Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is the latest IT service management (ITSM) and enterprise service management (ESM) trend to drive changes in service management improvement. It offers a wealth of opportunities for service management improvement across all three of “better, faster, cheaper.” Let’s examine GenAI’s impact on specific ITSM and ESM operations areas, as its applications are extensive. Here are some GenAI ITSM use case examples.
GenAI is the latest ITSM and ESM trend to drive changes in service management. This article offers GenAI ITSM examples to get you thinking. #GenAI #ITSM #ESM Share on XGenAI ITSM examples – Instant support, automation, and problem resolution
Organizations utilizing GenAI now have more options to ensure a 24/7 response for distributed teams across time zones, which has a massive impact on organizations where the service or support functions originate at a single location and overnight scheduling does not exist. The power of creating efficiency without waiting for first-tier answers is nothing new. Many organizations have applied effort over the last few years to build out 24/7 responses with scheduled practitioners.
However, here is where GenAI contributes to improving that support. It is powerful in analyzing incident data, identifying patterns, and recommending real-time solutions. Potentially, this GenAI ITSM example can reduce the time and effort required to diagnose and resolve IT issues, leading to faster restoration of services and improved end-user satisfaction.
Freeing humans from mundane tasks, such as ticket routing, data entry, and basic troubleshooting, shifts resource dollars toward the more complex, specialized, and strategic issues within service and support. Imagine advancing and transforming service through increased machine learning and predictive analytics adoption. Implementing intelligent automation practices will focus on making service efforts more predictive and proactive.
It has long been a service management goal to get in front of issues, empower end-users, and improve decision-making capabilities for ITSM and ESM operational teams. GenAI brings the potential for making this more manageable than it was in the past.
Looking for examples of how #GenAI can help #ITSM? From instant support, to automation, to problem resolution, this article has the examples you need. #servicedesk #AI Share on XWith the analysis of historical and current data patterns and trends, there will be more power to proactively identify and address underlying issues before they escalate into major incidents. Through tracking problems and patterns, the IT organization also leans into proactive problem management.
Organizations can take advantage of ongoing “shift left” efforts to move tasks, activities, and responsibilities to earlier touchpoints in the service delivery process by making critical investments in detecting potential issues early. This point is where the Tier 1 and Tier 2 jobs begin to disappear. There will be increased efforts to detect and address issues, defects, and service disruptions as early as possible for increased reliability.
GenAI for personalization and adaptive service management
GenAI’s capacity for natural language conversations is of incredible appeal to IT organizations wanting to optimize first-tier responses. GenAI can also collect and analyze vast amounts of data, which works well to solicit feedback on various services or experiences.
Imagine thoughtfully executed GenAI agent conversations that gather feedback to identify gaps and ongoing pattern recognition of problems from customer responses. Ask yourself how you might create VIP experiences for all customers based on their requests or needs while at the same time analyzing and comparing all past engagements with that customer. The possibility to link customers directly to product enhancement or improvement is endless.
The GenAI ITSM goal is to develop strategically designed and implemented solutions. Companies will benefit from GenAI capabilities that provide powerful feedback mechanisms for collecting information about an individual’s status, likes, and preferences and tapping into trends, patterns, and issues. Using open-ended questions, multiple-choice selections, or prompts will help the IT organization’s quest for continuous improvement and better experiences, taking personalization to a whole new level.
Service catalog, configuration management, decision support, & pattern analysis in IT management will all see dramatic improvements with increased automation and data analytics via #GenAI. Learn more here. #ITSM Share on XHow can this change the game? The service catalog, configuration management, decision support, and pattern analysis in IT management will see dramatic improvements with increased automation and data analytics. Furthermore, workflows, policies, and real-time feedback reinforce adjusting service levels dynamically if you get the data right!
The potential for service-based and product-based industries to personalize experiences for the customer and adapt them to their needs requires a clear understanding of workforce dynamics, good data, and customer insights. Sure, GenAI can make customer (internal and external) interactions more efficient, but stopping there and failing to leverage the personalization and adaptability capabilities means the company is not fully embracing the power of GenAI.
GenAI ITSM examples – Self-service, catalog management, and resource optimization
Ideally, we want customers to resolve common issues through more advanced self-service portals and chatbots. GenAI has the potential to assist as part of your intelligent user experience (UX) and interface design for these portals’ effectiveness. If you want customers to do it themselves, remember they will always refuse to use clunky or inefficient tools. More and more end-users are savvy, capable digital natives who expect instant answers, quick fixes, and self-directed resolution.
Vendors will increasingly embed better intuitiveness into their products to accommodate them; filtering through the ones that work best with your company is the challenge. Companies applying home-grown internal GenAI solutions will need to follow suit. The GenAI ITSM potential is a future with increased end-user satisfaction in areas where users find service answers quickly to get on with their day. The idea is to develop self-service capabilities that reduce standard and routine issue resolution times.
Self-service, catalog management, and resource optimization. Just three of the examples of how GenAI can help #ITSM in this article. #servicedesk Share on XOrganizations can benefit from automating the service catalog through dynamic updates, optimizing service offerings based on feedback mechanisms and support metrics, and continually updating knowledge management. A company’s commitment to the design will determine whether we see an increase in this over the next three years.
Still, today’s digital and fast-moving business landscape means the services must increasingly align with business needs and evolving requirements. Today, business change is the norm, and both internal and external forces make adaptability a significant requirement for most businesses.
Google layoffs earlier this year are “the canary in the coal mine,” indicating that businesses will begin evaluating areas where GenAI can replace people in efforts to reduce workforce costs. Optimizing resource allocation and utilization will hit human resources hard and eventually level out as the impacts are more widely understood.
We already see more considerable dollars allocated toward GenAI ITSM products, tools, and support, as we saw in early 2024, which kicked off the race for GenAI competitiveness. What I can imagine happening around year three is the fallout of stories highlighting “AI gone wrong” and more clarity around hype vs. reality, which will force organizations to understand where they must intervene in the system to avoid debacles with bias, diversity, ethics, and troublesome outputs.
I suggest we are in a phase of testing ITSM and ESM workloads, prioritizing activities, and trying to balance the business objectives, service level agreements (SLAs), and experience level agreements (XLAs). A false goal of workforce reduction must not lose sight of service requirements and experience. Saving dollars in one part of the organization, resulting in increased inefficiencies in another, is potentially destructive, and results may pan out over time.
GenAI ITSM examples – Continuous improvement, incident management, and content creation
An organization leveraging GenAI will increase its capabilities for collecting and analyzing performance data, identifying areas for optimization, analyzing data analytics of incident patterns, and identifying trends in past incident reports. That’s if they implement it strategically and thoughtfully.
GenAI already has the power to suggest workarounds and optimization options to improve processes and procedures. The GenAI ITSM capabilities won’t stop there; vendors and organizations will leverage it to enhance root cause analysis and performance monitoring. GenAI can develop and feed knowledge management information such as best practices, troubleshooting guides, and solutions to the most common IT issues.
The change enablement processes will potentially improve by analyzing the impacts of proposed changes on existing systems, developing simulations of different scenarios, and predicting outcomes for those changes. I anticipate vendors doubling down on increasing the change enablement capabilities utilizing GenAI.
'The next three years will involve testing, reallocating funds, reducing human resources, applying automation and workflows, and leveraging predictive analytics' #GenAI #ITSM #ServiceDesk Share on XWhat this means
The next three years will involve testing, reallocating funds, reducing human resources, applying automation and workflows, and leveraging predictive analytics, all using the capabilities of GenAI, powerfully augmented by other AI solutions. Ill-prepared organizations will make many mistakes, some of which may land on the front pages of the news. Calls for increased regulation will address the legal and ethical issues that arise. Still, the promise that ITSM or ESM operations will improve is significant.
Whether IT organizations can leverage the best of what it has to offer is yet to be seen. Anyone working in IT knows that budget goes where hype flows! The rush to meet the GenAI ITSM push of the competitive market will inevitably leave gaps, so I suggest taking it slow and thoughtfully applying DevSecOps and Agile principles and ensuring your data is clean and well-structured to meet business outcomes.
Further Reading
Please use the website search capability to find other helpful ITSM articles on topics such as handling service requests, ITSM processes, developing IT support teams, defining levels of service, customer expectations, digital transformation, service level agreement (SLA) creation, performance metrics, long-term improvements, enabling business processes, collaborating with other team members, aligning with business goals, ITSM tools, how to reduce costs with automation.
Patti Blackstaffe
Patti partners with clients to solve systemic leadership challenges that reduce effectiveness so that they save time and money, reduce risk, increase adaptability, and advance strategic priorities.
