How ServiceNow helps IT teams to improve their service operations

In every organization, the IT team wants to provide the best employee experience (EX). To do this, they need to automate and optimize their operational processes to reduce resolution time and, ultimately, be more proactive.

However, a major challenge is the proliferation of data across siloed environments. An organization may have employee data on Workday, payroll information on SAP, sales data on Salesforce, finance data on an on-premises enterprise resource planning system, and a range of IT service management data.

In such a diverse environment, maintenance and support can quickly become time-consuming and expensive. The lack of global visibility makes it hard for IT teams to anticipate and resolve issues speedily. Employees may be left feeling frustrated, and unresolved problems that affect productivity or customer satisfaction will affect revenue.

But, by bringing all of this data together in one place, IT teams gain the context they need to make data-driven decisions and deliver better and faster services.

The ServiceNow platform presents an efficient solution, combining ServiceNow IT Service Management, ServiceNow IT Operations Management, ServiceNow DevOps and ServiceNow IntegrationHub to give IT teams access to shared data from services, operations and development:

• A central dashboard tracks performance to help the IT team continually improve services and optimize their performance.
• AI-assisted recommendations and AI-powered virtual agents deflect tickets and reduce call volume.

How AI-enabled virtual agents make a difference

It becomes easier for employees to resolve their own issues, from password resets to software updates, or obtain IT-related information at any time of the day. They interact with an AI-enabled chatbot using natural language without having to open a ticket or speak to a live agent, which reduces wait times and increases employee satisfaction.

Meanwhile, IT service-desk staff receive an AI-generated summary of all user interactions for specific issues, along with resolution recommendations based on similar issues that were resolved in the past. These recommendations speed up resolution times and free up service-desk agents to focus on more strategic priorities.

Next, the IT services and operations team can use predictive AIOps to identify patterns and resolve potential high-impact issues before they can cause serious problems. Automated remediation and root-cause analysis provide swift and detailed insights, which means team members no longer need to be trained to resolve every known issue from scratch.

• ALSO READ → How AI, analytics and cloud can elevate customer experience

Time and money saved

Because AI can ease the burden of a high volume of routine or trivial support requests, valuable time and IT resources can be applied to more rewarding and higher-value projects. 

Take user requests for desktop and mobile software applications as an example – a common source of irritation for employees who might not know how to file a request or end up frustrated by a slow response.

Traditionally, the user would contact the service desk. A level-one agent would then be assigned to the request – and, depending on the nature of the request or the type of access needed to resolve it, a level-two agent might become involved too. The agent would then need approval from the user’s manager to proceed before completing the task and closing the ticket.

This sequence of events could easily take five days or more, leaving the user feeling angry and neglected.

However, with ServiceNow workflow automation, users can resolve their software application requests directly through a service portal or virtual agent.

The workflow kicks off with getting approval from the user’s manager. Then, ServiceNow automatically checks software license allocations, notifies the user of a scheduled software installation and deploys the software. It’s a much-simplified scenario that can be resolved in as little as five minutes – all without the involvement of the IT team.

This level of cost-effective automation and innovation streamlines your IT processes and optimizes service delivery to your users. In turn, satisfied employees are likely to provide better customer service, raising your levels of EX and customer experience at the same time.

• ALSO READ → Great CX is accelerated by the EX factor (plus AI and the cloud)