A growing trend in service management and delivery is the integration of chatbot functionality into an organization’s existing IT Service Management (ITSM) platform. By implanting a chat tool with your ITSM software, you can supercharge your self-service capabilities.
It’s important to note, that traditional chatbots don’t fare as well as those built on conversational AI. In fact, a market study from CIO.com found that nearly 76 percent of chatbot customers report user frustration with existing solutions. However, When conversational AI is used, the study shows more than 61 percent of respondents could effectively resolve problems vs just 35 percent when traditional chat is used.
How Conversational AI Chatbots Help ITSM
A growing number of companies are investing in self-service as a strategy to help overburdened IT service desks. When you combine automation, self-service and conversational AI – you can have a positive impact on IT resource drain and improve the experience of your customers and end-users.
Conversational AI chatbots are intelligent software applications that can simulate human conversations and perform tasks such as answering questions, providing information and performing transactions.
Conversational AI leverages natural language processing and understands intent. While they do need to be trained, with conversational AI you can facilitate more complex conversations and resolve issues through actions vs. the traditional chatbot’s question/answer limited dialog path.
Because conversational AI chatbots understand intent, they are much more effective when it comes to assisting customers and end-users. For example, when using traditional chat if you say “My password broke” it would likely respond with something like “I’m sorry, I don’t understand that. Please type your issue again,” and continue down that path with a final response that might give you links to 3-5 FAQ articles that it thinks might help resolve the issue – leaving it to the customer to further seek out a solution to the password problem.
When you have conversational AI, if you were to say “My password is broken” it can inform your intent and know that what you mean is your password isn’t working and needs to be reset. The response from the chatbot is then something like, “I can see you’re having issues with your password. I’ve sent a reset password link to the email on file.”
On the backend, the chatbot can pull the email address needed from the system where it’s stored and automatically send a password reset email – resolving the issue within the conversation in seconds versus sending the customer links and having them do the work to request the link.
By integrating conversational AI chatbots into your ITSM processes, you can achieve several benefits, including:
- Faster Incident Resolution: Chatbots can quickly identify the root cause of incidents and provide users with a resolution or workaround, reducing the time and effort required to resolve incidents.
- Improved User Experience: Chatbots can provide users with a natural language interface to interact with IT systems, reducing the need for users to understand complex IT jargon.
- Reduced IT Workload: Chatbots can perform routine tasks such as password resets, software installations and system checks, freeing up IT staff to focus on more complex tasks.
- 24/7 Availability: Chatbots can be available 24/7, providing users with access to IT support at any time, reducing the impact of incidents on business operations.
- Data Collection and Analysis: Chatbots can collect data on incident trends and patterns, enabling IT organizations to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions.
By adopting conversational AI chatbots as part of your ITSM strategy, you can significantly improve self-service adoption, customer satisfaction and problem-resolution time – all while cutting costs and reducing the drain on overburdened IT resources.
Tips for Implementing Conversational AI Chatbots
As you start to identify the right conversational AI tool for your organization, you’ll want to plan for the implementation of the new tool, as implementing conversational AI chatbots in your ITSM processes requires careful planning and execution.
Here are some best practices to follow:
- Define Use Cases: Identify the specific use cases for chatbots in your ITSM processes, such as incident management, password resets or software installations. If you plan to expand to use cases outside of IT (for Enterprise Service Management), then you’ll want to plan for those use cases as well – things like PTO requests, benefits enrollment, etc.
- Choose the Right Platform: Select a chatbot platform that aligns with your organization’s ITSM processes and integrates with your existing IT systems.
- Train the Chatbot: Train the chatbot to understand the language and context of your IT systems, and to respond to user queries accurately and efficiently. This part is critical to the success of your chatbot user experience.
- Monitor Performance: Monitor the chatbot’s performance regularly to ensure that it is meeting user needs and achieving the desired business outcomes.
- Continuously Improve: Continuously improve the chatbot’s performance by analyzing user feedback, identifying areas for improvement and updating the chatbot’s algorithms and training data.
Conversational AI Chat in Action
Before using Velentix conversational AI, Bowdoin College used an AI chatbot from a different provider.
The college is a long-time user of the Velentix ITSM platform and has derived a great deal of value from the platform’s integration and automation capabilities, Jason Pelletier, senior director of client services and technology said. So, when campus leaders learned that Velentix was launching a conversational AI tool that can integrate with hundreds of enterprise systems, it seemed like a natural choice to switch.
The connectivity is being managed through an integration hub that offers hundreds of pre-built connectors to enterprise systems. If you have a specific solution that is not in the library, there is a connector concierge that will build this for you. Connectivity is ready to go for systems like Workday, HRIS, Salesforce and the Active Directory.
“Being able to integrate the bot with backend systems is very exciting,” Pelletier said. “With Velentix, we have one platform for ITSM with a chat tool that can integrate with our enterprise systems, and then from there we can build automation – this is something we could never have done with our previous solution.”
The capabilities of the conversational AI tool allow for simple, drag-and-drop workflow and automation building. You can easily create integrations between various programs—with no special coding knowledge required. The no/low-code nature of the solution offers a rapid time to value and endless use cases.
Pelletier and his team have taken advantage of this integration and automation capability to create special use cases for their AI chatbot. For example, all employees at Bowdoin receive replacement computers every four or five years, and this is something the organization tracks within the Velentix asset management module. Employees have traditionally reached out to the IT support team to ask when their computer is eligible for replacement.
Now, the bot can answer this question automatically with a tailored personalized answer. By integrating the chat with the asset management system, the query will take the users’ information from SSO to then identify and look up their asset records. Once retrieved, the chat can then take that information back to the chat window.
“We are answering questions faster, with accurate personalized data,” Pelletier said. “When a customer has a question about their equipment, the chat is integrated back into our asset system so that it can give full details to the user.”
Velentix conversational AI has enabled IT staff to offload much of the work they do in answering peoples’ questions to the bot, allowing them to focus on more important tasks.
“We’re just scraping the surface right now,” Pelletier said. “Eventually, I think we could have the bot handle up to 30 percent of the questions our help desk staff are getting now.”
Not only does the bot reduce the workload for IT support staff; but it also creates a better and more equitable experience for students.
“Some people are outgoing, and they have no problem in coming to our Tech Hub to get technical support,” Pelletier explained. “Others have no problem communicating by email. But there are also many users with a language barrier or another reason why they might feel uncomfortable interacting with an actual person. There are also some users who are night owls and need support late at night when we’re closed. The chatbot allows us to meet users where they are and give them the assistance they need—whenever, wherever and however they might want it. If we can relieve even some of the stress they might feel, that enhances their experience.”
If you’d like to learn more about chatbots vs. conversational AI, check out: Chatbot Frustration and the Promise of Conversational AI
