We all know that artificial intelligence is one of the most path breaking inventions made in the field of modern technology. It has allowed machines and digital platforms to learn, think, and analyze like the human mind. Since its invention, AI has been used by organizations across the globe to streamline their processes and obtain valuable insights using their database. As reported by SEMrush, the increase in the usage of AI across businesses will create $2.9 trillion worth of business value and 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity. A common misconception revolving around AI is that it replaces the need for human employees. It is essential to understand that instead of replacing human employees, AI helps organizations make their employees’ tasks more manageable. No matter how powerful a technology is, you will always need human employees to work and undertake business processes with the technology. AI and machine learning (ML) can be used for making calculations, predicting customer behavior, undertaking business analytics, forecasting sales, and much more. Here, we will discuss how artificial intelligence can help your employees interact with chatbots through conversational AI.
What Is Conversational AI?
As the name suggests, conversational AI is a technology that allows a machine to interact with humans like a fellow human being. It involves using chatbots – virtual assistants that enter into conversations with individuals and guide them using the data stored within a system. Conversational AI allows machines to interact with humans by recognizing their speech and text, understanding context, gauging the intent, deciphering the language, and responding in a manner that is similar to the way humans interact.
How Does Conversational AI Work?
Conversational AI works by making use of technologies such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), and Advanced Dialog Management to interact in a human-like manner. Firstly, the platform with conversational AI receives input from a user (either in spoken phrases or written text). If the input is in a spoken phrase, the platform uses ASR to convert the same into readable text. Now, the platform uses NLP to understand what the input means and what the user conveys. Once the message’s intent is understood, and the platform has a response ready, the same is communicated to the user with the help of Dialog Management. Dialog management allows the platform to orchestrate the response and convert the same into an understandable format using NLG (Natural Language Generation), a component of NLP.
Depending on the platform and its purpose, the generated response can be in the form of text or speech synthesis (used in Alexa, Siri, and Google Home). However, the functionality of conversational AI does not end here. Just like a human being, as the platform interacts with the users over time and acquires new data, it learns and grows to provide more personalized support. This makes the entire process of using conversational AI holistic and productive.
Using Conversational AI To Leverage IT Service Desk Automation
Conversational AI can be used to automate your IT processes with the help of a modern IT service desk. These service desks use the technology to provide seamless support to your employees by making them interact with dedicated AI chatbots.
Here are some of the major ways in which conversational AI helps you in unlocking your IT service desk strategy:
- Reducing Dependence on Agents with AI Chatbots
Traditional IT service desks were often too dependent on support agents to provide employee support. This resulted in the agents getting overburdened with cases. With a plethora of cases at their disposal, the quality of support provided by the agents went significantly down. Moreover, traditional service desks often make employees wait to resolve essential issues.
A modern service desk can solve this issue by using AI chatbots to provide your employees first-level support (L1). Instead of getting all the cases routed to IT support agents, employees can interact with chatbots that understand the context of the problem and provide solutions within a few seconds. All you need to do is ensure that your knowledge base contains enough data to resolve the basic issues of your employees. Whenever an employee asks a question or raises an issue by chatting with the service desk, the chatbot would understand the context, leverage advanced knowledge base, and return with a personalized solution. This reduced the caseload going to the agents, allowing them to focus on every case properly.
If the concerned employee is not satisfied with the automated support provided, they can then get their case routed to a dedicated support agent. In such cases, the AI chatbots would help the agents communicate suitable solutions to the employees through your IT service desk. - Integration With Collaborative Platforms
Modern IT service desks can be integrated with collaborative platforms like MS Teams, Slack, Zoom etc, to leverage the functionality of conversational AI. This prevents your employees from switching platforms to obtain support and helps them chat with the virtual assistants on a single unified interface.
By integrating your IT service desk with your collaborative platform, you can allow employees working across the organization to automate several IT processes and obtain personalized help by interacting with the AI chatbots. Moreover, letting the chatbots scan the knowledge base of your collaborative platform helps them learn more as they interact with more employees, improving the overall efficiency of their support. - Creating Support Tickets with a Simple Chat
Modern IT service desks use conversational AI to create tickets. As opposed to the traditional ticketing system that complicated the process for many employees, the modern approach allows them to create support tickets simply by chatting with the platform.
By giving a simple command to the chatbots that works within MS Teams or Slack or any other collaborative platform, your employees can create their support tickets invisibly and get their cases routed to the agents. The chatbots would provide the agent with all relevant details regarding the case and historical data relevant to the concerned employee to provide enough context. As the case is being looked into, the service desk will keep your employee updated with the status of their case by sending them automated notifications.
Finally, when the case is resolved, and the employee is happy with the solution, the support ticket is automatically closed, and the details of the same are fed into the knowledge base for future reference. - Automated Changing and Resetting of Passwords
The traditional service desks required the IT department to handle repetitive requests for changing and resetting employees’ passwords throughout the year. This pulled them out of the more critical tasks, and they spent a large chunk of their time manually performing repetitive tasks. The use of conversational AI in IT service desk automation relieves your IT team from performing these tasks manually. It allows your employees to change or reset their respective passwords simply by initiating a chat with the AI chatbots.
On giving the command, their request is taken to the backend to confirm their identity. Once confirmed, they can reset or change their credentials successfully without getting the IT professionals involved. - Using Conversational AI for Microlearning
Microlearning is a new approach to learning that caters to the limited attention span of individuals. Through microlearning, you can get your employees trained in specific skills without providing them with lengthy literature and making them take up long courses. Microlearning allows you to provide bite-sized training content to your employees that do not take up more than ten minutes of their time. This way, they can retain the information consumed and knowledge gained through this approach.
With conversational AI, your employees can resolve all their queries regarding the skills they are learning within a few seconds. With all the training resources added to your knowledge base, the AI chatbots would have answers to almost every question an employee may have during their microlearning sessions.
Whether they need to revise the lessons learned or get their doubts cleared while consuming the training content, conversational AI understands the context of their issue and ensures wholesome employee training.
- Conveying Employee Benefits through Chatbots
Especially in new hires, employees are often unaware of all the benefits they are entitled to. Instead of them having to approach management now and then, the use of conversational AI within your service desk helps them obtain quick and personalized answers.
All your employees need to do is interact with the AI chatbots, and they would provide answers to all the questions your employees may have regarding their benefits. This keeps your team informed about the privileges offered to them without reaching out to the HR managers and waiting for them to respond.
Conclusion
These were some of the most effective ways conversational AI can be used to unlock your IT service desk strategy. If you have more innovative ideas for using AI and machine learning for employee support, discuss the comments below.
