5 things you should look for in your ITSM chatbot

Chatbots are rising in popularity, both in consumer and enterprises circles, because they are quick, sometimes clever, and ultimately help workers and customers get answers to common questions without bogging down your service team.

As part of our ITSM Professional package, ServiceNow’s Virtual Agent far exceeds some of the chatbots you may have used in your personal life for one simple reason – access to information.

By combining our robust knowledge bases and deep integration with your data, the solution can provide custom responses within the conversation unlike other options in the market. The introduction of natural language understanding makes it even more effective. End users can ask the same questions they would ask a human agent, and the chat bot understands and responds. If an employee has an IT issue, the agent already knows what equipment has been issued and can offer suggested troubleshooting within moments, speeding the task and creating a personalized service experience.

“It’s very convenient for our customers to use one single platform for everything,” said Archana Penukonda, Senior Product Marketing Manager at ServiceNow. “The connectivity busts the silos. Everything is available to them on the Now Platform, so they don’t have to build integrations into something else.”

Here are some ways Virtual Agent is helping organizations scale their ITSM operations:

1. Available when your workers need you - Virtual Agent is available 24/7 and can resolve issues immediately without requiring a live agent to intervene. The last thing an employee or customer wants to do in the wee hours is navigate your robust knowledge base. They get lost, and their queries still end up coming into the service desk. With Virtual Agent, common tasks can be handled in that moment, articles can be curated for the issue, and humans can go to bed satisfied at a reasonable hour.

2. Seamless handoff between tech and people – Nothing is more frustrating than having to re-explain your issues when you are introduced to a new agent or being transferred to a chatbot and also having to find the magic phrases to finally get your questions answered.

With this solution, you can access the right agent at the right time at any point in the conversation with no drop off in engagement. Virtual Agent is integrated with the Live Agent module to ensure transfers happen seamlessly, with information shared swiftly to the next tier of support without the clunky robot-speak. The experience is smooth for the user as well, with some companies able to make the transfer to a live agent in seconds.

3. A force multiplier for your support team – The goal of any ITSM leader is to deliver a quality experience while taking pressure off the service team. This has led many companies to experiment with self service.

Out of the box, Virtual Agent gives organizations access to pre-defined conversation workflows that provide an automated and cost-effective resolution to many common challenges, freeing IT staff. When launched, ServiceNow estimated that 15% to 20% of routine interactions can be handled by Virtual Agent, but some companies, thanks to self service, are seeing their service-team workload cut in half.

4. It’s where your users are – Virtual Agent is versatile, helping workers navigate robust knowledge bases and complete common requests through a range of media. It is accessible on the web through an employee portal, on mobile through our iOS and Android apps, and can also be accessed through collaboration tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams.

5. Know your users to support them better – Leaders need information to make decisions, and ServiceNow is committed to providing as much transparency into their operations as possible. Virtual Agent is no different. With data on how workers and customers are interacting with the solution, as well as on incident resolution times and escalation rates, you’ll know how to pivot to your users’ needs in real time.

“Leading-edge companies are beginning to adopt enterprise chat bots, and any company that wants to augment their support staff should consider it,” said Penukonda. “Chatbots are tireless. They are like little armies that just get work done.”

Ready to talk about the details? Virtual Agent comes with our ITSM Professional package. Learn more about this and all the other solutions that will help you make quick changes for your service teams.