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
2Next-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
3and 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/
4About 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.
5Wipro Limited
Doddakannelli, Sarjapur Road,
Bangalore-560 035, India
Tel: +91 (80) 2844 0011
Fax: +91 (80) 2844 0256
wipro.com
Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT,
BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is
a leading global information
technology, consulting and
business process services
company. We harness the
power of cognitive computing,
hyper-automation, robotics,
cloud, analytics and emerging
technologies to help our
clients adapt to the digital
world and make them
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recognized globally for its
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For more information,
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