IT service operations teams and their leaders are in the middle of the busiest weeks of their careers right now. They're scrambling to help many first-time work-from-home employees get securely connected as ITSM systems bog down under the weight of workloads they weren't designed for. Incident queues are thousands of requests long in many companies, waiting for assignment. A quick Pareto Analysis of an Incident Management queue with trouble tickets shows that approximately 75% to 80% of the requests for service are from the top 20% of connectivity and security login issues all IT users face. Adopting an AI-based approach to Incident Deflection that seeks the best IT service resource starting with help files and videos and then progressing to an IT service agent would reduce the queue quickly.

The science of service centers has advanced with hold-time estimates, call-back options and voice-recognition technologies. Yet once the customer reaches an agent, odds are high that the agent will not be able to solve the problem in one go. Unsolved problems lead to more complaints, greater customer churn and wasted time of employees trying to calm upset customers. Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to substantially improve the experience. Early efforts are helping companies improve the overall customer experience, while reducing costs--in staff time, service escalations such as field technician visits, and defecting customers--in the bargain.