The common expectations of the customers who have invested in IT Service Management systems are to resolve the tickets as quickly as possible and with reduced cost. What is Shift Left approach in ITSM? This approach involves the resolution of tickets by frontline less expensive support technicians and also the support activities are simplified.
To log the ticket, a self-service portal was introduced. Instead of sending emails or calling support desk to log a ticket, employees started using the self-service portal to get the issues resolved. This web-based self-service portal helps in support with its knowledge management system. The employee with this approach can resolve their issues quickly by searching the solution in the knowledge base without waiting for the service desk person.
Enterprises spend time and money to develop a user-friendly self-service portal. But these portals continue to fall short of expectations. Employees want an immediate solution to their issues. If it fails to provide the solution then the employees will start directly logging a ticket in that case which gets assigned to support agent.
Many times the employees are using this self-service portal to directly log a ticket as they feel it’s not giving the resolution to their issues. They feel like they are wasting their time by putting a lot of effort in searching for the solution.
How AI can help in ITSM?
Gartner says, by 2023, 40% of infrastructure and operations (I&O) teams will be using AI-augmented automation, resulting in higher productivity with greater agility and scalability.
Employees are looking for the resolution. And they want it without effort. They just want someone else to do research and provide the solution so that they can do their job.
Here comes Chatbot to the rescue. Instead of a support agent, chatbot read the support queries and understands the natural language query with the help of AI, NLU and Machine Learning.
Chatbot has started providing the answers based on the knowledge base in the organization. Most of the chatbots are accessible via collaboration tools like Slack, MS Teams, Skype and act as a search front-end to knowledge-based articles. These tools work as a front-end to enable search and provide the results to the employees to analyze the issue further. This experience is similar to a self-service portal as far as employees are concerned.
[Also Read: Chatbot And Virtual Assistant, Are They Different?]
Evolution of AI in ITSM to Virtual Support Agents
Often the terms “Chatbot” and “Virtual Support Agents (VSAs)” are used interchangeably. But are these two technologies the same?
The truth is, the underlying concept may be the same but they have different functions. Unlike Chatbot, a virtual support agent does not only provide the answer by searching the knowledge base but performs the tasks for the user like password reset, adding a user to DL, installing software and so on.
Virtual support agents automate the tasks without human intervention; this provides a quick resolution to the employee. Thanks to Natural Language Processing (NLP), VSAs can find context to human queries, even vague ones to determine intent and meaning. This improves the user experience as well as reduces operating costs.
Conclusion
Organizations have started adopting virtual support agent to increase user experience and minimize operating costs.
AutomationEdge Virtual Support Agent understands the language of IT, delivers on customer expectations, increases call deflection rates. We help in Shift Left in ITSM with AI-based advance technology and 400+ ready adaptors/actions for IT.
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