What do the ServiceNow Virtual Agent and Cobra Kai have in common?

dangrady510 · ‎09-23-2020

As a kid growing up in the 80s, I was of course a huge fan of "The Karate Kid" trilogy. I blame the arthritis in my right knee partially on the number of crane kicks I performed on imaginary Cobra Kai back in the day. So of course when I first heard they were making a TV series set 34 years after the original - in which Johnny Lawrence would be reopening the Cobra Kai Dojo and reestablishing the rivalry with Daniel LaRusso - I was beyond excited.

The first two seasons of the show released in 2018 and 2019 on YouTube Red. But, as big a fan as I was of "The Karate Kid", I hadn't watched a single episode until a few weeks ago when I saw it was trending on Netflix. Of course, I binged watched both seasons in a matter of a weekend(loved it) and am now anxiously awaiting the 3rd. An it seems I'm not the only one. "Cobra Kai" is about to set a Netflix record for number of consecutive days as one of the top 3 most popular shows on Netflix(25 days).

Why am I telling you this story? And what does it have to do with the Virtual Agent.

Two things.

Location, Location, Location

First, it speaks to the old adage of "Location, Location, Location" - that success from a business standpoint is heavily depending on operating the business from the right location.

This applies to service delivery as well.

ServiceNow customers use Virtual Agent to allow both employees and their customers to hand common requests or tasks on their own. Things like FAQs and How To's, check the status of a ticket, resetting a password, or requesting new software/hardware. Being able to support these repetitive actions in an automated fashion frees human agents to work on more complex issues - and the accelerated resolution times increase productivity for the entire organization.

To maximize the adoption of Virtual Agent and effectively scale, you'll want to make it available in channels that customers/employees are using most frequently. Essentially meeting your employees where they are and providing engaging experiences.

For example, the dramatic shift to remote work has significantly increased Microsoft Teams usage at organizations. As of April 29th, Microsoft Teams is reporting 75 million daily active users (see the link to the press release below).

Using a pre-built integration with MS Teams you are able to expose the Virtual Agent (and ServiceNow workflows) to those employees in the flow of their day to day lives, extending the reach of the ServiceNow platform to people don't normally log in to ServiceNow and increasing the value of the service assets you've stood up on the Now Platform.

One of our customers, Western Governors University, shared a story at our Knowledge20 conference in which they were struggling to get their developers to update Problem records. When they deployed a Virtual Agent conversation that allowed the developers to update the Problem notes directly from MS Teams, a channel they were using constantly, they saw a considerable increase in the volume and the quality of Problem notes there were receiving. This is a direct result of meeting users where hey are most comfortable and making it easy to get their job done.

ServiceNow and Microsoft just announced an expansion to our partnership to continue to deliver elevated experiences that meet employees where they are.

Virtual Agent also has pre-built integrations with Facebook Workplace, Facebook Messenger, Slack and of course is available via the ServiceNow mobile application on both iOS and Android.

As of the Paris release, Virtual Agent also offers an API to allow customers to extend to their channels of choice beyond anything ServiceNow offers out of the box.

Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy.

The second tie between Virtual Agent and "Cobra Kai" has to do with the Dojo's motto of "Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy."

Specifically, the "strike first" portion.

Virtual Agent can be used to provide personalized experiences and proactive notifications to customers and employees, prompting them to take specific actions before a human agent needs to get involved.

For example, we can use Virtual Agents to notify someone that their password will be expiring in a few days and then right within that conversation step them through the process of resetting their password. Or maybe let an employee know that their laptop or mobile device is due for an upgrade/refresh in a couple of weeks and allow them to start the process of requesting a new device.

Virtual Agent can greet users with information about tickets that they currently have open or notify them when a ticket has been updated - to start deflecting the very common checking the status of existing tickets ask that service desk agents are often bogged down by.

In these scenarios, by using Virtual Agent to strike first, you are actually showing mercy to your service desk agents and allowing them to become more productive(see what I did there?).

Final wisdom from Mr. Miyagi

A post about "The Karate Kid" should include some reference to "wax on, wax off", "sand the floor", "paint the fence", or "sweep the leg". Alas, I couldn't think of a way to related them to Virtual Agent.

But I will close on this classic lesson from Mr. Miyagi because I think it applies to deploying Virtual Agents in an organization.

"First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature rule Daniel-San, not mine." - Mr. Miyagi

When thinking about deploying Virtual Agent in your organization, start small with maybe 5 impactful conversations(services) that Virtual Agent can assist with and then make the Virtual Agent available in your most used channels. Grow from there.

Before you know it, Virtual Agent will be doing crane kicks on its own and will be helping your organization set new "bad ass" service delivery performance records.

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What do the ServiceNow Virtual Agent and Cobra Kai have in common?