04 Oct
5 Advanced Capabilities to look for in an IT Helpdesk Bot
The past year has witnessed the rapid adoption of IT helpdesk chatbots as remote work increased and companies received an influx of IT service requests. With employees trying to access different applications simultaneously and remotely, incidents and issues surged, ranging from simple ones like setting up VPN and authentication to complex troubleshooting.
IT helpdesk bots enable self-service by addressing simple, repetitive requests instantly. Being available 24X7, they can handle multiple requests at once at lower costs to the organization, allowing IT support agents to focus on other higher priority issues.
Since they were first launched, IT helpdesk bots have matured and now possess a host of powerful capabilities.
Let’s look at some of the advanced functionalities to look for in an IT Helpdesk bot.
Capabilities to look for in an IT Helpdesk Bot
1. One-stop solution for all your IT needs
The foremost purpose of an IT chatbot is to act as a virtual IT assistant, ensuring employees receive timely support on all their IT issues, whether it’s resetting passwords, updating software, resolving network outages, or creating and tracking IT tickets.
Common IT use cases in various areas include the following –
- Fulfillment of common IT requests
Login to the VPN, install hardware/software, reset passwords, renew software licenses.
Management of IT Assets
Submit requests for hardware/software, check approval status, return devices, report a stolen device, wipe or disable a stolen device.- Automate incident management
Unlock accounts, report network outages, create and escalate major incidents, assist in troubleshooting IT issues (For example, WiFi connectivity problems), provide real-time IT alerts and notifications.
- Answer network and configuration related FAQs
Configure connections with a network printer, tutorials on virus scanning and anti-virus software updates, troubleshooting guides based on various Windows versions, installing Microsoft 365, recovering deleted M365 accounts.
Learn More: Create Ticket/Incident Use Case
2. Understand the user’s intention
The IT bot must use powerful technologies, such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), and Machine Learning (ML), to understand the user’s intent and recommend suitable solutions.
Often, similar questions may confuse IT bots, and users may not receive the solutions they are looking for at the moment. In such a scenario, IT bots must reaffirm the user’s intention before providing answers.
3. Agent Handover capabilities
In certain scenarios, IT bots cannot handle employee queries, and the conversation may require a handover to a human agent. The issue may be complicated, or the employee may be anxious or frustrated. The IT bot must present the user with a “chat with an agent” option in such a case.
Capabilities that ensure a seamless handover include –
- Handing over chat transcripts such as details about context and sentiment analysis scores.
- Seamless integration with existing IT helpdesk software, including Service Now, JIRA, Service Desk Plus, etc., and live agent software, including Salesforce, LiveChat, etc.
- Translating queries for the human agents while escalating the chat in cases where multilingual support is provided.
- Agent observation, that is, agents merely supervise and monitor bot conversations instead of completely taking charge. In such cases, the IT bot privately takes agent authorization before recommending solutions to employees.
Learn More: Handover to Live Agent Use Case
4. Robotic Process Automation
Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to perform repetitive tasks like data entry, calculations, handling routine queries, etc.
The combination of RPA and IT helpdesk chatbots is powerful as it can solve significant operational and workflow-related issues for organizations. The automation abilities of RPA integrated with the cognitive capabilities of chatbots help IT teams automate processes end-to-end, perform transactions on the user’s behalf, and reduce costs.
The RPA-powered bot integrates with multiple disparate backend systems, retrieves information from such systems, and handles complex requests and queries at scale.
When the IT bot receives a request, it will ask a few questions to confirm the user’s intention and trigger the RPA bot to perform specific tasks without routing them to an agent.
5. Additional advanced capabilities
Other advanced capabilities you should look out for in your IT Helpdesk bot include –
- Multilingual support
Even though English is one of the most popular languages globally, merely 7.5% of the world’s population are native speakers of the language. Organizations need to provide IT assistance to their employees in the language of their choice so that they feel included and supported. An IT bot must possess multilingual capabilities and answer employee queries in multiple languages, including German, Italian, Spanish, French, etc.
- Search beyond the internal knowledge base
When needed, the IT bot must be capable of fetching relevant information from the internet when the answer to the employee’s query isn’t available in the company’s knowledge database.
- Ability to create or update bot responses
The IT chatbot’s admin portal must allow users to add FAQs, create conversational flows, and modify bot responses whenever needed.
- Take chat backup
Another interesting capability to look out for is the bot’s capability to take backups of employee chatbots and share them via email when requested.
How can Acuvate help?
At Acuvate, we help clients deploy IT Helpdesk bots with our enterprise bot-building platform called BotCore.
Key capabilities of our BotCore include –
- An intuitive, low-code, graphical interface that allows the quick implementation of AI chatbots
- Seamless integration with existing ITSM systems (ServiceNow, ServiceDesk Plus, JIRA, etc.) and AI services.
- Our chatbots can be designed to simulate highly complex employee conversations.
- As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we leverage the best of Microsoft’s AI, machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP) technologies.
- Our bots are deployable on almost all popular enterprise messaging channels and support multiple languages, including English, German, French, Italian, etc.
- Users can create/update responses using rich media such as Buttons, Carousel, Images, Videos, etc., by dragging and dropping the required elements.
- If the bot does not completely comprehend the user’s query, it will surface the top seven Bing search results.
To know more about our IT Helpdesk bots, click here, or please feel free to schedule a personalized consultation with our experts.
Abhishek is the AI & Automation Practice Head at Acuvate and brings with him 17+ years of strong expertise across the Microsoft stack. He has consulted with clients globally to provide solutions on technologies such as Cognitive Services, Azure, RPA, SharePoint & Office 365. He has worked with clients across multiple industry domains including Retail & FMCG, Government, BFSI, Manufacturing and Telecom.
Abhishek Shanbhag