INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
ServiceNow announces new
bot technology to improve
customer experience
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work interactions simple, accessible and
natural for everyone.
Streamline IT, HR and customer
service requests with out-of-the-
box conversations
In its pre-built offerings, ServiceNow’s
Virtual Agent delivers common
service conversations:
CJ Desai, Chief
Product Officer,
ServiceNow
S
erviceNow has announced new
conversational bot technology dubbed
‘Virtual Agent’ designed to improve
customer and employee experiences by
getting work completed quickly through
more natural interactions and real-time
automated resolution.
Unlike other bots, ServiceNow’s Virtual
Agent can manage employee or customer
requests from start to finish, leveraging
ServiceNow’s Now Platform to resolve
conversational requests automatically, such
as resetting a password.
“Our Virtual Agent enables a powerful
conversation model built natively in the
Now Platform,” said CJ Desai, Chief
Product Officer, ServiceNow. “This enables
our customers to develop a wide range of
intelligent service conversations, from a quick
question to an entire business action through
the messaging platform of their choice.”
An intelligent Virtual Agent in action
ServiceNow’s Virtual Agent provides
personalised responses in context. For
example, when an employee asks for a
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new phone, the chat knows what cell phone
plan and carrier the employee already
has, speeding the task and creating a
personalised service experience.
Virtual Agent also enables companies to
respond faster with instant, interactive
conversations that can scale even during
peak periods. It frees up staff to do higher
value work. ServiceNow estimates that
15% to 20% of routine interactions can be
handled by Virtual Agent.
• IT: Improve employee experience with
common help desk requests such as
automating password resets, creating
an incident, processing approvals and
checking outages
• HR: Make it easier for employees to
get answers or submit requests such
as a leave of absence, research pay
discrepancies, check status and update
their profile
• Customer service: Increase customer
satisfaction and improve agent efficiency
when customers can create cases for
products or orders and check product
status through virtual agents
Design custom Virtual Agents easily
With self-service interactions, customers
and employees engage in familiar places
via Microsoft Teams, Slack or ServiceNow
chat clients. Virtual Agent gather inquiries,
requests and conversations within a
messaging format. It’s easy to instantly create basic service
conversations that resolve issues in large
volumes so agents can focus on their most
important work. Customers can design their
own virtual agent conversations with drag-and-
drop ease and little-to-no development time.
With the acquisition of Parlo, ServiceNow
intends to inject more natural language
understanding (NLU) into its virtual agents in
the next year. NLU addresses a challenging
area for AI: understanding the nuances of
human language. With Parlo, customers
using virtual agents will train their bots to
understand technical and jargon-laden
content, which is critical to make every day Organisations can easily plug in their
preferred messaging service. That includes
web, mobile and adapters for popular
messaging apps such as Microsoft Teams
and Slack that are delivered out-of-the-box
with the Now Platform.
Virtual Agent will be available in ServiceNow’s
next product release this year. n
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