The Compelling Case for AI in IT Service Management

ITSM is increasingly leaning towards service intelligence, which essentially means that artificial intelligence is getting embedded into service management technologies. AI can be highly efficient in taking over routine maintenance tasks that used to clog up precious hours and drain the energies of service personnel with their repetitive nature including patch management, incident routing, and software deployments. While complete automation is still some time away, even automation at the initial levels can free up precious resources and save your employees from burnout.

How Does ITSM Use AI?

AI in ITSM is being driven by trends such as virtual service desk agents and chatbots, both of which rely heavily on natural language processing (NLP) and associated technologies.

In fact, automation and intelligence in service has the potential to transform service management, as we understand it. With operational activities being increasingly automated, incidents can be reported, processed, closed and logged faster than ever before – shortening the entire cycle and delivering results at much cheaper costs.

But the extent to which AI can be leveraged in ITSM will depend on intelligent designing at every operations level adopted by companies. With the freed up resources, companies will be able to focus more on creative business problem-solving and enhancing user experience at every touch point.

How AI is Changing IT service management

• Visibility – When efficiency of data collection and accuracy is enhanced through AI in service desk operations, it enables companies to have a clear line of sight, or visibility across channels. This can also enable them to move towards a more proactive approach in service management as opposed to a slower, more reactive model. For instance, companies can always use AI to be able to see patterns in their service requests and incidents, that can enable them to proactively identify and stop service-level agreement (SLA) breaches before they happen. Instead of working with siloed incident information, companies can be equipped to read patterns in overall incident reporting that can help them connect the dots and trace larger, systemic problems before they turn into a critical issue and result in breakdowns. This can also help business leaders be prepared for any changes with always updated information about the state of services within the organization.
• Speed request resolution – AI can help relieve a major burden on service desk personnel by equipping them with the latest intelligence and pattern recognition to increase efficiency as they plod through tickets manually. In some cases, tier-1 problems can be left entirely to AI-enabled self-checkout processes, wherein service personnel are only required to intervene as and when they are needed. AI can also improve efficiencies in call routing and make services simpler to both operate and get resolutions from.
• Reduced burden of time and cost - Staffing costs have been a major headache for all companies responsible for major IT workloads. In many cases, operations costs have been high enough to actively hinder growth and profitability of companies. AI in ITSM can reduce the over-reliance on outsourcing as well as reduce churn and employee burnout by minimizing the burden of repetitive tasks. On the other hand, it also frees up employees to focus on creative problem solving – making them both more engaged and productive. IT Services Vancouver can be a good place to start looking for an AI-powered solution that’s just right for your business.
• Data accuracy – Truly efficient service desk resolution is dependent on the quality of data available within your organization. This has proved a tricky challenge for many organizations as complete, accurate data has proved elusive. While most of it can be pinned down to lack of context-awareness on the part of service requesters, AI can save business operations from dealing with such uncertainties. Through automated routing, service catalog forms and priority assignment, AI can cut through much of the unnecessary loops of human communication arising from incomplete requests or employees who can be vague about the exact technical subcategory their particular request may fall under.
• Prevent false results and enable smoother end-user experience – High churn rates at organizations often leaves service desk request processing in the hands of inexperienced employees who can make mistakes as they learn the ropes. AI in ITSM can truly minimize and sometimes even eliminate the fallout including correctly detecting issues, RCA and offering a supportive and proactive experience to the end-users.
• Enable predictive maintenance – AI can enable predictive maintenance in ITSM so issues can be detected before an actual incidence even takes place. Needless to say, this can be highly efficient in preventing unplanned service disruptions and unnecessary waste of time and resources. With the combination of machine learning, this can also help businesses to detect anomalies in system behaviours and strengthen overall system security.
• Enable continuous real-time learning – While this remains an area still in the early stages of development, intelligent conversational AI solutions should be able to learn proactively with incident reporting. With high-end algorithms and job automation, these systems should be able to learn more about the users and improve its service delivery iteratively.

Whether you are already using it or not, service desk automation is here to stay for the foreseeable future. The combination of cutting-edge technologies such as NLP, ML, and virtual assistants are proving to be a highly valuable tool for businesses, especially those in the service industry, the world over. There is virtually no cap on the efficiencies businesses stand to derive from intelligently designed systems.

In the post-pandemic scenario, where saving money and time has become essential for organizations to stay competitive, AI in ITSM can help them drive an edge in overall services, customer satisfaction and internal process efficiency that their competitors still lag. Intelligently-designed AI-powered service desks can enable full self-checkout processes, and streamline processes and technology to deliver faster, more efficient results at scale.

Why not start crafting great service experiences today? You could always reach out to local providers in IT Support Vancouver to implement an AI Service Management solution that’s the right fit for your organization. Enhance your service efficiency and productivity; delight end-users both internally and externally with the right AI Service Desk solution and drive ROI even as an early adopter by investing in the future today.

About the Author:

Sam Goh is the President at ActiveCo Technology Management, an IT Support Vancouver company. Sam comes from an operational perspective, his tenure at ActiveCo emphasizes working with customers to closely understand their business plans and to successfully incorporate the technology component to those plans. Under his leadership, ActiveCo has developed expertise which focuses on enriching the extensive customer relationships by integrating strategic and operational focus areas through consulting.