A new survey conducted by IDG and commissioned by Freshworks finds, AI becomes mainstream in delivering delightful IT service management.
Freshworks Inc., a leading software firm that helps companies delight their customers and workers, has released the findings of a recent survey conducted by IDG on the condition of IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Operations Management (ITOM). Overall, the survey revealed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has entered the mainstream, with 93 percent of firms exploring or using AI in ITSM.
“The data proves what Freshworks has been seeing with our customers for years — they expect AI to be deeply integrated within the ITSM tools instead of it being an add-on that requires additional effort to delight their employees,” said Prakash Ramamurthy, Chief Product Officer at Freshworks. “As evident from the survey, users of AI want greater automation, reduced complexity, and a simplified approach with modern IT tools that delight businesses of all sizes. AI is no longer a futuristic concept, it’s a must-have.”
Top Key Findings:
AI is seen as an ITSM/ITOM game changer. AI technologies are rapidly emerging as a way to delight customers and employees and not just a chat tool.
1. Almost all IT managers (93%) are now researching or using AI technology for ITSM/ITOM modernization, with 61 percent deploying at some level and 32 percent exploring options.
2. For improving and modernizing their service desk capabilities, nearly 70% of IT managers feel that AI is either critical or very important..
3. Among six representative AI use cases, ITSM chatbots are the clear leader in planned or actual AI deployments. On the flip side, a significant percentage of the respondents indicated that they have no plans to deploy these AI-powered capabilities.
4. Despite the expected and achieved benefits, survey respondents cited what they wanted to gain from implementing AI.
The following four topped the list:
- Speed of implementation (40%)
- Integration with legacy systems (40%)
- The overall cost of implementation (38%)
Training the AI bots solution to return the most accurate response (39%)
5. The survey explored a key metric associated with today’s demanding IT environment: the number of IT service inquiries received by the IT support desk each day. That number ranged from an average of 44 inquiries per day for small companies to 725 per day for large organizations.
6. A large majority of the survey respondents indicated that any AI solutions for ITSM/ITOM should be intuitive, scalable, collaborative, and easy to deploy. For example, 82% mostly or completely agreed with the statement: “We need a fast, pre-trained, easy-to-deploy AI solution to meet our needs.” Also, 85% mostly or completely agreed that “the more intuitive an AI application, the more likely it will be accepted and deployed.”
Freshworks’ Freshservice contains automation and collaboration functionality that enhance user productivity, augment human engagement by automating processes to address and answer employee IT service requests. Self-service and AI-powered chatbots also help reduce the overall volume of customer service tickets.
Freshservice uses AI to create a prediction model based on previous tickets in a service desk and uses the model to predict field values such as category, group, type, etc. for every incoming ticket. This saves 35% of agents’ time allowing them to focus on other more high-level tasks.
In May 2021 IDG surveyed 850 senior and mid-level IT managers involved in these disciplines. Large organizations (5,000- plus employees) accounted for 34% of the survey base, midsize (1,000 to 4,999) for 42%, and small (250 to 999) for 23%. Collectively, the organizations are based in 14 countries and four regions: North America, UK/Europe, the Middle East/North Africa, and Asia/Pacific.