AI- Automating the Mundane and Elevating the Humane.

I don’t recall exactly when or where I heard this or who deserves the credit for saying it,?but I remember it was a female IT leader advising conference attendees to: “Automate the mundane and elevate the humane.”?For?weeks afterward, that admonition?kept coming to mind.?The WHY we really need to consider AI as the solution to this

First, let’s talk about people.?

While it's generally true that people need to feel safe and protected (hence their comfort with routine and habit) there’s a big difference between wanting these things and settling for boring routines that don’t challenge one’s mind.??Recall the Dunkin’ Donuts commercials from the ’80s and '90s that had the half-asleep worker dragging his feet into the shop in the wee hours of the morning saying “time to?make the donuts” or the Maytag repair man, sitting idly with his feet propped up,?waiting forever to get a call for repair.

While one is a representation of robotic work?that you can do in your sleep and the other of a nearly perfect product requiring practically?zero maintenance, both speak to less than exciting work. Neither depicts very appealing work.

Consider manufacturing assembly line workers. Back?when the assembly line was invented, people were put into stations to do relatively mundane?tasks, at a high frequency. Can you imagine still doing the same thing over and over again, for hours on end? Imagine what that would do to your body, the strain it would put on you, how mindless that would be, how?one slight slip in the transaction order/delivery and you put the whole assembly line into?disarray, causing a ripple effect.?Comedians of the time... Abbott and Costello, the 3 Stooges, Charlie Chaplin, and Lucille Ball turned such stress into great comedy.?Today robotics has replaced many workers on that assembly?line and?reduced or even eliminated the error rate in that?process.?

So why is it that in 2022 we’re still struggling with the idea of AI assisting our?front-line support workers? Why is there such a fear of at least leveraging, if not fully embracing AI???

I?think the primary?obstacle is that?as human beings, we simply fear the unknown. The less we know?about our destiny and future situation, the more we project our fears onto what’s in front of us.?Thus we resist and pushback against what really could be of massive benefit to our health and?wellbeing in the workforce.?

In the past few years, I’ve struggled to figure out ways to improve the operational efficiency?and thus the effectiveness of two critical front-line support departments; the IT Service Desk,?and the Desktop Support operation.?I challenged my managers to bring in tools to optimize the ACD (Automated Call Distributor,) leverage?knowledge base solutions, develop balanced scorecards, and even dynamic?performance dashboards.?All great things that give you intelligence and help you manage better,?but how does that help you get ahead of the curve? It doesn’t. It doesn’t solve the bigger?challenge of reducing manual work and more importantly, reducing burnout.??

It's not that what the teams are doing is of less value, or that the problems that keep coming to them are of less?importance to the user. Not at all. I completely understand how crippling it is for a customer?to not be able to log in to their workstation due to a password issue and become completely?unproductive until they get assistance with this.?What I don’t understand is why it has to be?resolved purely by a human being instead of some form of automation.?Who in their right mind thinks that any Service Desk Analyst jumps out of bed each morning thrilled to know that 30% of their daily calls will be for password?resources.?No one is motivated or excited by doing this type of mundane work.?Yes, they?understand that it is necessary and that the customer values and appreciates them for doing it, but?they don’t love doing it. It doesn’t make them think, it doesn’t elevate their problem-solving?skills, or?challenge them.

So why isn’t it natural and logical to passionately pursue solutions to automate this type of work,?and tirelessly work to automate more and more of it over time??

I can only think of one main?reason why not, because it takes effort to find solutions and partnerships to do this effectively, and effort to?develop human-facing processes that replace the human work that these people do.?And?sometimes, that effort appears to be monumental and the obstacles insurmountable.?

So we?opt to keep doing the same thing over and over again just “better, faster, cheaper.”?But doing the same things over and?over, expecting better results makes no sense. Is it really better for Service?Desk Analysts to be doing manual password resets in this day and age? Aren’t there compliance?issues with validation of identity, and risks of failing to do this effectively? Is it really faster to?wait on a hotline, then go through a call script of questions and keystrokes to affect a?password reset versus a system that does that naturally via a challenge/response and more?secure dual-factor authentication in 30 seconds or less? Is it cheaper to pay for resources, use?facilities, and spend customer time to get a transaction completed by a human when a machine?can do that for 1/10th of the cost??Industry?averages put the cost of a Service Desk call at $20 while the automation of that call is $2.?It's?never going to be better, faster, cheaper to?continuously do the same mundane tasks over and over with human resources.

Recently I challenged my Service Management team to find solutions that would?start to leverage intelligence to create better human interactions for the?team with our customers. The focus of their effort would be on?elevating the humane… finding ways to enable our support people to do more?of what matters and less of what doesn't.?Tools and processes that would elevate the team to a level of thinking and engagement far beyond what they’ve traditionally been held to.?

They’ve started looking at solutions that do “search and destroy” type discovery of?problems on workstations, giving digital employee experience scores, and also introducing

options for Robotic Process Automation (RPA).?We called this “Proactive AI” as our goal?is to find ways to pre-empt customer calls to the Service Desk, by identifying and solving problems proactively.?

They also started looking at solutions that would?use Natural Language Search (NLS) to identify what an incoming call is about to offer an immediate answer or redirect the call to the best resource.??We call this “Reactive AI.”?Some call?it chatbot?technology, or a virtual agent. I call this GENIUS! Why? Because all at once we're learning what the customers want/need and evolving our solutioning around those needs while also eliminating the need for front line workers to keep answering the same darn question 1,001 times in a year.?It’s improving both the employee experience?and?the customer experience simultaneously thus making the "Total Experience" better, faster and cheaper.?This may seem old hat to early?adopters of AI-assisted support techniques but I have to say it’s eye-opening to witness what happens when you take a bunch of people who had been part of the traditional process for delivering support and engage them in?developing ways to actually eliminate their own work!?

Right now, we have a highly motivated?team of Level 1, 2 Support and Engineering individuals from different groups, working to curate?knowledge content, develop “intents” or decision trees, and work out RPA routines to deliver?automation of solutions. Are these individuals worried about losing their jobs after automating?this workload? I doubt it because they’re gaining?new skills in the process, skills they can tap into as they evolve in their roles within or outside of?the company.

And, I know they’re even secretly excited about the mission to automate even more of the mundane. They want to make the customer experience better while making their own?workday better. They want to do more meaningful work, to be excited about coming to work each and every day. They are demonstrating agility in how they think, being part of a new way?of working and solving problems. For this, I’m truly grateful.

Yesterday I silently sat in on a work session where the core team was working through their?UAT feedback, actively solution-ing and brainstorming. There?was?excitement, the buzz of engagement. It was tangible. It was real. It was the anticipation of the promise of?the future. It made me think, that there’s something to be said about elevating the humane.?

If we?stop and think about the?platinum?(not golden) rule, "Treat people as they?want to be treated"…we’d realize that there are few, if any people, who want to be under-challenged, under-appreciated, and underpaid. By automating the mundane, you can shift the focus and efforts to tackling issues with attachment to the mission, the purpose, the WHY. You start to give people the 3 things they crave?the most... autonomy, mastery, and purpose!?You put the human back in humane.

For more on the 3 things that drive people, enjoy this, from Daniel Pink.

https://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc