ExpressDesk
Simplifying Service Desk Operations

Ten thousand plus employees, spread across different geographies and time zones, raising thousands of tickets is an everyday event in mega-corporations. To resolve IT issues faced by these internal customers, behemoths use Skype for Business, the market leader in the Unified Communication segment and BMC Remedy, the dominant force in enterprise IT Service Management Market. As a Remedy consultant, Stephane Fornaroli, in his discussion with a client, discovered a lack of integration between these two systems. Intrigued by this information, Stephane set on to develop an integration that could harness the power of Skype for Business and BMC Remedy together. He subsequently created a solution that accelerates service desk operations which led to the foundation of ExpressDesk. “We enable big corporations like Ikea, Dell, and others to automate IT service operations at a fractional cost while simplifying the lives of support customers,” states Fornaroli, General Manager.

ExpressDesk unleashes the power of automation to manage and accelerate the ticket processing, improve quality of service and here their chatbot—ExpressAgent, a Skype for Business and Remedy Aware virtual agent, comes into the picture. If employees have to resolve a technical snag, they can communicate the issue through a single point of contact, located in their Skype for Business’s favorites. ExpressAgent kicks in and applies a fully configurable logic. It can fetch information about employees and perform conditional processing. Using its Knowledge Base integration, it tries to assist users, who can also request updates about open cases.

In the event user’s request cannot be addressed by ExpressAgent, the conversation can be transferred to a Service Desk agent, based on availability and skills. If too many internal customers seek help simultaneously they would be notified about their status in the queue along with waiting time in minutes.

Already being assisted by ExpressAgent, the service desk can harp on ExpressDesk’s client-side integration to efficiently use Skype for Business together with BMC Remedy. When a conversation is transferred to a Service Desk agent, he will be presented with a Remedy ticket embedded inside the Skype for Business window. End user input to the virtual agent is used to pre-fill the ticket with employee data, categorization and summary of the request. In case the user requested a follow-up about an existing ticket, that ticket is shown to the agent. Numerous automations become available, amongst which: agents can send predefined messages in one click, and transferred files and chat transcripts are saved in the ticket. Thanks to these time-saving features, agents can easily manage 4+ chat sessions in parallel by switching tabs. All powerful Skype for Business features such as screen sharing, remote control, voice and video remain available—only limited by IT admins if so desired.

In addition, ExpressDesk provides Service Desk agents with a quick overview of employees’ Skype for Business presence through Remedy Consoles. Agents can initiate chats about on-going investigations with a single click from Remedy. Chat window will display the selected ticket on agent side, while appearing as a regular chat coming from IT Support SPOC to the end user.

Finally, the solution comes with a supervisor dashboard that allows building reports and measuring real-time metrics and KPIs. ExpressDesk is available as SaaS or as on-premise installation.
The Belgium-based company has developed a complete solution for IKEA to manage their co-workers’ IT support requests, including tools to gradually roll out the solution in the U.S., Australia, India, Sweden and other countries.

Going forward, ExpressDesk plans to extend its integration to Microsoft Teams which is due to replace Skype for Business by 2021, and include competitors of BMC like ServiceNow in its scope.