Espressive in the News

Creating a startup is not for the faint of heart. In spite of that, I left ServiceNow in 2016 to found a startup focused on solving a problem I was passionate about delivering frictionless self-help for the enterprise. This passion was sparked when I started my career at the service desk. With all the advancements in AI and automation, I find it interesting that organizations are putting “people in seats” versus leveraging technology to solve problems. For me, creating my own startup was about betting on my passion, so I dropped everything to build technology to transform how employees get help.

Espressive, a pioneer in automating digital workplace assistance, announced that DXC Technology, a Fortune 500 global technology services provider, has expanded its adoption of the Espressive AI-based virtual support agent (VSA), beyond IT to include support for HR and supply chain use cases. Instead of managing a chatbot for every department, which is time- and cost-intensive, the Espressive VSA will be the primary source for answering IT, HR, and supply chain questions for employees.

Recently I began implementing a strategy to bring AI to my healthcare organization. The reason was simple; to find ways to improve the customer experience while reducing the burden on the IT teams that deliver the service. The approach I took was to deliver the most straightforward and shortest solution that gets technology out of the way of the clinical provider, enabling them to be better at their jobs. This starts with eliminating all complexity for the customer while opening multiple channels for support to meet them where they are.

The rise of hyperintelligent chatbots like ChatGPT has caused quite the uproar in organizations nationwide. As employees embrace new super-smart tools to help them accomplish work tasks, employers are uneasy about potentially sharing company information with the artificial intelligence. New findings from career insights platform Fishbowl revealed that 43% of professional workers are using ChatGPT for work-related tasks. What's more, 68% of those employees are doing so without their manager's knowledge.

Espressive, a provider of automated digital workplace solutions, has unveiled new advancements for its no-code Integrated Designer. The new Integrated Designer tool is designed to integrate and communicate with multiple backend systems concurrently and in real-time, automating the resolution of complex business issues.

Leveraging Integration Designer, the new Service Quality Wizard instantaneously determines the health of over 2,000 SaaS applications, verifies the availability of on-premises applications, and identifies and resolves hardware and software issues before executing complex runbooks, streamlining the support process and improving employee productivity and satisfaction.

The unpredictable economic climate coupled with an ever evolving workplace is driving more organizations to make smart investments to uplevel IT teams while enabling efficiency and positive employee experiences, which is not an easy feat. Today's workforce expects the same digital self-help at work that they receive during their personal lives-a seamless, reliable experience that doesn't leave them with unanswered questions. However, outdated legacy systems are unable to deliver this experience. Enter: AI-based virtual agents.

As modernization becomes a top priority for organizations, many are turning to automation. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 70% of organizations will implement structured automation. Inflation and the looming possibility of a recession are driving an acceleration in automation to improve the efficiency of current teams. While beneficial for every enterprise’s renewed focus on cost containment and cost reduction, employees are impacted by the frequency of change and complexity resulting from this acceleration.

There’s a disconnect today between how employees want to consume content versus how they’re able to access it at work. Traditional approaches to knowledge management practices, no matter how robust, have failed because of their limited impact on an organization’s self-service initiative. As consumers, employees are accustomed to quickly finding answers through virtual assistants such as Alexa, Google Home, and Siri. Yet at work, employees looking for information face intranets, portals, and an endless number of knowledge articles spread across multiple sources.

Virtual agents will become the experience integration hub for employees. As conversational AI, ML, and NLP capabilities expand, virtual agents will be able to resolve more complex issues and meet employees where they are to become the experience integration hub. Looking ahead, virtual agents will continue to evolve from automating the resolution of tier 1 service desk agents (password resets, questions on PTO, etc.), to resolving much more complex issues that historically required higher skilled IT staff.

The future of work is upon us. The era of the hybrid workforce -- made up of employees who work remotely part time or only come into the office for scheduled group activities, while others work either in the office or remotely full time -- has arrived in full force. By the end of 2022, Gartner <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-06-22-gartner-forecasts-51-percent-of-global-knowledge-workers-will-be-remote-by-2021?_sp=20a0cef6-571f-42d9-8b4a-614698bd30ee">forecasts</a> the share of knowledge workers working remotely will increase to 47%, up from 27% in 2019.

Service desk call volume has long been an issue, and now the challenges are greater with the transformation to a hybrid workforce model.<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pulse-report-on-the-state-of-it-service-management-reveals-that-enterprises-are-prioritizing-artificial-intelligence-for-itsm-in-2019-300797720.html"> A Gatepoint Research</a> study from 2019 found that the number one ITSM initiative was reducing service desk call volume. Despite that, in 2022, the latest<a href="https://www.espressive.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/virtual-support-agent-strategies-one-minute-white-paper.pdf"> Gatepoint Research</a> report shows that 74% of in-office staff turn to phones for help, and 80% of off-site staff are also phoning the help desk, so not much has changed.