5 Practical Ways Now Assist Helped Our Service Desk — And 2 Surprising Limitations

[nishant3101]

I’ve been working with Now Assist in our Service Desk environment for a while now, and instead of sharing the usual “marketing-style” benefits, I wanted to post something real and practical from day-to-day experience.
Here are the 5 ways Now Assist actually added value, along with 2 situations where the AI still struggles.

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1. Suggested Responses → Faster First Replies

This is the biggest win.
When agents open a ticket, Now Assist suggests a clean, ready-to-send response based on the issue.
It helped us:

• reduce time spent crafting replies

• maintain consistent communication

• support new agents who aren’t confident with wording yet

Even shaving off 10–20 seconds per ticket adds up quickly in high-volume queues.

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2. Ticket Summaries Save Time During Handoffs

Before Now Assist, if an agent picked up a ticket mid-way, they had to read long comment histories.
Now Assist gives a short summary that captures:

• what happened

• what was tried

• what’s pending

This made shift handovers smoother and improved SLA adherence.

3. Knowledge Suggestions → Fewer Repeated Questions

Now Assist highlights the most relevant Knowledge Articles right inside the ticket.
This helped new agents solve issues faster and reduced dependency on seniors for common troubleshooting.

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4. Drafting Knowledge Articles Becomes Easier

Agents can use Now Assist to create a first-draft KA based on ticket details.
We still refine the content, but it speeds up documentation by a lot.

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5. Better Clarity When Reviewing Complex Tickets

When escalations come in, we use Now Assist to quickly summarize long, messy tickets.
It shows:

• what the user originally asked

• key steps

• blockers

• unresolved points

This reduces back-and-forth and helps leaders make decisions faster.

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-> Where Now Assist Struggles (Honest Take)

 

1. Unclear or Poorly Written Tickets

If the user writes a very vague description (“Laptop not working pls fix ASAP”), the AI’s suggestions also become vague.
Garbage in → garbage out.

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2. Tickets With Heavy Technical Logs

Now Assist sometimes misinterprets system logs or stack traces.
It’s helpful for summaries, but not for deep troubleshooting.

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Overall Takeaway

Now Assist is not a magic solution — but it’s a genuinely helpful tool for speeding up responses, summaries, documentation, and onboarding.

The biggest improvements we saw were in:

• response consistency

• handoff clarity

• reducing repetitive efforts

• saving agent time during peak load

I'd love to know:
How has Now Assist worked for you in real-world operations? Any unique use cases you’ve tried?

[GChanner]

Hi @nishant3101 

We are also struggling. We implemented NOW Assist as a pilot and the test group will be our service desk (SD) tier 1 group. I activated the OOTB skills however in testing with the group we found that the current OOTB skills does not add much value for the group. For other fulfillers other than the service desk, we do see the value but not SD tier 1.

We do not use Chat as a channel in the organization, therefore I did not activate those skills. Our primary channels are phone and the service portal.

I know we can build custom skills but we first wanted to stay OOTB as we learn.

[nishant3101]

Hi @GChanner 

I also piloted Now Assist with our Service Desk Tier 1 team, and even though we use Chat as a channel, the OOTB skills didn’t add much value initially. They work great for fulfilment teams, but Tier 1 usually needs far more tailored support.

What I learned is that the OOTB skills are just a starting point. The real impact for Tier 1 came only after we began adding custom skills aligned to our SD workflows. We introduced chat summarization, a customized bot, and enabled Agent Assist — and that’s where the chat experience improved dramatically.

With these additions, our Tier 1 agents started getting faster suggestions, cleaner summaries, and more contextual guidance, which made the chat channel far more efficient and useful.

So yes, OOTB is good to understand the framework, but custom skills + Agent Assist is where Tier 1 truly starts seeing value.