when to expect a response and had a limited number of ways to reach out for help. Now, tickets can be submitted off-network and are automatically routed to the right team, allowing people to receive support and feedback about their IT and support requests. By building a more automated experience, they close 250 more requests a week, improving the employee experience of more than 2,000 people.

Higher Grounds was looking to balance employees’ needs at every stage of their career, from onboarding to retirement. By using Zendesk’s EX platform, which includes direct integrations with Slack and other key workplace tools, the company can now respond with single, continuous, context-based conversations and simplified processes. Whether helping an employee file for paternity leave or navigate IT troubles around the world, Higher Grounds is able to take quicker action with Zendesk for EX.

Homebridge uses Zendesk for Employee Experience to support 15 internal departments, including HR, marketing, and customer success. The company extended its use of Zendesk to employees when it recognized they needed access to quick solutions and support — and that its employees were their best asset.

Instacart started using Zendesk for customer service then realized it could make an even bigger impact. Now it uses Zendesk for Employee Experience to automate HR, onboarding, payroll, and IT experiences for over 10,000 employees, making it easier than ever to drive quick and continuous conversations with them about their support needs.

Please visit here to learn more about Zendesk for Employee Experience, or check out our recent What’s New where we shared more about our latest updates and releases.