How GenAI Improves Enterprise Service Management

The IT service management (ITSM) trends of artificial intelligence (AI) and enterprise service management are often treated as separate opportunities. However, AI – and generative AI (GenAI) in particular – offers enhanced service delivery and support capabilities that will elevate corporate use of the improved ITSM capabilities by other business functions, such as facilities, human resources (HR), finance, and legal. 

GenAI capabilities are already enhancing efficiency, productivity, and the employee experience for IT organizations. Early 2024 data from ITSM tools showed that one-third of IT organizations were already using AI-enabled capabilities, and a more significant two-thirds of ITSM employees had tried using non-corporate AI tools for work. 

This blog explains how the GenAI capabilities for ITSM easily extend to other business functions through enterprise service management and how they help.

This blog explains how the #GenAI capabilities for #ITSM easily extend to other business functions through enterprise service management and how they help. Share on X

Enterprise service management as a conduit for GenAI

Your company’s business functions such as HR, facilities, finance, and legal likely already have plans, pilots, or live implementations of GenAI capabilities. These will be part of the software they currently use or potentially bespoke applications aligned with business-specific needs. 

They might have also planned to benefit, or are already benefiting, from a corporate enterprise service management strategy. This is where the corporate ITSM capabilities are extended to other business functions to improve their operations, services, experiences, and outcomes. The SysAid 2024 Mega-Trends report found that 38% of organizations have already bought into the benefits of enterprise service management, with another 30% undecided.

Given the growing adoption of GenAI within IT, the ITSM operations that leverage GenAI are also potentially enterprise service management capabilities that leverage GenAI. Where natural language understanding, contextual awareness, and automated content generation are employed to streamline service delivery, automate repetitive tasks, and provide proactive insights. 

Examples of these enhanced service management and workflow automation capabilities follow.

This blog shares some of the opportunities for #GenAI to improve your organization’s enterprise service management capabilities across business functions. #ITSM #ServiceDesk Share on X

Better experiences and outcomes with GenAI-powered virtual assistants

There are two key GenAI-powered capabilities here, and the terminology used might differ across organizations:

1. Virtual agents for employees
2. Virtual assistants for service and support staff.

These GenAI capabilities might also be called chatbots or Copilots.

GenAI-powered virtual agents or chatbots can transform how your employees interact with services, no matter the business function. They provide intuitive, human-like interactions to employees seeking help by engaging in conversations that assist them in gaining access to information or resolving issues more effectively. A key differentiator from traditional chatbots is that GenAI chatbots or virtual agents understand the context and intent behind employee queries, enabling more accurate and relevant responses. This means an employee could request help from multiple business functions using a single virtual assistant engagement, perhaps requesting leave or finding relevant facilities policies within a single conversation. GenAI also automates common service and support tasks, such as ticket creation, status updates, and issue resolution. 

GenAI virtual assistants make getting ticket-related information easier for your service and support staff. This could be information on an employee’s sick record for an HR support agent. Or the history of an office’s temperature-related inquiries for a facilities support agent. The GenAI can also suggest solutions. For example, checking that the office windows are closed when an employee reports that the air con isn’t hitting the desired office temperature.

GenAI virtual assistants can also help with workload distribution across your organization’s business functions, suggesting the next ticket for an agent based on knowledge of their skills and experience and the current ticket queue. 

Many people are aware that #GenAI capabilities can aid knowledge management. But did you know they can help on the problem management side of things as well? Here @Joe_the_IT_Guy takes a look. #servicedesk #ITSM Share on X

Proactive repeat issue identification and resolution to address root causes

GenAI’s predictive and analytical capabilities allow your organization’s business functions to identify and resolve issues proactively. It makes the extension of ITSM’s problem management capabilities to other business functions easier:

• By analyzing historical data, GenAI can identify patterns and anomalies that indicate potential business function service provision issues before they escalate. For example, your facilities team can be automatically alerted to and address employee security card problems based on an influx of related virtual agent conversations or tickets.
• GenAI accelerates root-cause analysis by correlating ticket data, identifying patterns, and suggesting probable causes for problems. 

Automated knowledge management for speedier and better outcomes

GenAI improves business function knowledge management capabilities, helping to ensure your support staff have access to the most relevant and up-to-date information by creating and maintaining knowledge articles. Here, GenAI can draft new knowledge articles, FAQs, and documentation based on ticket data, reducing the related human workload. It can also summarize complex technical documents into concise articles written in “layman’s terms,” making it easier for employees to find the solutions they need quickly.

However, GenAI-powered knowledge creation is only part of the opportunity. It also helps with knowledge-gap identification, automatically identifying gaps in business function knowledge bases based on employee inquiries. Plus, knowledge retrieval is improved thanks to contextual knowledge search, rather than relying on keywords, providing your employees with the most relevant knowledge articles.

'GenAI-powered knowledge creation is only part of the opportunity' says @Joe_the_IT_Guy. There's far more than GenAI capabilities has to offer to improve your knowledge management function. See here. #servicedesk #ITSM Share on X

Automated content creation to reduce low-value admin

GenAI-based content creation capabilities are wide-ranging. For example, they can summarize ticket data or generate content for employee or broader communications. This content could be a chat or email request for more information, ticket closure correspondence that outlines what’s been done and what to do if the issue arises again, or a broadcast message such as a statement that the restrooms on Floor 6 are out of action until tomorrow.

In the latter example, the facilities agent simply requests that the GenAI creates a suitable communication that includes helpful details such as where the alternative restrooms are, who to contact with issues, etc. The GenAI formulates its response by reusing existing content in the context of the communication need.

Another example is your legal team using GenAI to quickly retrieve and summarize relevant regulations, legal precedents, and case law. This aids highly paid legal staff in preparing for cases or drafting advisory documents.

Intelligent workflow automation for greater efficiency and accuracy

Intelligent ticket processing is a popular GenAI-powered ITSM capability. This can be extended to other business functions, with GenAI automatically triaging and routing incoming employee requests based on historical data. But this is just “the tip of the intelligent workflow automation iceberg.”

Automating business function processes can be as simple or as complex as needed. For example, your HR team can streamline employee onboarding workflows that span multiple departments. Where the GenAI automates and orchestrates the processes across different teams, creating and assigning tasks, tracking progress, and ensuring timely and effective onboarding. Or, before onboarding, your HR team can use GenAI for recruitment, with the technology undertaking tasks such as screening resumes, interview scheduling, and fielding candidate queries, leaving HR staff free for other work. 

Intelligent ticket processing is a popular GenAI-powered #ITSM capability, but did you know it works beautifully in the HR department too? #GenAI Share on X

Another business function example is sales teams using GenAI-powered workflow automation to qualify leads – with it interacting with potential customers to gather information and assess their buying readiness. 

Enhanced decision support for better outcomes

GenAI’s predictive analytics capabilities allow your business function staff to forecast future trends for better resource planning and allocation. The GenAI can also simulate different service-change scenarios and predict the impact on service performance and employee satisfaction. 

Business functions can also benefit from automated performance reporting, where GenAI provides regular leadership and staff updates. It analyzes key metrics, such as response and resolution times, ticket volumes, and employee satisfaction scores, to identify trends and areas for improvement. It can even provide recommendations for optimizing business function processes or reallocating resources.

This blog shares some of the opportunities for GenAI to improve your organization’s enterprise service management capabilities across business functions. Are you using GenAI in your business? Let me know in the comments!