Alexa comes to the IT service desk: Are businesses ready? - Wipro

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Alexa comes to the IT
service desk: Are
businesses ready?
nterprise IT service desks face challenging              Let’s take a closer look at the changing role of
           times today, trying to balance shrinking                 the IT service desk and how VDAs can
           budgets and headcounts with demands                      revolutionize service desk management to
    for greater efficiencies and better customer                    deliver personalized and contextualized services
    experience. Add to it an increasingly complex                   that are highly cost-effective and scalable.
    computing environment disrupted by the
    onslaught of emerging technologies, and it's no                 Commoditization of the IT service
    surprise that most organizations struggle to put                desk: The challenges
    their customer experience promises into action.
                                                                    Gone are the days when the role of the service
    Thankfully, that’s changing.
                                                                    desk was to fix issues and fulfill requests.
    Artificial intelligence (AI), voice technologies,               Service desks in the digital age serve as the shop
    and the increased use of automation are poised                  window for IT – end users come, browse, and
    to make the IT service desk a highly efficient and              depending on the experience they receive,
    productive arena. While over 1.8 million people                 decide whether or not to access support in
    already use Amazon’s Alexa to control lighting,                 future. But are IT service desks prepared to make
    temperature, etc. in their homes, IT service desk               the leap from a reactive function to a strategic
    users will soon be able to leverage Alexa for                   business enabler to meet the growing digital
    Business, a new service from AWS1. According to                 demands of both business and users? With
    research and markets, the number of enterprises                 business processes increasingly moving to the
    using virtual digital assistants (VDAs) such as                 Cloud, it’s time enterprises invest in a
    Alexa, Siri, Cortana and others, will touch 843                 Cloud-based IT service desk model to convert
    million by 2021, with total VDA revenues                        the service desk from a cost function to one that
    touching USD 15.8 billion2.                                     drives competitive advantage (see Figure 1).

                                     Current IT service desks
                                              The pitfalls and challenges

                                     Limited scalability: Inability to quickly scale up/down to provide digital

                         #1          support due to dependence on human resources

                       Steep learning curve of human agents: 60% time spent in mundane
                          support, high-level training required to minimize human error, a
                                      scenario further complicated by high attrition rates       #2

                                     Lack of modern offerings: No self-service capabilities, social

                         #3          media support, or support for BYOD access

                                       High cost of ownership due to higher maintenance,
                                                          operational and resource costs
                                                                                                 #4

2
Next-gen service desk in the cloud
                                                            The advantages

                                       On-demand scalability - anytime, anywhere, and on any device

                           #1          enabled by a Cloud-based operating model

                                    Self-learning chatbots: AI and ML technologies provide
                                     relevant, real time, error-free, and contextual support
                                                                                                 #2

                                       Multi-channel support: Spans social media, voice and video

                           #3          chat, instant messaging, mobile applications, etc

                   Lower operational costs: Due to intelligent optimization of request tickets
                   using smart-learning AI algorithms. Optimal human resource consumption
                       for providing a superior customer experience, not merely fixing issues    #4

Figure 1: A comparative analysis of current vs next-gen service desks

Here are the three key challenges plaguing IT                           issues at the pace of business and provide the
service desks today:                                                    level of quality users demand. Only 79% of
                                                                        service desks measure the ‘average speed to
#1 High cost of operations: 67% of service desks
                                                                        answer’ metric, which stands at 34 seconds5.
spend the majority of their time fire-fighting or
simply keeping the lights on, which steals time                         Hello, Alexa for Business: The
away from looking at new service improvement
                                                                        next-gen service desk is here
initiatives3. Given that ‘always-on’ availability is
non-negotiable today, modern enterprises are                            As the world becomes increasingly mobile, IT
under tremendous pressure to reduce service                             services and support function must reinvent
desk costs as well as headcount.                                        itself to keep up. This is where VDAs a la
                                                                        Amazon’s Alexa for Business come in. According
#2 Fluid customer expectations: Today’s
                                                                        to Gartner, by 2020, 25% of customer service and
customers want support – anytime, anywhere,
                                                                        support operations will integrate virtual
and across channels and devices. IT support is
                                                                        customer assistant technology across
no longer simply a service for end users – it’s an
                                                                        engagement channels6. Powered by Artificial
experience - and they want it to be at par with
                                                                        Intelligence (AI) technology, Alexa for Business
what they get in highly consumer-centric
                                                                        enables a contextually-powered support
industries such as retail and e-commerce.
                                                                        experience to improve efficiency, engagement,
Modern customers place a premium on their
                                                                        and relevancy. Here are four use cases for Alexa
time. 66% of US online adults say valuing their
                                                                        for Business in the IT support domain:
time is the most important thing a company
can do to provide them with good online                                 #1 Maximize people resources: Besides taking
customer experience4.                                                   over routine IT support tasks such as scheduling
                                                                        and monitoring, Alexa for Business can optimize
#3 Long resolution time and quality issues:
                                                                        resource planning to avoid bottlenecks and
Straddled with legacy technologies, unbalanced
                                                                        congestion. How? By leveraging its AI algorithm,
workloads and insufficient agent training, IT
                                                                        it predicts support traffic and workload patterns,
service desk staff find it challenging to resolve

                                                                                                                             3
and matches them with available resources.                      satisfaction with IT support services and the
Alexa can also source relevant and contextual                   factors that improve/hinder it. It can also match
knowledge from documents and help service                       the results with other parameters such as
agents do their job faster and more accurately.                 resolution time, customer demographics and
                                                                more, to generate in-depth data insights on
#2 Improve IT support services and
                                                                consumer expectations.
decision-making: Leveraging its predictive
analytics capabilities, Alexa can predict common                Is the IT service desk ready for the
as well as high impact support issues, future
service trends, demand for new IT support
                                                                Alexa revolution?
services, impact on existing services, and the                  There’s no denying that enterprises are more
number of support personnel required.                           global today than ever before, and the ‘future of
                                                                work’ as we often refer to it, is already a reality
#3 Enhance IT self-service: Self-service now
                                                                for many companies. Leveraging its vast
constitutes 21% of methods customers use to
                                                                language processing capabilities, Alexa for
contact the service desk7. Alexa’s voice interface
                                                                Business can elevate support services to
can significantly reduce the number of email and
                                                                transcend language and geographical barriers by
call tickets as users find voice support more
                                                                delivering real-time service to all end users,
convenient. Alexa can also be trained to close
                                                                regardless of their location. The best part is- VDA
email requests and tickets on a CRM system
                                                                scan constantly train themselves using a
without much human involvement. In IT
                                                                dynamic knowledge base to become smarter,
self-service portals, Alexa’s intelligent search
                                                                helping IT deliver a consistently superior user
capabilities can be leveraged to deliver more
                                                                experience while remaining compliant with
accurate search results by combining search
                                                                changing industry regulations.
history, user intent, and context.
                                                                It’s clear that the combined power of voice
#4 Enable a superior customer experience:
                                                                technologies and IoT-enabled smart devices is
Customer experience is becoming the #1
                                                                poised to breathe new life into the IT service
indicator of service desk success8 as service
                                                                world. The question is: how ready are
level agreements (SLAs) are giving way to
                                                                organizations to take advantage of this trend?
experience level agreements (XLAs). Alexa for
Business is equipped to measure user

    References
    1
     AWS News Blog, Announcing Alexa for Business, 30 Nov 2017 (accessed Mar 2018), https://aws.amazon.com/-
    blogs/aws/launch-announcing-alexa-for-business-using-amazon-alexas-voice-enabled-devices-for-workplaces/
    2
     ResearchandMarkets, Mar 2017 (accessed Mar 2018), https://globenewswire.com/news-re-
    lease/2017/03/15/938033/0/en/15-8-Billion-Virtual-Digital-Assistants-Market-2021-Focus-on-Intelligence-Natura
    l-Language-Processing-and-Conversational-User-Interfaces.html
    3
     Barclay Rae, The Service Desk 2017 & Beyond (accessed Mar 2018), http://www.barclayrae.com/wp-content/up-
    loads/2012/02/BRC-White-Paper-2017-Beyond.pdf
    4
     Forrester, 2018 Customer Service Trends: How Operations Become Faster, Cheaper – And Yet, More Human (Jan
    2018), accessed Mar 2018, https://www.forrester.com/report/2018+Customer+Ser-
    vice+Trends+How+Operations+Become+Faster+Cheaper+And+Yet+More+Human/-/E-RES142291
    5
     SDI Benchmarking Report 2017 (Accessed Mar 2018), https://www.servicedeskinstitute.com/insight-re-
    source/benchmark-report/
    Gartner, When Will AI Support Agents Replace Your IT Service Desk? , Chris Matchett et al, 24 Apr 2017 (accessed
    6

    Mar 2018), https://www.gartner.com/doc/3689417/ai-virtual-support-agents-replace
    7
     SDI Benchmarking Report 2017 (Accessed Mar 2018), https://www.servicedeskinstitute.com/insight-re-
    source/benchmark-report/
    8
     SDI Benchmarking Report 2017 (Accessed Mar 2018), https://www.servicedeskinstitute.com/insight-re-
    source/benchmark-report/

4
About the author

Milind Halapeth,
Vice President of Global Infrastructure
Services and Global Head of Cloud Practice,
Wipro Limited.

He has more than 20 years of experience in the IT
industry and has represented Wipro in leading
industry conferences and events on data center
strategy and emerging technologies.

                                                    5
Wipro Limited
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Tel: +91 (80) 2844 0011
Fax: +91 (80) 2844 0256
wipro.com

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       IND/BRD/MAY 2018-APR 2019
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