AI + Service Desk: 7 Ways to Boost Service Desk Capabilities

The integration of artificial intelligence in service desk software has become a game-changer, revolutionizing the way organizations handle customer support and IT Service Management (ITSM). 

In this sense, AI service desk solutions offer a range of benefits, from improved efficiency and cost savings to enhanced customer satisfaction. 

So, to help you harness the power of AI in your service desk, in this article we'll discuss practical ideas and strategies to implement the technology effectively. 

We'll also highlight some of the top AI help desk solutions in the market, empowering you to make informed decisions when selecting a suitable service desk for your organization.

Ready to transform your IT service desk with AI? Let’s get started.

InvGate AI Hub: New Artificial Intelligence Capabilities For IT Teams

What is an AI help desk?

First, let’s refresh our minds on what a help desk is. Also known as service desks, they function as a central hub for managing customer inquiries across various communication channels. They streamline the process of addressing and resolving customer issues, ensuring efficient and effective service.

An AI-powered help desk is designed to enhance the capabilities of your IT services by leveraging artificial intelligence. These systems can, among other functions, automate tasks, prioritize and route tickets more effectively, and help agents offer faster and better resolutions. 

Recommended reading

Artificial Intelligence Tickets: 7 Game-Changing Strategies

5 top AI help desks in the market

It is clear by now that AI can have a big impact on the help desk efficiency, so there are many vendors who are applying this technology to their services. 

Let’s see the top 5 AI service desks in the market.

InvGate AI Hub for Service Management

InvGate AI Hub for Service Management brings a set of practical tools that integrate artificial intelligence directly into your help desk operations. It automatically generates draft knowledge base articles from resolved tickets, offers solution recommendations based on past resolutions, and even suggests expert collaborators to improve ticket routing and resolution.

The AI Hub can also help you evaluate the impact and severity of incidents, help assign higher priority to major incidents, and recognize recurring issues to aid in root cause analysis. Additionally, its predictive risk and impact analysis feature assists with managing change requests and their potential risks effectively.

It also includes the Virtual Agent, which provides an added layer of support by answering user questions in plain language. The virtual agent offers smart responses that use your existing Knowledge Base, acts as a conversational bot for smoother interactions, and can summarize long articles into clear, short summaries.

Features overview

• Generates knowledge base articles from resolved tickets
• Offers solution recommendations
• Suggests expert collaborators for tickets
• Evaluation of incident impact and severity
• Prioritizes major incidents
• Recognizes recurring issues
• Predicts risk and impact for Change Management
• Provides a Virtual Agent for user support
• Suggests keywords for service categories
• Modifies the tone of agent responses

InvGate Service Management pricing

InvGate Service Management is available as an on-premise or SaaS solution. 

Here's a breakdown of the pricing structure:

• Starter: $17 per agent per month, billed annually. It is designed for up to 5 agents and features a simple configuration and a self-service portal.
• Pro: $40 per agent per month, billed annually, suitable for teams of 6-50 agents, including ITIL-aligned workflows, automation, and enhanced support.
• Enterprise: Pricing is custom and requires a quote; it offers custom agents, on-premise hosting, concurrent licensing, and advanced security configurations.

And don't hesitate to sign up for a free 30-day trial.

"At Farmacity, we are transforming the way we work to become more agile. InvGate Service Management is accompanying us in this transformation process, helping us to implement changes in a way that is practically transparent to the entire organization."

Marcos Aste, Level One Support Efficiency Leader at Farmacity

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InvGate Service Management: 6 AI Superpowers to Augment Service Desk Agents' Capabilities

BMC Helix

BMC Helix combines Composite AI, which merges sensory reasoning with generative AI, to provide predictive insights and automate complex IT Service Management tasks. Its domain-specific HelixGPT model learns from organizational data, acting as an "expert of your systems" to improve efficiency.

With generative AI, BMC Helix creates summaries of incidents and chat interactions, helping agents resolve issues faster. It also identifies recurring problems through predictive incident clustering, allowing for automated root-cause analysis. The AI-powered virtual agent provides human-like interactions, offering contextualized responses and self-service guidance.

Features overview

• Generates case and incident summaries
• Predicts service outages using historical data
• Automates ticket categorization and workflows
• Correlates incidents for proactive Problem Management
• Integrates generative AI into chatbots and virtual agents

BMC Helix pricing

Given the complexity and varying needs of organizations, BMC encourages potential customers to contact them directly for a tailored pricing quote. BMC Helix ITSM offers a free trial.

Freshdesk + Freddy AI Agent

Freshdesk offers Freddy Copilot, an AI-powered solution designed to enhance both customer and employee experiences through autonomous service capabilities. It uses pre-existing documents and websites to learn, enabling it to provide personalized support across multiple channels and languages without needing code for deployment.

Freddy Copilot can autonomously resolve customer and IT service requests. This allows teams to deliver personalized, near-real-time support that meets individual needs, freeing up time for IT, HR, and other internal service teams.

Feature overview

• Resolves support requests autonomously.
• Provides 24/7 autonomous operation.
• Supports multiple languages.
• Learns from existing documents and websites.
• Automates ticket assignment and routing.
• Provides contextual and real-time agent assistance.
  

Freshdesk + Freddy AI pricing 

• Pro Plan: $49 per agent per month (annual billing)
• Enterprise Plan: $79 per agent per month (annual billing)

Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk includes Zia, a built-in AI assistant, which works alongside support teams to improve response times and automate common tasks. With ChatGPT integration, Zia enhances ticket management by making interactions smoother and more intelligent.

Zia's Answer Bot can resolve customer queries by pulling solutions from the Knowledge Base, reducing agent workload. It also prioritizes tickets based on sentiment analysis, ensuring urgent issues get addressed faster. Zia also detects anomalies, alerting managers to sudden ticket spikes or negative sentiment trends. Customers can interact with the chatbot not only through text but also through voice, making it more accessible. 

Features overview

• Auto-tags and groups similar tickets
• Provides reply suggestions via ChatGPT
• Analyzes customer sentiment per ticket
• Detects service traffic anomalies
• Summarizes long ticket threads
• Offers multilingual support (13 languages)
• Maintains GDPR/HIPAA compliance

Zoho Desk pricing

Here's an overview of Zoho Desk's pricing structure:

• Standard: $14 per agent per month (billed annually), offering essential features for small to medium-sized businesses.
• Professional: $23 per agent per month (billed annually), providing more advanced features and customization options.
• Enterprise: $40 per agent per month (billed annually), including the full suite of Zoho Desk's capabilities, including advanced Zia AI features.

Zia AI's capabilities are included in the higher-tier plans. The Enterprise plan unlocks the full potential of Zia AI and provides the most comprehensive set of features.

SymphonyAI Summit

SymphonyAI Summit, established in 2015 and based in Pune, India, is an ITIL-compliant IT Service Management (ITSM) solution that uses advancements in AI-driven digital agents and service automation. It offers a personalized service portal with built-in widgets and drag-and-drop capabilities, allowing users to build capabilities with low-code or no-code.

SymphonyAI Summit manages complex IT infrastructures, enhances service delivery, and optimizes processes. It provides a single service portal to consolidate all employee service needs, improve productivity through streamlined and automated processes, and empower employees with self-service capabilities enhanced by AI.

Features overview

• ITSM process design and implementation
• Single Service Portal
• Connects various request types with assets and configuration items.
• No-code/low-code Design Studio to design and customize functions and workflows.
• Role templates
• SLA Management

SymphonyAI pricing

SymphonyAI doesn't disclose its pricing, tiers, or model. Reach out to their team to obtain information on their current pricing.

Why should you care about AI Help Desk Management?

Undoubtedly, artificial intelligence has transformed the way we work (and will continue to do so!), and customer service is no exception. In this context, organizations are under increasing pressure to continue delivering seamless and efficient support experiences in order to stay competitive.

AI Help Desk Management offers a solution to this challenge, using artificial intelligence to streamline support operations, enhance agent productivity, and improve customer satisfaction. 

By adopting AI Help Desk Management practices, organizations can automate repetitive tasks, such as ticket routing and resolution, allowing agents to focus on more complex and high-value activities. This not only improves efficiency but also reduces response times, leading to higher customer satisfaction levels. 

AI is here to stay, so we better use it in our favor to enhance our productivity!

Recommended reading

6 Things to Consider Before Using AI in Customer Service (+ Examples)

5 benefits of an AI service desk

AI-powered service desks go beyond simple automation, offering smarter ways to handle customer support and IT operations. Here are five key advantages that make AI a valuable addition to any help desk:

1. Faster, more personalized support
AI speeds up response times by automating common inquiries and providing instant solutions based on historical data. Virtual agents can analyze past interactions to tailor responses, making support more relevant and efficient.

2. Increased efficiency without added workload
AI-powered bots can handle high volumes of tickets at once, allowing support teams to focus on complex cases. Automated categorization and intelligent routing ensure that tickets reach the right agent faster, reducing delays.

3. More time for agents to deliver value

Instead of spending time on repetitive tasks, agents can focus on resolving issues that require critical thinking and a human touch. AI takes care of routine inquiries, ticket assignments, and common troubleshooting, allowing support teams to contribute in more meaningful ways.

4. Knowledge Management is faster and more useful

Documenting solutions takes time, and in fast-paced environments, it often gets overlooked. Even when records exist, searching through past tickets for relevant information can be slow and frustrating. AI can change that by automatically generating knowledge base articles from resolved tickets, making valuable solutions easier to find and reuse. Instead of reinventing the wheel with every request, teams can quickly access past resolutions, ensuring consistency and reducing repetitive work.

5. Smarter decision-making with real-time insights
AI analyzes patterns in ticket data to detect recurring issues, predict service disruptions, and recommend solutions. With AI-driven insights, businesses can proactively improve their support processes instead of reacting to problems as they arise.

7 ideas to use AI in the service desk

Now that we’ve gone through the main benefits, let’s delve into these seven ideas to use AI in the service desk.

1. Accelerate knowledge base article creation

AI can significantly improve the speed and efficiency of creating knowledge base articles by automatically generating drafts based on ticket resolution details. This automation eliminates the need for agents to start from scratch, saving valuable time and effort when writing articles. 

InvGate AI Hub for Service Desk offers a Knowledge Article Generation feature. In under 30 seconds, a draft is automatically generated based on the ticket resolution. Agents can quickly review the draft, make any necessary edits, and submit it for approval in a few simple steps. 

This ensures that the knowledge base remains up-to-date and comprehensive, providing agents with the tools they need to deliver accurate and efficient support and offering users robust self-service options for faster resolution.

2. Improve knowledge article efficiency

Also to enhance Knowledge Management, AI can analyze what's written in the knowledge base and to generate contextual summaries before sharing them with users. By providing this extra information to the article, you can help enhance the efficiency of the answers offered.

For this, InvGate Service Management generates article summaries that encompass vital details such as troubleshooting procedures, pertinent policies, or best practices, aiding agents in swiftly accessing the necessary information.

3. Optimize agent responses

Agents must reply quickly to service requests, but they also need to be high-quality. AI can optimize this process! It can help the agent answer incoming requests faster, with suggestions to improve the text. The response process gets simplified with AI, and the support team can provide more accurate and personalized responses to tickets.

The InvGate AI Hub for Service Desk includes AI-improved responses. This tool uses natural language processing to analyze the agent's draft response and helps them enhance it quickly with actions such as "improve," "shorten," or "expand".

Streamlining the response process enables agents to handle their ticket volume more efficiently (for instance, responding to tickets up to 28% faster!), greatly improving overall customer satisfaction.

4. Streamline ticket routing with keyword generation

AI is also leveraged to streamline another central aspect of service desk efficiency: ticket routing. The technology suggests relevant keywords when creating tickets, reducing user errors and ensuring that tickets are routed to the appropriate support teams from the outset.

InvGate Service Management’s keyword generation feature suggests new and relevant keywords to add to a service category, helping users to find the information they need and improving Ticket Management capabilities.

5. Improve ticket resolution capabilities with summaries

AI can facilitate quick onboarding for agents and collaborators by allowing them to quickly catch up on the case at hand and the steps taken so far. By generating a brief summary of the ticket activities to date, AI ensures that everyone involved in the resolution process has access to relevant information, leading to faster resolution times and improved collaboration.

InvGate Service Management’s Ticket Summarization feature allows users to generate a brief summary of the resolution  activities to date. This is particularly useful when collaboration or approval is needed, as it provides a quick overview of the ticket's history and current status. 

Also, users can choose to post the summary as an internal comment on the ticket, ensuring that all stakeholders are informed and improving overall collaboration and efficiency.

6. Enhance conversational support capabilities

AI can provide better and more accurate responses to users' inquiries by offering customized assistance within the chat interface. Based on information from knowledge articles, it provides customers solutions to their inquiries directly within the chat.

The seamless integration of support resources helps improve efficiency and response timers when offering customer support, ultimately assuring high levels of user satisfaction.

7. Raise service delivery quality with predictive ticketing

Finally, AI-powered ticketing systems can leverage machine learning algorithms to analyze ticket data and predict potential issues before they occur. By identifying patterns and trends in ticket data, AI can forecast future problems and alert IT teams to take proactive measures before they escalate, minimizing downtime and improving overall service delivery.

To sum up

Leveraging AI-powered capabilities in your service desk allows you to streamline ticketing processes, enhance self-service options, and empower your agents to focus on more complex issues. 

With the practical ideas and strategies provided in this article, you can effectively harness the power of this powerful technology to optimize your service desk operations and improve your overall customer satisfaction.

Here are some key takeaways from the article:

• Understand the key concepts and benefits of using AI in your service desk to transform your customer support and ITSM.
• Learn how to implement AI effectively in your service desk, including practical ideas to streamline ticketing processes and enhance self-service options.
• Discover the top AI help desk solutions in the market to make informed decisions when selecting a suitable service desk for your organization.

If you are ready to enhance your Service Management operations with AI, ask for InvGate Service Management's 30-day trial and check out for yourself what this technology can do for your organization!