How to Implement a ServiceNow Virtual Agent
How Do We Improve Customer Self-Service?
Want to improve customer self-service and gain user adoption? First, we’ll explore ServiceNow’s Virtual Agent option in this blog post. Then, we will also cover the best practices for sourcing content to make the Virtual Agent bot a valuable tool for your customers.
What is a Virtual Agent?
First, what is a Virtual Agent (VA)? ServiceNow’s Virtual Agent is a user-friendly chatbot you can use on ServiceNow portals, websites, or messaging apps like Teams or Slack. Customers can use self-service to get the answers they need using natural conversation.
Virtual Agent Chat Benefits
Chat conversations are a low-cost per-transaction option that encourages call deflection. In addition, Virtual Agent comes with predefined topics for everyday customer needs (check ticket status, create incidents/cases).
Pre-built conversations are available for IT Service Management (ITSM), Customer Service Management (CSM), HR Services (HR), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), Project Portfolio Management (PPM), Field Service Management (FSM), and Instance Security Center (ISC).
Free Up Live Agents
By using Virtual Agents to answer frequent questions, your Live Agents can spend their time concentrating on the more complex queries. A good approach when implementing Virtual Agent is to start with the out-of-the-box topics and then add your business-specific frequently asked questions and topics.
Virtual Agent Designer
The VA Designer is where you create the topics. The interface has a visual flow to design the conversation. For example, the Virtual Agent topic consists of prompts or nodes to ask the customer questions and use that input to present information and the next logical troubleshooting step.
Successful deployments of Virtual Agent treat topic creation as an ongoing iterative process. Similar to a document repository or knowledge base, it will need new and updated topics to stay current and relevant.
Virtual Agent Topics
First, look at your top call drivers with clear resolution steps when deciding what topics to create. Then, as you design the conversation branches, think about the intended outcomes. Toward the end of the troubleshooting steps, if there has not been a resolution, give the customer an option to create a support case. Insert the steps or topic block to do this for the customer.
Live Agent Chat
Another option will be to hand off the conversation to a Live Agent Chat if you are using it. Using a live chat agent will result in a good customer experience. An excellent source for topics is to look at your existing knowledge base. Find the articles with the most views or that have high feedback ratings.
Suppose your agents are linking knowledge articles to incidents or cases. In that case, you can also analyze that data to identify what pieces they are using successfully to resolve customers’ questions and issues. Again, these would be good candidates for VA topics.
Dashboard Benefits
Another option for continuing topic curation is to use Performance Analytics. The conversation dashboard lets you see what your customers ask the Virtual Agent and what they cannot find in the content library. In addition, the dashboard feature will help you identify missing topics to create and add to the content library.
Natural Language Understanding (NLU) Prediction
You may also consider adding a Natural Language Understanding (NLU) model. NLU prediction helps connect a customer’s search terms to the intended content. When setting up, the NLU utterances (the customer’s phrases) are matched with an intent of what the customer wants to do. The Virtual Agent can then respond with the topics that best match the intent. If there are no matching topics to an intent, a fallback is used to display matching knowledge base articles.
How Do I Get Started?
Did you know that 90% of customers expect an online portal for customer service? Milestone ServiceNow experts can help you not just meet but exceed customer expectations. If you need help in your Virtual Agent journey, contact Milestone ServiceNow experts to get you off to the right start today!
