Digital Transformation of Enterprise Service Management (ESM) Will be Made Possible Through
AI-based Consumer-like Employee Experience Apps
Espressive, a leader in AI for enterprise service management, announced its vision of a world where employees get help without friction at the Pink19 IT Service Management (ITSM) Conference. Historically, ITSM vendors have focused on solving the problems encountered by the service desk, rather than focusing on the employee experience. However, as connectivity becomes ubiquitous in every aspect of our digital lives, today’s consumer mentality around increasingly personalized service and instant gratification has bled into the workplace. Employees have refused to use traditional ITSM tools to get help, and this issue has been exacerbated when they have Alexa-like ease of use and immediacy at home.
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Espressive is the pioneer in AI for enterprise service management (ESM), redefining how employees get help by delivering exceptional employee experiences.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to solve this problem for IT, as well as the rest of the enterprise including HR, Facilities, Payroll, and more. Espressive believes that the employee self-service problem requires an enterprise service management (ESM) solution that can only be made possible through AI-based consumer-like apps.
Most ITSM Vendors have Repackaged their Tools for Non-IT Applications
A new Gartner report titled, “2019 CIO Survey: CIOs Have Awoken to the Importance of AI,” included the key finding that “the percentage of enterprises deploying artificial intelligence (AI) has tripled in the past year.” The research also reported that, “Chatbots have displaced fraud detection as the top use of AI in 2019.1”
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Findings from the Pulse Report, which was released today and focuses on the top ITSM tool strategies in 2019, reveals that the number one complaint employees have with regard to employee self-service is that it is easier to call or email the help desk than it is to use their existing ITSM solution. In fact, 53 percent of respondents said that less than 10 percent of incidents are automatically resolved without human involvement. Not surprisingly, 62 percent of respondents are at the consideration phase or beyond in terms of adding a chatbot/AI to their ITSM tools.
“Early implementations of AI in ITSM have failed because they are either extremely complex and time-consuming to deploy, or they are bolt-on solutions to an existing ITSM tool that was never designed to maximize employee adoption,” said Pat Calhoun, CEO of Espressive and former SVP of ServiceNow.
Pat added, “Most ITSM vendors have repackaged their tools for non-IT use. While the complexity of common ITSM tools that follow the comprehensive ITIL process is appropriate for IT, it is not for other departments.”
Early AI-based ITSM solutions fell into two main approaches. The first approach is based on platforms that enable organizations to build chatbots, as well as third-party tools like Watson or Agent.ai.
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Platforms require customers to hire an ongoing staff of linguists, AI experts, and data scientists to use them. With acute talent shortages in AI, this approach is not available to most. The other approach, commonly known as search bots uses advanced algorithms to enable a more efficient search of existing knowledge base articles. However, search bots are hampered by the lack of a good knowledge foundation in most enterprises, and force employees to be precise in their language in order to find the information they need.
As Calhoun observes, “For AI to deliver digital transformation in ESM, it can’t be based on legacy solutions—AI must be the foundation. AI solutions need to be built in a way that encourages employee adoption because adoption is what will increase employee satisfaction and productivity, which in return will reduce call volume and MTTR. Vendors need to deliver pre-built consumer-like apps that are accessible, intuitive and understand the language of employees, as well as include case management that is available to the entire enterprise. At the same time, these tools must increase the ROI of existing ITSM investments and deploy quickly without the need to hire expensive and rare AI resources to implement and support.”
“As the leading AI security company, we are well placed to judge the various approaches for deploying AI in ITSM,” said Kumud Kalia, Chief Information & Technology Officer at Cylance.
Kumud added, “The Espressive team understands how to apply AI to make it easy for employees to get help, which in turn will drive ITSM adoption. In our evaluation, we made sure the Espressive solution was quick to deploy, would learn from experience to get smarter, and would not require expensive AI resources.”
In another release today, Espressive announced new innovations to Barista, a next-gen AI-based consumer-like app that redefines how employees get help across the enterprise.
Barista, the company’s virtual support agent (VSA), brings the ease of consumer virtual assistants, such as Alexa and Google Home, into the workplace. Barista delivers a personalized user experience that results in employee adoption of 50 to 60 percent and reduced help desk call volume of 30 to 50 percent.
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