Streamlining the resolution of employee service requests

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<p id="docs-ai-summary-content">You can set up task lists, approval requests, and action flows to help agents handle employee service requests. Use automatic ticket routing to assign requests to the right teams, train agents on workflows, and automate updates in external systems. These features support common scenarios like hardware asset assignment and new hire onboarding, improving ticket management and service quality for employee requests.</p>
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<p id="docs-hc-snippet" style="display: none;">Articles in the series</p>
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<p class="sidenav-heading">Articles in the series</p>
<ul class="nav nav-underline flex-column" id="topic_u4f_qzj_t3c__ul_enb_q1k_t3c">
<li class="li"><a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10386345608346" target="_blank">Messaging deployment guide:
Introduction</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8836478757914" target="_blank">Part 1: About the Zendesk Employee Service
Suite</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9012803758362" target="_blank">Part 2: Using the sample data for employee
services</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/10488094678682" target="_blank">Part 3: Simplifyig the submission of employee
service requests</a></li>
<li class="li">Part 4: Streamlining the resolution of employee service requests</li>
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<p class="p"><span class="ph suite_es_all">Employee Service Suite | Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus</span></p>
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<p class="p">Approvals, task lists, and action flows were designed specifically to solve employee
service requests more efficiently. These features can be used with other Zendesk
features, such as triggers, AI agents, and omnichannel routing, to help agents solve
employee requests efficiently and with a consistently high quality of service.</p>
<div class="p">This article contains the following topics:<ul class="ul" id="topic_u4f_qzj_t3c__ul_efc_k1s_t3c">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_mjh_syl_t3c">Best practices for setting up employee service ticket workflows</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_qmb_5yl_t3c">Examples combining Zendesk features to solve common employee service scenarios</a></li>
</ul>
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<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title2" class="topic nested1" id="topic_mjh_syl_t3c">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title2">Best practices for setting up employee service ticket workflows</h2>
<div class="body">
<div class="p">Consider the following best practices when setting up your ticket workflows for
employee services:<ul class="ul" id="topic_mjh_syl_t3c__ul_qqx_d1m_t3c">
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Configure automatic ticket routing</strong>. <p class="p">Whether you're using Zendesk
for customer service or employee service, you need to have a way to get
the tickets to the right agents.</p>
<p class="p">This could be simple triggers
that route IT-related service requests to a team of IT agents, HR
service requests to a team of HR agents, and so on. Then, those agents
could use views to see the tickets assigned to them and their groups.
That would be a pull-based routing method, since the agents would be
selecting or <em class="ph i">pulling</em> the tickets they work on from a
view.</p>
<p class="p">Alternatively, for a more sophisticated routing system, you
could use omnichannel routing with custom queues designed to identify
each type of service request and route them to agents on the appropriate
internal team. Optionally, you could further refine the routing
assignments based on the skills an agent must have to solve a request or
the ticket's priority.</p>
<p class="p">For more information, see <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408831658650" target="_blank">Routing and automation options for
incoming tickets</a>.</p>
</li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Train your agents on the ticket workflow</strong>.<p class="p">First and foremost, make
sure your agents understand how they receive their work in Zendesk. Do
they assign it to themselves from views or is it automatically assigned
to them by omnichannel routing? </p>
<div class="p">Also, make sure that they know
what <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9676934427418" target="_blank">task lists</a> exist and
understand how and why to use them as well as when and how to use <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8481158639770" target="_blank">approval requests</a>. It might
help them to understand the following about task lists and approval
requests, respectively:<ul class="ul" id="topic_mjh_syl_t3c__ul_kvg_1zr_t3c">
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Task lists</strong>: Many employee service requests require agents
to take predictable and repeatable steps to solve. For example,
certain HR requests might require a review by the Legal or
Security teams or an IT request might require the approval of
the requester's manager. Admins can define the lists of tasks
required for these common types of service requests so help
ensure agents know what actions they need to take. Then, the
task list can be added to the ticket by an agent or an action
flow, and the assigned agent can check off their task items as
they are completed.</li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Approval requests</strong>: Approval requests are added to tickets
by agents, API, or action flows when something about the ticket
requires the approval of someone other than the ticket assignee.
Commonly, approvers are users who don't spend all day working in
Zendesk. Therefore, the approval request process is designed to
make it as simple and easy as possible for approvers to respond
to approval requests rapidly and let the agents proceed with
solving the ticket.</li>
</ul>
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</li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Use action flows to automate actions in external systems based on
employee requests in Zendesk</strong>.<p class="p">Action flows are user-defined
automated sequences of steps that perform actions in Zendesk and
external systems based on a defined event that initiates the workflow.
They can be used to update ticket, user, and custom object properties in
Zendesk, send notifications through external systems, and update data in
external systems.</p>
<p class="p">Especially in employee service scenarios, it is
common to need to keep external systems up-to-date based on changes that
are prompted by tickets. For example, if onboarding new hires to your
company involves submitting a New hire service request, the HR agent
working the ticket might need to ensure the new user is added to Zendesk
and an external HR system, such as Workday. Rather than manually
creating that user twice, they could create it once and use an action
flow to ensure the same user information is reflected in the other
system.</p>
</li>
</ul>
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<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title3" class="topic nested1" id="topic_qmb_5yl_t3c">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title3">Examples combining Zendesk features to solve common employee service scenarios</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">The following examples demonstrate some of the ways you can combine Zendesk features
to solve common employee service scenarios.</p>
<div class="p">
<strong class="ph b">Assigning hardware assets (IT)</strong><ul class="ul" id="topic_qmb_5yl_t3c__ul_jvs_z5r_t3c">
<li class="li">Add hardware service items to your service catalog and connect them to your
IT asset types.</li>
<li class="li">Create an <em class="ph i">Assigning hardware assets</em> task list. The list should
include a task to create an approval request assigned to the requester's
manager and a task to update the assigned asset's record in Zendesk to
reflect its status as assigned and the user to whom it was assigned.</li>
<li class="li">Create an action flow that automatically adds the Assigning assets task list
to tickets created for service requests for hardware assets.</li>
<li class="li">Create a ticket trigger or custom omnichannel routing queue that routes
tickets created for service requests for hardware assets to the IT team's
agents.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="p">
<strong class="ph b">Onboarding new hires (HR)</strong><ul class="ul" id="topic_qmb_5yl_t3c__ul_ad1_wvr_t3c">
<li class="li">Add a <em class="ph i">New hire onboarding</em> service to your service catalog.</li>
<li class="li">Create a ticket trigger or custom omnichannel routing queue that routes
tickets created for new hire service requests to the HR team's agents.</li>
<li class="li">Create a <em class="ph i">New hire</em> task list. This should include tasks for things
such as performing background checks; adding the new employee to the HR
system, payroll, and messaging system; and submitting service requests to IT
to get a laptop and necessary software licenses assigned to the new
employee.</li>
<li class="li">Create action flows that:<ul class="ul" id="topic_qmb_5yl_t3c__ul_jgn_lwr_t3c">
<li class="li">Automatically adds the new employee to Zendesk based on their
information in the HR system, such as Workday, after the ticket is
updated to reflect that the employee's background check has been
completed.</li>
<li class="li">Post a "Welcome" message to a team's channel in their messaging
system, such as Slack, when a new employee is added to their team's
group in Zendesk.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
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