Revolutionizing Employee Experience: Joining Forces with AI Virtual Agents

Freshworks & Microsoft Teams alliance: Boost employee experience with AI-powered virtual agents. Learn how it’s transforming the workplace.

Freshworks Inc. (NASDAQ: FRSH) has unveiled a noteworthy surge in the utilization of Microsoft Teams by Freshservice® clients, aiming to enhance the employee experience through more efficient AI-driven virtual agent assistance. Over the past three years, the adoption of Microsoft Teams among Freshservice users has witnessed an impressive average growth of 42%. Consequently, companies leveraging Freshservice are now empowered to boost productivity for over 250,000 users.

The AI-driven Virtual Agent within Freshservice, an IT service management (ITSM) solution, in conjunction with Microsoft Teams’ ServiceBot, offers continuous support to employees and expedites the resolution of their needs directly within the Microsoft Teams environment. This integrated solution further enables IT and other business teams to reduce the number of support tickets, streamlining workflows and saving valuable time. According to a July 2023 study commissioned by Freshworks, Forrester estimated that a mid-sized company could save $2.1 million over three years by enhancing user productivity with the Freshservice Virtual Agent.

Srini Raghavan, VP of Microsoft Teams Ecosystem, highlighted the significance of Microsoft Teams as a collaboration hub, stating, “Through our collaboration with companies like Freshworks that share our vision for AI, we aim to empower teams across various channels to swiftly address employee issues, ultimately leading to cost savings and enhanced efficiency through next-generation AI solutions for customers of all sizes.”

By utilizing Freshservice, which is seamlessly integrated into the Freshworks Neo platform, businesses of all sizes can elevate user productivity. Through AI-driven virtual agents, they can enhance collaboration across different departments during critical incidents, resulting in a better employee experience with quicker issue resolutions, including:

1. Automated conversational support: This facilitates faster issue resolution by offering employees access to round-the-clock conversational support from virtual agents within Microsoft Teams, eliminating the constraints of working hours.
2. Increased agent productivity: AI-powered virtual agents, such as Freddy AI within Freshservice, allow business departments to focus on high-value tasks, leaving routine and mundane issues to the virtual agent. This speeds up ticket updates and approvals.
3. Enhanced collaboration during critical incidents: Freshservice seamlessly notifies on-call agents directly within Microsoft Teams, enabling IT operations teams to swiftly communicate and resolve major incidents, ensuring maximum service availability and minimizing downtime, all without leaving a single app.

Prominent organizations like A&E Networks and Haynes International have harnessed Microsoft Teams in conjunction with Freshservice to enhance employee service management. Haynes International, a U.S.-based materials manufacturer, reported a remarkable 50% increase in business user productivity since adopting Freshservice integrated with Microsoft Teams.

Lyle Snyder, Senior Support Analyst at Haynes International, emphasized the benefits of this integration, stating that traditional support channels with complicated portals were no longer suitable for the modern workforce. The Freshworks and Microsoft Teams’ integration, on the other hand, has simplified and modernized the employee experience, all on one unified platform. Impressive productivity gains have already been observed, with expectations of further scalability to accommodate evolving business and employee needs.

The Office for Students, the independent regulator of higher education in England, succeeded in reducing its average resolution time by an impressive 67% by incorporating the Freshservice virtual agent with Microsoft Teams. Karen Spray, IT Service Support Manager at the Office for Students, outlined their objective of shifting away from employee emails to the service desk and utilizing Teams as a primary channel. The adoption of the Freshservice Virtual Agent was seamless, and the technical implementation took merely 10 minutes. Access to the Virtual Agent within Microsoft Teams greatly enhanced convenience and empowered employees to independently resolve numerous issues, thanks to robust self-service features.

Prakash Ramamurthy, Chief Product Officer at Freshworks, emphasized their dedication to providing customers with powerful yet user-friendly tools to excel in today’s fast-paced workplace. Their commitment to AI-driven customer and employee support, dating back to the launch of Freddy AI in 2018, is further fortified through this collaboration with Microsoft Teams, enabling customers to deliver an exceptional employee experience across various business teams.

Freshworks’ strategic alliance with Microsoft Teams to enhance the employee experience through the integration of AI-driven virtual agents represents a significant milestone in modern workplace solutions. The impressive adoption of Microsoft Teams among Freshservice users, combined with the proven benefits observed by organizations like Haynes International and the Office for Students, underscores the transformative impact of this collaboration. By seamlessly bringing together AI-powered support and collaboration within Microsoft Teams, Freshworks and Microsoft are equipping businesses of all sizes with the tools they need to drive efficiency, boost productivity, and deliver an exceptional employee experience in the ever-evolving landscape of the modern workplace.