The rise of Virtual Agent: Where technology meets human

The past few years have opened paths and ways for owning and developing new digital capabilities. These capabilities are the new currency driving growth and resilience. Digital workflows are the new way to get business done. Virtual Agent capability is a platform that works with ServiceNow Digital Workflow to boost productivity and employee satisfaction.

Virtual Agent has meta-morphed from a conventional bot application to a seamless, end-to-end conversational experience for employees and customers. Instead of responding with static information like most chatbots, it offers a tailored experience to provide them with a personalized experience with each conversation.

From a user perspective, customers now do not appreciate waiting for an agent to connect to them or listening to a monotonous voice on the phone asking press one for this, press two for that. Customers now require their queries to be answered immediately instead of waiting for a guided response. With the shift towards hybrid work, employees need to be able to get help from anywhere, at any time. AI-powered chatbot technology uses natural language understanding to address common queries and service requests.

Virtual Agent connects to where your teams are already working in your browser, in the Now Mobile apps, and in collaboration tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Workplace by Facebook. In short, VA enables users to ask questions on the channel of their choice and receive immediate responses without having to wait for a live agent.

How is Virtual Agent Creating Value?

Virtual Agents are all about driving improved user experience with your system.

 No-code and low-code workflows, straight-to-implement OOB conversations, and numerous other features are at dispense to enhance the user experience. Below are some of the ways Virtual Agent creates Value.

• Issue auto resolution – Identify user intentions in submitted issues and proactively initiate a conversation for resolution.
• Conversational analytics – These real-time analytics allow the Department to make informed decisions and identify ways to improve the overall user experience.
• Topic recommendations – Uses machine learning to identify critical topics and then add suggested conversations with one click.                                                                           

Why does your business need Virtual Need?

The Senior leadership will have its own set of questions regarding the benefits of Virtual Agent. The main goal of having chatbots and virtual agents is resolving problems without the need for human intervention. Let us explore its benefits for various Stakeholders :

For Employees

• Meet employees where they are, with the convenience to collaborate and get help directly.
• Employees are no longer constrained to collaborating or getting help within the confines of 9 to 5 office hours. 

For Agents

• Increase agent speed and efficiency to resolve issues with embedded workflows 
• The result is faster issue resolution, better communication, and increased agent efficiency, Time saved can be spent on more important activities.

Across Enterprise

• Increase employee satisfaction with enterprise-wide workflows.
• With the power of an always-on Virtual Agent, organizations can deflect common service requests.

Quick Fact Check

Some quick facts to highlight how ServiceNow Virtual agent implementations are successful

• Levis: Deflection rate over 50%, SLAs at the service desk turned green. CSAT 100 %.
• Corteva:50% Reduction in voice tickets
• ASML: 80% User satisfaction rate
• Novant Health: 62,000 more hours for clinicians to spend on patient care. 50% reduction in service desk workload.

How can Alcor help?

With the increased demand for Virtual Agent or Chatbots in the global market, here is how Alcor can help you achieve the defined business outcomes.

Instead of jumping into straight implementations, we try to fit ourselves in your shoes, to understand your business needs and operational model, which help us identify where to start.

Our Implementation Strategy: 

    Start small, stay near OOB

We have a team of Business consultants and developers who have strong implementation experience on Virtual Agent. The team advises organizations to start with OOB prebuilt conversational flows which cover most business-critical use cases. We have a dedicated tea that has expertise in reporting. They advise the use of ServiceNow Performance analytics and conversational analytics to analyse the Data and find the pattern of high-volume cases or to measure the usage and success of your Virtual Agent.

This helps with initial implementations as well as the to track success and utility later. Our goal at Alcor is to ensure your Virtual Agent implementation achieves the desired outcomes and garners elevated levels of user adoption.

Conclusion

Building up a virtual agent/chatbot helps an organization reach its enterprise goals – whether it is higher deflection rates, Improved resolution times, or Increased employee productivity. In turn, Virtual Agent can drive conversation to resolution with a great user experience. Best of all, you can get up and running with Virtual Agent in just a few weeks—it delivers immediate value out-of-the-box, and you do not need any unique skills. In other words, it is a win for you and your customers.

References:

https://diginomica.com/levis-virtual-agent-finds-success-integrating-servicenow-and-microsoft-teams

Virtual Agent – Chatbot – ServiceNow

Novant Health – Customer Stories – ServiceNow

Corteva – ServiceNow – Customer Story

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/rome-now-intelligence/page/administer/virtual-agent/concept/virtual-agent-landing-page.html