Chatbots are rising in popularity, especially with organizations under increasing pressure to ‘do more with less’ while improving the employee or customer experience. Chatbots are quick and enable users to get answers to common questions without bogging down the service team.
For many enterprises, chatbots have become an integral part of their customer care arsenal due to the challenges that traditional support channels bring such as –
- Slow response times and high wait times
- Too cumbersome to find answers for simple questions
- Complex portals that are too hard to understand and navigate
- Takes too long to resolve simple queries
One area where chatbots are playing a critical role is IT Service Management (ITSM). ITSM requires complicated (ITSM). ITSM requires complicated assistance and is labor-intensive. Companies that have implemented chatbots for ITSM have witnessed tremendous benefits.
24×7 availability: Chatbots improve the overall response time for users’ queries, offer round-the-clock availability, and improve resolution time and productivity.
Faster ticket resolution: AI-powered chatbots increase the overall ticker resolution rate, thus improving customer satisfaction and restoring business as early as possible.
Proactive engagement: : Chatbots are intelligent enough to predict an incident and report a ticket. Proactive support helps save costs by eliminating delays and service outages.
Cost optimization: Chatbots deflect routine Tier I tickets, which ultimately reduces the overall cost incurred. This frees service desk agents from routine tickets and allows them to focus on resolving complex issues.
Chatbot use cases in ITSM
Experts estimate that a significant part of all Level 1 help desk support functions are repetitive. In addition to being costly from a human resource perspective, the end-users experience delays when waiting for responses.
With ITSM chatbots, organizations can shift the repetitive tasks and workflows away from human agents and toward AI-powered software. Following are some of the use cases of chatbots in ITSM:
Efficient self-service: IT can’t increase the number of agents to resolve the growing number of tickets. This is where chatbots come to the rescue by answering routine incidents and service requests. Chatbots help in ticket deflection by suggesting relevant self-help articles while delivering consistency in terms of language, response time, and availability.
Password reset: One of the common tickets for the service desk is password reset. Agents spend a lot of time resolving this transactional query. With the introduction of AI, password resets are handled by the chatbots, which connect to the backend to set up a temporary password for the user. The process can be carried out seamlessly without manual intervention.
Categorizing, prioritizing, and assigning tickets: Another area where chatbots come in handy is ticket categorization and assignment. Chatbots simplify the process by intelligently classifying tickets to the agent group based on the type of issue. If the ticket cannot be resolved by the chatbot, it is assigned to the right agent with a complete background of what has happened so far.
Assisting agents: In addition to improving end-user experience, chatbots can also assist agents in solving their requests. Say, for instance, an agent requests for a helpdesk ticket volume report. The chatbot prepares this report and delivers it to the agent instantly improving process efficiency.
Automated workflows: Service requests and change approvals are common within the IT service desk. Resolution generally gets delayed waiting for the right approval. Chatbots, in this case, automate the workflow and get instant approval by notifying respective approvers. Similarly, employee onboarding/offboarding is automated through chatbots by allocating all the required resources.
Knowledge management: Knowledge management is the key to efficient self-service. ITSM systems backed with AI-powered chatbots will have access to an extensive suite of knowledge. The chatbot can then suggest the right articles to enable self-help.
Access provisioning, de-provisioning: This is a common service request made by users. Chatbots understand the type of request, requester job title, department and send approval to the respective management to grant access to the respective application. Similarly, chatbots automate access de-provisioning for users.
Leading-edge companies are already using chatbots, and any company that wants to augment their IT support staff should consider it. AI-powered bots have the potential to supercharge the IT help desk.
If you are considering leveraging chatbots, feel free to contact our experts by clicking here.
