The rise of self-service: why invest in ServiceNow's Virtual Agent

The importance of AI 

The impact of AI (Artificial Intelligence) on businesses has played a vital role on operational efficiency and business decision-making, and will continue to be influential as technology develops further. We are now seeing the implementation of AI in areas such as medicine, retail and hospitality; it is likely that more and more industries will look to leverage AI, as it ultimately creates a safer world based on actionable data. 

AI  brings huge amounts of value to teams and their internal processes. Its benefits are being seen more and more within customer service departments by enabling help desk teams to use automation for repetitive and mundane – but nonetheless essential – tasks. It can also be used to kick off onboarding processes, reset forgotten passwords, run BI reporting and more, all without business users having to waste employee hours.    

Sales processes can also be massively enhanced and defined by utilising AI. In a similar vein to marketing activities, a CRM integrated with AI can enable sales pitches to reach the right person at the right time, on the most suitable platform. This leads to higher chances of conversion. Moreover, an AI-based CRM can identify patterns in a potential buyer’s info, such as past buying history and buying preferences; indeed, when a conversation arises with that potential buyer, AI systems can ensure that you know a bit about their buying history beforehand. All in all, this adds up to a more seamless sales process with less time wasted by your team thanks to the automative qualities. 

On top of this, AI can be a valuable tool of innovation in research and development. It helps to build a more intricate understanding of essentially any industry, as it is able to collect and analyse vast amounts of data so quickly and efficiently. Automation is therefore not the only key driving force of AI, but it can also lead the way to drastically improving products and services. 

The advantages of investing in a Virtual Agent 

Virtual Agents, or chatbots, are a type of artificial intelligence that uses scripted rules to provide an automated service or guidance to customers. Generally, they are utilised to answer frequently asked questions and common issues. It’s worth bearing in mind that they are not to be confused with virtual assistants, too (such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa). 

There are several benefits to implementing Virtual Agent or chatbot software into your enterprise. 

• Increasing productivity within the workplace 

Because the power of a VA is to answer simple, commonly asked questions, this means that by default, your team will have bandwidth to address complex issues that allow them to fully leverage their expertise. This also reduces stress, as the VA’s handling of mundane queries means minimal wasted time and repetitive workload for your team. 

• Available around the clock 

Unlike humans, Virtual Agents can operate all hours of the day and night. This ensures that customers can get assistance 24/7, without having to wait for a response. 

• Can handle both customer and employee needs 

VA’s are able to easily deal with employee needs as well as customer – for example, if a staff member needs to reset a password or are unable to access an online file. A Virtual Agent can be viewed as a live action knowledge base which provides a quicker resolution than manually searching. 

• Unexpected events or mistakes are easier to handle 

Accidentally publishing sensitive or confidential material is something no business ever wants to experience, but something all businesses should absolutely be prepared for. Sticky PR situations like this can trigger an onslaught of new support complaints from many people asking about the same topic. Virtual Agents will be able to aid with this, by automatically instigating timely conversations with your customers. 

• Natural Language Understanding (NLU) streamlines customer interactions 

Natural Language Understanding allows machines to understand the human language. It alludes to how unstructured data is rearranged, so that the machine is able to analyse it. For example, NLU can add automatic ticket routing into a business by being able to understand and compute the contents of a ticket, automatically routing it to the right person. This saves teams hundreds of hours and will allow them to prioritise tickets by importance. 

How we’ve worked with ServiceNow’s Virtual Agent 

Unifii recently implemented ServiceNow’s Virtual Agent module for a top financial services organisation. They had found that valuable time was being spent resolving simple queries, meaning that their staff had less time to focus on issues that warranted their attention. It made sense for these questions to be answered through automated self-service, as they were simple in nature and came up very frequently. 

The customer saw the following benefits from implementing Virtual Agent: 

• Person-to-person support chats were successfully reduced by 85%. 

• This went live during one of the lockdowns at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic; the customer was able to maintain incident volumes to the Service Desk which increased demand for remote working support by approximately 20%. 

• Request fulfilment tasks were reduced by 25% by helping employees find and select the appropriate service offering, therefore ensuring the tickets landed with the right team first time. 

• The organisation can now measure 100% of all feedback via the tool, using this information to iteratively develop new and better levels of support.

For full details on how this implementation improved the customer’s operations, read our case study here. And if you would like more information on how ServiceNow could help your business, please get in touch with one of the team here.