How AI Is Helping The Help Desk?

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

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

IT self-service is not new. But lately, chatbots and smart search recommendations have become more sophisticated to help 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 ITSMs, but offer AI-based virtual assistant software or helpdesk.

Chatbots And Virtual Support Agents

One area where AI moves forward is in their ITSM.tools article, "One area where AI moves forward is providing users with a 24x7 automated 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.

According to Matchett, many support managers are more than satisfied with the way to divert simple, repetitive requests and queries before escalating complex interactions with real IT support agents.

However, some chatbots may 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.

It also performs actions on behalf of business users to extend chatbot functionality, reset passwords, deploy software, escalate support requests, make changes to restore IT services, and more. Unlike regular chatbots and virtual assistants, which require extensive customization, VSA is preprogrammed with the ITSM process and can procedurally escalate 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.)

Prioritization and routing of requests and incidents

AI is also driving automatic classification, prioritization, and routing of incidents and service request tickets.

"We are seeing that some ITSM tool providers provide predictive analytics and even fully suggest or complete some of the fields on the ticket form," says Gartner Matchett. The tool recommends incident priorities, classifications, and appropriate groups for assigning tickets.

"Human operators can override these suggestions, so they will not be replaced, but they will provide artificial intelligence assistance to work faster and take less obvious actions.

Healing Knowledge

Another new feature of help desk products is artificial intelligence-based knowledge management. This includes smart search capabilities that understand context and meaning, as well as relying on specific keywords, Mann writes in his ITSM.tools article. Recommend solutions that have previously worked for knowledge seekers and solutions based on those that have not.

Mann said AI is also the most likely solution to providing smart automated responses to reply to emails from end-users. It also helps to identify gaps in the knowledge base.

AI knowledge curation helps IT support agents as well as end-users. "Many intermediate and advanced ITSM tools leverage past and current incidents, changes, issues, known bugs, and knowledge bases to suggest potentially relevant information to IT service desk agents," Matchett says. "This data is generally displayed in a dedicated area of ​​the user interface, such as a window that is docked next to the main window."

Gartner defines an Intermediate ITSM Tool as a tool that has superior ITSM capabilities and provides some basic IT Operations Management (ITOM) functions or that integrates with an Intermediate Third Party ITOM solution. Advanced ITSM tools are defined as those that offer a wide range of ITSM capabilities and integrate with advanced or native third-party ITOM products.