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Espressive Named a “Hot Vendor” by HFS Research

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Espressive Barista Recognized for its Consumer-Like Approach to Employee Self-Service that Drives Adoption and Reduces Help Desk Call Volume

SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 10, 2019 Espressive, the pioneer in AI for enterprise service management (ESM), today announced that the analyst firm HFS Research has named Espressive a 2019 Q2 “Hot Vendor.” According to the report written by Ollie O’Donoghue, the HFS Hot Vendors are “an exclusive group of emerging players with a differentiated value proposition for the Digital OneOffice.” Hot Vendors are selected by HFS analysts based on the following characteristics: distinctiveness, ecosystem robustness, client impact, financial position, and the impact in HFS’ OneOffice Framework. The selected emerging players and startups in the Hot Vendor report were chosen due to their visions and strategies to impact and disrupt the market.

“Chatbots and AI-powered solutions have been at the top of the service management hype lexicon for what feels like decades,” the report states. “And yet poorly designed solutions just haven’t hit the mark with end users – either because they’re unintuitive or simply don’t get busy employees the services and solutions they need” Espressive took on this challenge, the report continues, “by developing a virtual support agent, Barista, that is set to transform the enterprise self-service experience from traditional ITSM solutions to a consumer-like approach that drives employee adoption and significantly reduces help desk calls.”

The full report can be downloaded here.

“We were founded on the belief that getting help at work shouldn’t be so hard. While others have focused on solving the problems faced by help desk agents, we shifted the focus to the employee because you can’t have self-service if employees are not engaged—and that focus has made all the difference,” said Pat Calhoun, CEO and founder at Espressive. “We are honored to be named an HFS Research Hot Vendor.”

Espressive created Barista, an AI-based virtual service agent (VSA), to make employee self-service easy. Barista understands over 500 million employee phrases across 4 thousand topics covering multiple enterprise departments. The company’s VSA brings the ease of consumer virtual assistants, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, into the workplace. Barista automates resolution of employee questions, issues, and requests with personalized experiences. As a result, Espressive customers report employee adoption of 80 to 85% compared to the industry’s 10%, with reduced help desk call volume of 40 to 60%.

“Barista is much more than your typical FAQ-powered chatbot that enterprise leaders have been bombarded with over the last few years,” said Ollie O’Donoghue, vice president, Research at HFS Research. “At HFS Research, we commonly see that end-users simply don’t have the time or appetite to be led around in circles by ineffective chatbots. Espressive has impressively designed a solution that employees actually want to use. This is especially important for IT and business service teams to consider as employee expectations for immediacy at work begins to match demands we see in the consumer space.”

Barista is smart out of the box, making the VSA fast and easy to deploy without the need for expensive and rare AI talent. The VSA can also be easily integrated into tools such as ServiceNow. Espressive also recently announced its achievement as an Advanced Technology Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN). Espressive leverages the power of AWS to deliver Barista as a cloud-based SaaS service with the speed and resiliency of a consumer-based app to meet the challenging demands of the modern enterprise customer.

About Espressive

Espressive, the pioneer in automating digital workplace assistance, and a 2022 Forrester New Wave Leader, redefines how employees get help by delivering exceptional employee experiences. Barista, the company’s virtual support agent (VSA), brings the ease of consumer virtual assistants, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, into the workplace. Barista automates resolution of employee questions, issues, and requests with personalized experiences that result in employee adoption of 80 to 85% and reduced help desk call volume of 50% to 70%. Espressive is backed by Insight Partners, General Catalyst, and Wing Venture Capital, and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Visit www.espressive.com for more information.

Media Contact

Pam Njissang
Bhava Communications for Espressive
espressive@bhavacom.com