Reduction in help desk costs
First week ticket deflection
Help desk phone support
Background
This long-standing energy company provides electric and natural gas services to their customers. They play a key role in supporting their state’s economy and the quality of life of its citizens.
Challenges
The company had an outsourced help desk that employees were satisfied with, but the cost per call model was high and not sustainable. Because of this, they had a plan to transitional IT help desk interactions to self-service over time. The transitional plan was upended, however, when the company made the decision to insource IT support immediately.
Solution
Rather than hiring in-house help desk agents, IT decided to completely eliminate their staffed help desk and rely on Espressive Barista, an AI-based virtual support agent, integrated with ServiceNow.
Results
By shutting down their outsourced help desk and launching Barista, the company saw an immediate return on investment with a 75% reduction in help desk costs. In the first week, Barista was able to deflect 62% of tickets going to the help desk. And as adoption grew, they were able to eliminate their help desk phone support altogether.