Democratizing the Chatbot: the Fastest Path to Value

[dangrady510]

Over the last few years there has been a lot of hype around chatbot technology and the value they can bring in terms of scaling services, reducing costs, improved experiences, and increasing productivity.  But unfortunately not everyone gets the results they envisioned when they embarked on their journey.  There could be any number of reasons for this, but the one I want to focus on with this post is the ease with which experiences can be delivered and adjusted to meet the needs of an organization.  

Almost every conversation about how to get started when deploying virtual agents centers on how important it is to engage subject matter experts to identify the use cases that will have the biggest impact.  In most deployment models, once these use cases and requirements are gathered they'd be passed along to a development team and eventually rolled out to the organization.

But the reality is that chatbots require some care and feeding, tweaks and adjustments based on a consistent stream of usage data and user feedback.

The inability to extend the design and development of the experience to the business itself to make necessary adjustments or adapt to unexpected scenarios that are commonplace in fast-paced organizations has crippled the success of many chatbot initiatives.  

But what if we could extend the design and authoring capabilities out to the SMEs in different business units within the organization?  What if we could give each of them the ability to augment their teams with a virtual agent to address teh most common questions and tasks that are unique to their areas without always being dependent on someone else to make it a reality?

That's exactly what we are able to do with the ServiceNow Virtual Agent.  This short video will walk you through authoring a quick conversation that will allow someone to create a service ticket.  No need for development experience - all you need to bring to the table is an understanding of your workflow requirements and the experience you want your customers or employees to have.

I like to use this example because it highlights a key value add that the in-platform virtual agent offers.  The ability to seamlessly interact with data on the Now Platform.

As organizations mature their chatbot deployments, they start to recognize the importance of domain-specific data.  The more data we have access to that can augment or enrich the conversation, the more context the virtual agent has - this results in fewer questions asked of the end user and a better, more streamlined experience.

This seamless ability to interact with the Now Platform also allows the Virtual Agent to do more then just answer basic questions.  It can automate a task of some sort - the creation of a ticket, looking up the status of that ticket, kicking off a workflow or orchestration to automate the fulfillment of a request(resetting a password or ordering a laptop, for example)  Putting the power to create these next level chatbot experiences in the hands of the business units themselves will accelerate the time to value - scaling services, reducing costs, improving experiences, and increasing productivity.

Other Virtual Agent Blog Posts:

How the Virtual Agent Can Help in Emergency Response Situations

NLU Makes the Virtual Agent the Road More Traveled 

Is "Chatbot" a misnomer?  Let's talk about what makes successful chatbot experiences

The Digital Ensemble That Creates Great Virtual Agent Experiences