IT Is Better With Chatbots!
Automating processes is a game-changer in the tech industries, and IT services do not want to be left out of that party. The millennial crowd is into automating everything, starting from ordering food to paying bills. Automation is believed to be the future of IT service management, and organizations are investing a lot of money to recruit modern-day “employees” who never go offline and practically live on the internet.
Now imagine you are running a tech company. You have over a hundred employees calling for IT support every single day, and your agents are pressed for time. There are two ways to go about it; one is to recruit more IT support agents and the other is to get a self-service portal. The smart choice is the self-service portal since it delivers faster, smarter and more personalised service.
As impressive as it may sound, most often than not, the following illustration is a representation of what actually happens.
The solution
With AI integration, Chatbots will be able to solve your problems by mapping your questions to the FAQs and giving you an immediate answer.
Industry reports estimate “$8B in annual savings from chatbots, with 80 per cent of businesses considering implementing them.”
As an organization, you need to ensure your employee satisfaction. Let’s see this from the end user’s perspective. Let’s talk about what we need as an end-user. We need solutions, and we need the solutions now! We are not keen on exchanging pleasantries or sending umpteen emails looping in managers and team-leads when our laptop freezes., At this point, all that we need is our laptop to start working.
Often, end-users lose their last ounce of patience because of the frustration and not wanting to go through the painful process of explaining specifics to the IT agents or drafting out lengthy emails.
For example, James is trying to access his Word Document files that are stored on Slack, a cloud-based proprietary instant-messaging platform, related to his Project A. To do this, James has to follow a six-step process starting with logging into slack, launching Word, opening the file dialogue box, search for the required files and then start working. By using a conversational virtual assistant, all he has to do is to make a verbal request, and he can access his files with a single click.
Chatbots mimic human conversations. They engage in real-time-human-like conversations powered by AI/ML/NLP technologies to make everyday jobs easier and more efficient.
According to Gartner, 40% of all service desk requests are password resets for various devices, applications, and IT services.
Empowering the users to support themselves with the help of a chatbot can avoid the lengthy ticket forms and response waiting time.
Conversational chatbots classify and route issues with greater ease. They deflect trivial tickets being sent to support agents. Chatbots intelligently categorizes and assigns tickets to the agent group based on the type of the issue. Automated ticket assignments and escalations bring in lesser human involvement, thereby lesser errors. In a digital ecosystem, real-time user engagement is the key to competitive advantage and delivering a great experience. Chatbots provide service round the clock, which improves overall resolution time and productivity.
A Gartner study says, “By 2020, 85% of all the IT support will be online without human interaction.”
Further, “Twenty-five per cent of customer service and support operations will integrate virtual customer assistant (VCA) or chatbot technology across engagement channels by 2020,” according to Gartner, Inc.
Conversational AI remains at the top of corporate agendas spurred by the worldwide success of Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and others. Meanwhile, new technologies continue to emerge, such as augmented intelligence, edge AI, data labelling, and explainable AI. This is no surprise, as chatbot technology- which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to mimic human conversations- is beginning to mature and offer more sophisticated solutions. This is primarily because of improved, AI-enabled language capabilities.
Keeping up with the trends
Intelligent Automation is all glitzy until it comes to communicating the purpose of conversational bots to the agents and making sure they don’t feel the fear of losing their jobs.
Technological advances do affect the business world. For example, Amazon is testing drones for delivery, and the others are trying to make their shop-floors, staffless. With disruptive technologies, there’s always a chance of losing a job or two, and there are no two ways about it. But the good news is that it opens up to a lot of new possibilities and new lines of work, creating 100 jobs in the place of one. Organizations must concentrate on perfecting the chatbot-to-human hands-off and use the live agents as the secondary level of defence to leverage the power of bots.
If you are intrigued to indulge in Intelligent Automation as a New Year technology-adoption resolution for your organization, this whitepaper on “The guide to Intelligent Automation in IT service management” will serve you just right. Download it here and get started!
Blog cover by Banu Priya
