How Artificial Intelligence Helps the Help Desk?

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are popping up everywhere these days, and IT support features are no exception. In fact, experts believe that various forms of AI will become an important component of help desk support services in the coming years.

"Over the next three to five years, artificial recognition will be absolutely essential to any form of operation or support," said Shannon Kalvar, Research Manager for IT Services Management and Customer Virtualization at IDC. I will do it

IT self-service is not new. But lately, chatbots and smart search recommendations have become more sophisticated, helping guide users to the right solution. AI is expected to increasingly assist IT support teams in other ways, including predictive analytics for incident management, demand planning, and workflow improvements.

Chief content officer and chief analyst company Stephen Mann said one of the biggest benefits of artificial intelligence over IT support and technical support capabilities is: "eliminating manual overhead associated with high-volume, low-value activities from the service desk. That's what you can do. ITSM tools. "In many ways, it's similar to the more familiar IT automation of repetitive tasks, allowing people to focus on higher value-added activities." 

Mann said the first artificial intelligence capabilities were already integrated into some IT service management (ITSM) tools, "and we expect many more tool providers to add artificial intelligence capabilities to their existing ITSM tools this year.

Mann says ServiceNow, Micro Focus, BMC, Symphony Summit, Ivanti, IBM, ServiceAide and Freshworks are among the ITSM providers that have integrated AI into their products. Other vendors, such as Astound, Spoke, and Espressive, have not created a complete set of ITSM, but offer AI-based virtual assistant software or helpdesk.

According to IDC's Kalvar, chatbots, knowledge healing, and incident / request routing are three main categories of AI features and capabilities that providers are working on today with proprietary helpdesk software. "We are already using artificial cognition to help route service requests and service recovery to the appropriate responders and answer simple questions directly," says Kalvar.

Let's take a closer look at how artificial intelligence is helping the help desk today, and how it will help in the near future.

Chatbots & Virtual Support Agents

An area AI is advancing in, Mann writes in an article on ITSM.tools that "provides users with an automated 24/7/365 first contact chatbot experience." So even if you are not a person, the help desk is always someone.

IT support leaders are interested in implementing chatbots, said Chris Matchett, senior research analyst for IT operations management at Gartner. "In the context of the IT service desk, chatbots tend to apply NLP (natural language processing) through conversation-based platforms to perform specific knowledge base searches or other explicitly written actions. There is one," he says, " .

According to Matchett, many support managers are happy with more than that as a way to avoid simple and repetitive queries or requests before escalating complex interactions with real IT support agents. 

However, some chatbots can further improve user support. Virtual Support Agent (VSA) is a type of virtual assistant that provides specialized functions to assist IT support and IT service management scenarios.

"We also expanded the capabilities of chatbots by taking action on behalf of business users, including resetting passwords, deploying software, expanding support requests, and making changes to restore IT services." . Matchett says. Unlike regular chatbots and virtual assistants, which require extensive customization, VSA is preprogrammed with the ITSM process for procedural escalation of incidents.

"Many providers claim that virtual assistants and chatbots can be used in ITSM scenarios, but few can be considered a real VSA," says Matchett. "While both chatbots and VSAs rely entirely on well-established knowledge management scripts or processes, some VSA products are also emerging that create and update knowledge bases." (Machete) According to Gartner policy, certain tools cannot be named.)