Why 'password reset' can expose enterprise inefficiencies

Have you ever struggled remembering your work laptop password after a well-deserved year-end vacation? Or perhaps you discovered that your password has already expired, leaving you in a panic to respond to an email from your boss? We’ve all been there, and it can be incredibly frustrating.

One of my favourite questions to ask the CIOs I meet is about their top-ranking IT helpdesk tickets, and "reset password" often emerges as the number one request. The reasons behind this include forgotten passwords, password expirations and arbitrary password complexity requirements that complicate matters for users. While single sign-on solutions have significantly reduced password fatigue and the need for numerous password resets, the issue still impacts productivity and costs organizations valuable time and money. Bloomberg reports?that employees spend an average of 11 hours each year remembering or resetting passwords.

Create a unified employee center for user self-service

It should be straightforward for anyone to reset their password, and providing information usually helps calm people down. However, many organizations still lack a unified employee centre, which can hinder employee support. It serves as a central location where employees can seek assistance and find answers to their questions. The portal which can be run through the laptop or mobile app is designed to provide quick access to knowledge base articles using AI searches and easily accessible information or to direct employees to the appropriate resources for their needs through technology like virtual agents or even voice-enabled digital avatars.

Use AI to support helpdesk agents deal with users' frustration

Common help desk requests like password reset or connectivity issues often pertain to employees' daily tasks, which can lead to frustration when users are trying to resolve issues quickly so they can continue working. Generative AI can assist your helpdesk agents by helping them understand the context of chats and incidents, allowing for faster and more accurate resolutions. Additionally, agents can use this technology to generate incident resolution notes and knowledge articles, which can aid in resolving future tickets. Large enterprises like BT Group have already experienced significant benefits from utilizing AI for their 90,000 employees through ServiceNow’s AI platform. The average case resolution time has been reduced from 4.7 hours to just 1 minute, and there has been an 80% improvement in task automation and self-service capabilities. With the rise of Agentic AI, we can soon expect that some of these repetitive tasks managed by autonomous AI agents, such as initial contact, user verification, and post-reset follow-up to ensure both security and user satisfaction.

Conclusion

We may soon enter a world where passwords are no longer necessary, as we can utilise multiple technologies like biometrics and real-time data capture to uniquely identify individuals when they request services or log into applications. However, for now, let's examine how your organization manages password resets and consider whether this issue is merely a symptom of a larger problem affecting enterprise efficiency.