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The New Era of Intelligent IT Support: What You Need to Know

Valerie Vancuren
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The hot topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

With all the hype around digital transformation and artificial intelligence lately, it’s challenging to understand how each branch of AI differs in functionality and how each can play a role in your company’s support processes. Machine Learning (ML), Conversational AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP) – we get it, these terms can all sound like gibberish! Before investing time and money into AI technology, take a step back and learn more about each of these areas and what value they bring to your organization.

We’ve come a long way from clunky self-serving portals

The main idea behind using AI technology in IT support is to enable companies to streamline operations, increase efficiency, and personalize experiences for all users at scale. Artificial intelligence can automate repetitive tasks such as answering common questions or resolving issues without having to hire additional employees to meet the demands of growing companies and digital transformation.

When this AI technology is optimized, it is capable of understanding users' intent and resolving issues faster than any other IT support outlet. Organizations cannot ignore the benefits of artificial intelligence in support processes.

Technology driving innovation in IT support

How exactly does artificial intelligent technology work? Whether you’re a small business or large enterprise, AI can help your company operate more efficiently and provide better service to your customers using the following branches of AI:

1) Machine learning

When an algorithm learns from experience without being explicitly programmed, and predicts future outcomes using this information. As an example, if you teach an algorithm how to recognize a common IT issue by showing it data from previous tickets, it will be able to resolve this issue with users without being explicitly told the solution. This type of technology can be used to create fast and helpful responses for users based on previous interactions/data from your company.

2) Self-learning AI

This takes machine learning one step further by allowing machines to learn from new interactions with users rather than being programmed by humans after the successful or failure of tickets. The AI internalizes each interaction and learns with time based on a positive or negative outcome from interactions with users. That’s right, over time, this technology only gets better and better at answering and resolving issues with users.

This type of AI technology has proven to be valuable in IT support processes by giving more accurate and helpful information that users need within seconds of the interaction.

3) Cognitive computing

This a branch of artificial intelligence that uses cognitive science to mimic human thought processes. This technology learns from experience with structured and unstructured data, rather than being programmed. This means that the technology can predict areas of human thinking and emotion. In IT support, this is particularly useful for customer retention or general user satisfaction when the AI can ask questions and provide responses catered towards the user’s behavior needs.

Structured data refers to information that has a defined format versus unstructured data is a collection of information in native form with no specific formatting.

4) Natural language processing

Another piece of cognitive computing that understands human language through analysis rather than coding instructions. This allows for greater flexibility and accuracy in analyzing text-based requests from customers or employees. This means that users can speak in natural language and not have to reword questions for the AI technology to understand what is attempting to be said/asked.

So, what is an AI-powered helpdesk?

An AI-powered helpdesk encompasses all of the listed AI branches along with other forms of technology to bring an industry-leading, chatbot-like assistant capable of automatically resolving the majority of IT support requests within seconds or minutes of initiating a request. Reduced overall IT support costs, delighted users, and increased employee productivity are only a few of the benefits you can expect when implementing this AI-powered helpdesk in your company.

What makes Cloud MSG so unique is our team of helpdesk experts behind the fancy technology, geared to optimize artificial intelligence in each organization, and to work with your existing IT support team to provide strategy development and guidance. 

conversational ai dashboard
A conversational AI dashboard built by Cloud MSG, showing the helpdesk conversation statistics.

AI technology is the future of IT support

In summary, the technology for building an intelligent IT helpdesk is here. It seems today that almost any business can take advantage of AI-powered IT support software and reap numerous benefits in return. Not only are companies seeing significant results with this technology, but users also receive faster and more personalized responses to boost productivity of employees and retain customers.

Although there are distinct advantages associated with its usage, AI technology can only go so far without the right team of experts optimizing its abilities to meet each company’s needs. That is why we are so thankful for our team of helpdesk experts here at Cloud MSG.

Looking for an AI-powered helpdesk partner?

Cloud MSG is a leader in managed IT services. We advise on AI and next-gen technology, build intelligent helpdesks, and manage the service delivery of them. In recent client projects, we have helped transform the entire IT support experience and automated the resolution of over 78% of all support requests with AI.

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