Calling UK users of Virtual Agent

[Ken Cree]

Hi all.

I work within the UK Higher Education sector and I’m looking to connect with other users of Virtual Agent (specifically ITSM Pro users) to share the successes and challenges we have encountered.

Areas I’m keen to discuss are topic setup and any links to Live Agent or 3rd party services (Teams, Slack, WhatsApp etc), as well as any plans or implementations of LLMs or Automation.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!  

Thanks

[CandyDee]

Hey Ken

I used the following video's from the dev channel. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d87YriT6ZA&list=WL&index=4&pp=gAQBiAQB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF6JVzEbHts&list=WL&index=7&pp=gAQBiAQB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1gc3JoUr6A&list=WL&index=5&t=10s&pp=gAQBiAQB

I also used this as a guideline to integrate to chapgpt, we didn't actually go live with it but I found it super helpful as a stepping stone into integrating flow designer actions within Virtual Agent and from there how to integrate into 3rd party apps, If you using integration hub there are actions within there I think can be utilized.

https://www.servicenow.com/community/developer-forum/chatgpt-integration-with-servicenow-virtualagen...

Setting up topics was relatively easy and building out the flow which it follows using those vids became pretty straight forward, but we deliberately kept it simple.

We had simple topics such as 'Create an Incident', 'Close/update Incident' and so forth. 

Live Agent Chat was extremely simple aswell but then your introducing Agent Workspace or the newer version of that which was problematic getting our teams to adopt that. 

Wish you well on the 

[Ken Cree]

Hi @CandyDee thanks for all the information, there are some useful topics in those videos and I've only just started looking to add Flow's into the topic designer so they are definitely on point for what we need. 

We were an early adopter of Agent Workspace so we have worked through several bugs in it and got it working well for our Service Desk. We recently just migrated them into SOW with Agent Workspace being out of support.

One issue we found with Live Agent Chat was dealing with users who are in the chat queue when we close the channel. ServiceNow waits for Max Wait time to do anything but this isn't necessarily a good customer experience. I've been looking at using a Flow to message each of them after a desk finished to give an apology and advice on the next steps but struggling to get a message into the chat conversation. Did you have a similar issue?

Currently, I've created an autopilot topic and agents can accept the chats and pass them over to that. It's fine when there are only a few chats left in the queue when we close the channel but it's not ideal when there are a lot. 

Are you using the NLU model and allowing users to ask anything or are you using a topic to filter them to specific areas? 

I've considered moving to a topic tree approach to assist with user expectations as many still enter full paragraphs or describe what they are trying to do before asking a question. The NLU model seems to struggle with more complex utterances.

Speaking of the NLU model we encounter quite a few bugs/errors with it where it will not train or it says it's completed training but it hasn't. Not to mention its load time. Are you having any similar issues?

[CandyDee]

Hey Ken, Glad you found it useful.

So your live agent chat issue is something we didn't hit as not many people were using it, very few in fact so it wasn't a problem for us that needed addressing but I can absolutely see the issue.

This is just me firing out an idea and ive no idea if its possible or not but may give you something to look at. 

1: Check if flow designer can trigger when a channel is closed. This would be for detecting users still in the chat queue.

2: Check the virtual agent API for messaging, I think VA Conversation API 'sn_va_conversation' or Live Chat API 'connect'. I just googled it and pointed me to messaging and notifying within chat sessions. So there may be something there. 

3: Use a 'for each' action to loop through each user in that chat queue sending that apology in point 2

4: Extra Option. Set up an email notification to those users advising on next steps. Email notification isn't ideal but passing messages out of flow designer isn't possible I don't think 

Something like that is where id start but again sorry if its a wild goose chase, I hadn't looked at it but thats where my mind went to on reading.

I stayed away from the NLU, I fully leaned into topics and directed users to where I wanted them to go as I experienced exactly the same as you. 

I think users both staff and customers seem to think VA is a AI when its not, I could see people just having full blown chats with a simple bot lol. 

[Aly Skidmore1 · Accepted solution]

Hi folks - happy to help organise a session on this if there's enough of us client-side who'd like a "warts and all" discussion and experience share.  We have VA integrated with Teams and live agent chat.  We have also configured a separate channel for specific, urgent app support for front office trading.  We've integrated VA with powershell scripted self-heal capabilities on laptops (nothing earth shattering but it's a start). 

Like many of you we have found the OOTB conversations, NLU and product documentation to be a bit touch and go and have had to put a great deal of development effort and investment to get to where we are now.  

We've found the Impact accelerators to be very helpful (for those on Impact guided or above).  

Now starting to scale back and concentrate on other aspects of the platform that will help improve VA conversation quality - underlying data/ quality of analyst updates/ KA content and EC design. 

The reality is that OOTB VA is facing into a world of user expectation that it can't meet due to advances in GenAI worldwide.  Retro fitting it into platforms that have existed for a few years also makes the ROI tricky to realise. 

We have a user group who we engage on the VA roadmap - I'd say about 10% of their suggestions are for VA - which speaks volumes!  We have now opened up the discussion to the broader subject of both the digital and human interfaces to service, 

If there's appetite for a one-off, or even a series of sessions on this then I'm sure this is something the SNUG team could help facilitate. 

Cheers, Aly 

[Matt Cronin]

I would definitely be up for getting together for a chat about this.  I am also interested in your Powershell scripting solutions...