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Espressive Barista is used as the main intake point for our internal IT support. We currently offer Espressive Barista through various channels for users to access IT support, with Slack being our primary channel.

Espressive Barista has been extremely helpful in handling common questions that are widely known and can be readily found online, such as Microsoft-related questions and how-to questions. This has allowed us to avoid creating knowledge articles and solutions for things that can easily be Googled. This is particularly beneficial for questions about specific tasks in applications like Outlook or Microsoft Word, where creating knowledge articles would be unnecessary. Espressive Barista's access to public domain knowledge ensures that this readily available information is accessible to our users without any additional effort from our end. One challenge we've faced is adapting to the internal nomenclature used within our organization. Over time, we've been able to incorporate this terminology into our responses, allowing IT to effectively address the needs and questions of our internal customers, ensuring they receive prompt and accurate answers.

It is important from an inclusivity standpoint that Barista provides localized information in multiple languages, even though we are primarily a US-centric company. We are a global organization with a significant presence in the Philippines, Portugal, and England. Therefore, assuming that everyone can easily understand English terms and nomenclature would be exclusionary. I believe it is crucial to continue expanding our language offerings to accommodate the diverse ways people work and communicate, rather than forcing them to adapt to a standardized global English format.

The implementation of Barista has resulted in a significant reduction in our workload by nearly 35 percent. Its ability to answer common questions directly through a public Slack channel has been particularly beneficial. As questions are posted, Barista promptly provides responses, eliminating the need for my technicians to manually address each query. This shared knowledge remains accessible, preventing its loss within individual threads. Barista's out-of-the-box applications have proven to be immensely valuable.

We have observed a definite increase in resolution, also known as deflection, within Barista over time. This increase has been substantial. The twofold benefit of this deflection increase includes out-of-the-box growth and modification. Expressive side content has been curated and modified, allowing us to provide answers to a wider range of applications than we previously could. This has significantly reduced the need for us to curate public knowledge or address common issues or questions that can be easily found through Google searches. We also no longer need to spend time crafting responses to frequently asked questions, particularly those related to Adobe products. Barista provides readily available canned responses, which has been immensely helpful. The main challenge we have encountered is educating users on Barista's intended purpose. In some instances, its effectiveness has been almost too successful. Our Slack channel, initially designed solely for IT support, is now receiving HR, production, and product-related questions. Users have come to view Barista as a comprehensive solution for all their queries, extending beyond IT support. While this is a positive development, it also presents a challenge. We sometimes need to redirect users to the appropriate channels or resources to address their specific concerns. This redirection, while necessary, doesn't always resolve their issues directly.

We were able to resolve 28 percent of support requests without human intervention. In essence, no tickets were created for these interactions, which were handled directly by Barista. This data covers interactions from January to October 2023, encompassing the first three quarters of the year. Based on the total interactions within Barista, 13 percent of issues were resolved through automation. Again, no tickets were created for these interactions, and the problems were resolved using our automated intents, which can handle tasks like account unlocking.

Barista has significantly reduced our service desk costs. By deflecting 28 percent of service desk tickets, Barista has effectively fulfilled over a quarter of my staffing needs. This means that I have been able to maintain my current team of four people, whereas, without this deflection, I would have needed to hire an additional person. Barista's automation has also improved productivity by 13 percent, which has helped to get our employees back to work quickly and efficiently. Account lockout has been a major problem for our IT department, but Barista has taken care of this issue as well. By automatically unlocking accounts, Barista has saved us a lot of time and effort. Additionally, there is no value in having a human check a box to unlock an account – Barista can do this much more efficiently. I am always in favor of automating tasks that do not require human intervention, and Barista has been a valuable asset in this regard.

Barista has significantly reduced our average resolution time, particularly by addressing 28 percent of deflections, resulting in a 13 percent overall reduction. This has been achieved through automation, which has transformed minutes-long tasks into mere seconds. As a result, our average resolution time has plummeted. Previously, our general incidents could take up to three days to resolve, but now we've successfully reduced that timeframe to less than a day. This remarkable improvement is attributed to a combination of Barista, Freshservice, our ITSM platform, and various workflow enhancements. The user-friendly interface and simplified operations of Freshservice, coupled with its seamless integration with Barista, have been instrumental in achieving this drastic reduction in our average resolution time.

With the help of Barista, we have enhanced our ability to support our employees around the clock. While our human team is not available by phone or in person 24/7, we maintain a global presence through Slack, SharePoint, and a dedicated app. This allows us to provide support around the clock without requiring our team to be physically present. This has significantly improved our coverage for the Australia and EMEA time zones, as well as for areas that fall outside of the traditional West Coast or East Coast time zones. As a result, we are better equipped to meet the needs of our global workforce without the need for continuous hiring.

The most valuable feature is its scalability. This has been incredibly beneficial for a small team like ours, enabling us to operate effectively around the clock. I have a small team of ServiceDesk personnel based in the Philippines who primarily work U.S. hours, but we are a global company. To accommodate our growth, Espressive Barista allows us to maintain an IT presence 24/7, regardless of geographical location.

Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human intervention. However, Barista does help us identify and address some of these areas, allowing my team to step in and create intents and responses to questions. When a user asks a question that Barista doesn't immediately understand, we can recognize the pattern, capture it, and link it to a common intent. This is highly beneficial for acquiring such data, but it's a reactive approach and still requires curation. Natural language processing still has some way to go.

One of our challenges is that our internal employees haven't yet adopted a natural way of interacting with Barista. Getting people to be concise and to the point, rather than being verbose as if they were interacting with a human, has been an ongoing challenge. While they may feel comfortable being conversational in Slack, expecting a human-like response, Barista is a different entity. Barista isn't interested in their recent vacation; it just wants to know they're locked out of their account. So, some users may assume Barista understands their intent when they say, "I'm back from vacation and locked out of my account." Barista, however, may interpret this as a request for the holiday schedule. Therefore, we're gradually educating our users to adapt their communication style for better success with Barista. Conversely, we desire Barista to adapt its behavior based on the interaction, the language used, and the way people communicate.

I wholeheartedly desire an AI that can continuously learn and adapt to our organization's evolving needs. This is the most challenging aspect, as it involves understanding our organization's terminology, procedures, and toolsets. We've made significant progress in this area. However, from an NLP standpoint, we still face challenges with our nearly 3,000 Slack channel users, each with their unique communication styles. People ask questions in various ways, and sometimes there are misunderstandings. They want to interact with us naturally. However, we still struggle with natural language processing. People don't always realize that the bot is a virtual agent designed to be concise and efficient. Sometimes, less is more. It's been a difficult transition for people to grasp that they're conversing with a virtual agent, not a human. They still expect human-like interactions, such as discussing their weekend or holidays or simply pasting screenshots of errors. However, the bot can't interpret screenshots. If they provide the error code and some context about the application, the bot can better understand the issue. So, the key challenge is bridging the gap between human expectations and the bot's capabilities in terms of natural interaction.

I have been using Espressive Barista for one year.

Espressive Barista has maintained a high level of stability throughout the past year. We experienced only one incident where Barista malfunctioned. Our company's uptime has consistently been at 99.9 percent, and even in the instance of the malfunction, it was not Barista itself that was broken but rather our ticket integration system. This demonstrates Espressive Barista's ability to meet our core value of providing optimal uptime at 99.9 percent.

Espressive Barista is a scalable solution that can easily accommodate our growing team and meet the needs of our employees, regardless of their location or number.

The technical support team has been very responsive, and we even have a dedicated technical account manager. Additionally, we have a direct line of communication with Espressive through Slack. Espressive has been exceptionally responsive and helpful, making them one of the best partners we have. Their support team is always available, responsive, and feels like an extension of our own team. This, along with their employee adoption program, has been instrumental in keeping our project on track.

Positive

The initial deployment was neither particularly straightforward nor overly challenging due to the integration requirements. We integrated with our existing ticketing system, Okta, and Slack. Integrations can sometimes require some tinkering to ensure seamless operation. The Espressive team has been incredibly responsive in assisting us with expanding and improving our integrations. We have transitioned from one ticketing system to Freshservice, our ITSM tool. They have been right there with us, enhancing the integration to a level surpassing our previous experience. Their support has been exceptional, always willing and available to act almost as an extension of our own team, enabling us to implement the system quickly with minimal resource allocation on our end. Essentially, they served as a staff augmentation or an extension of our own team during the implementation and ITSM tool migration phases.

The implementation was completed by myself, and three team members within our IT engineering team, and Espressive.

Espressive has been very accommodating in trying to meet our needs and adapt to our current situation. User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it. We anticipate expanding our usage and adding more capabilities, which would necessitate upgrading to an enterprise license from our current IT-focused license. We envision utilizing Espressive across various service areas, including HR, facilities, and legal.

The ability to assist users with repetitive, task-oriented common challenges, problems, or questions without constantly redirecting them to knowledge articles, SharePoint sites, or other resources is particularly valuable. We are meeting users where they are, and we believe the value of Espressive is immense.

We evaluated ServiceNow and Moveworks, particularly its virtual agent capabilities. However, due to budgetary constraints and our current economic situation, implementing such a solution was not feasible. In essence, their pricing was beyond our reach. Barista effectively addressed both our requirements for immediate service impact and cost-effectiveness.

I would rate Espressive Barista eight out of ten.

We utilized Espressive's employee adoption program, which proved to be one of the most valuable services for our implementation. They provided us with a comprehensive package of content, collateral, and messaging, along with strategies for engaging our employees and generating rewards. This comprehensive approach effectively raised awareness about our initiative, its purpose, and the benefits it offered. Espressive's service was truly exceptional, and I wish every software development and delivery company had access to such a valuable resource.

There is some maintenance involved, but it's more about the content than any upgrades or implementations. We have one and a half people allocated to maintaining Barista, so 75 percent of their time is dedicated to this task. Their work primarily focuses on content, but they also collaborate with the Espressive team to implement new features and evaluate potential functionalities for rollout. So, there is definitely a regular maintenance component to this aspect.

Employee adoption is a significant undertaking. It requires careful consideration of how we currently provide service and how we envision Barista providing service in the future. This transformation may necessitate a cultural shift and new ways of doing things, which can be challenging to implement. It is crucial to clearly define our service goals and how we intend to maintain them, and then assess the impact of this change on those goals. Secondly, every tool, software, and application requires ongoing care and maintenance. This is especially true for Slack, which serves as our primary point of contact and support channel. We must dedicate sufficient personnel, time, and resources to ensure that Slack remains a thriving and evolving tool. There is no such thing as a "set it and forget it" approach in this regard.

We are a reseller of Expressive Barista. Most of the use cases are related to self-service IT support. 

I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams.

Expressive Barista could improve by adding native integration with WhatsApp, one of the top communication channels in South Africa. When we're trying to sell Barista to customers, we have to tell them that the solution doesn't have out-of-the-box support for WhatsApp. We can develop it, but then we need to have a conversation about how much that will cost.

I have worked with Expressive Barista for about a year now. We're still trying to get our first deal as a reseller.

I rate Expressive Barista nine out of 10 stability. 

I rate Expressive Barista seven out of 10 for scalability.

I rate Expressive Barista six out of 10. The total cost depends on how large the client is. We get Barista from the vendor for a certain price and resell the solution to our customers at a markup. It's negotiable and depends on the customer's budget.

I rate Expressive Barista eight out of 10.