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Manuel Villalba Rodriguez - PeerSpot reviewer
ServiceNow consultant at ATOS
Vendor
Powerful, visually attractive, and helps to create deflections and save a lot of time of service desk agents
Pros and Cons
  • "For me, it's very valuable that many of the IT solutions that normally service desk agents provide and that take a lot of their time can be done. For example, password reset normally takes a lot of time for service desk agents, and that is something that can be very easily automated so that they can focus on something that adds more value. Password reset or helping with password reset looks simple, and maybe naive, but it takes a significant amount of time for service desk agents. That is something that helps a lot."
  • "They can help the developers with ready-made structures or JavaScript structures or topics that can be integrated into the basic package. That would help a lot."

What is our primary use case?

I work for a ServiceNow partner providing technological solutions for businesses. I use the Virtual Agent Designer to create topics for the Virtual Agent for a customer.

Virtual Agent is like a chatbot with a natural language understanding. It can be used to create deflections and release the service desk support from things that can be automated, semi-automated, or deflected in some other way. A Virtual Agent can help the end-users to reset their own passwords or trigger remote actions, such as fixing Microsoft Office. When they cannot do certain things with their own administration rights, Virtual Agent can do it for them. Basically, it helps the users like a service desk, but in an automated way, and it also recognizes the natural language.

What is most valuable?

For me, it's very valuable that many of the IT solutions that normally service desk agents provide and that take a lot of their time can be done. For example, password reset normally takes a lot of time for service desk agents, and that is something that can be very easily automated so that they can focus on something that adds more value. Password reset or helping with password reset looks simple, and maybe naive, but it takes a significant amount of time for service desk agents. That is something that helps a lot.

It's very stable. It's powerful. It's flexible and very configurable. The way it shows for the end-user is very intuitive. 

What needs improvement?

Even though the way that the developers program the topics for the Virtual Agent is very intuitive and flexible, there is some room for improvement. There are things that can be done visually, and there are also things that can be done through JavaScript. They can help the developers with ready-made structures or JavaScript structures or topics that can be integrated into the basic package. That would help a lot.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with ServiceNow for two or three years, but I have been working as a Virtual Agent Designer since last July.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

If you have well-qualified IT support people, not the service desk but the experts who run the Virtual Agent solution and the integration with ServiceNow, it's very stable. The solution itself is stable, but if the people you have contracted don't have proper preparation, it can become a little bit unstable because of the complexity of ServiceNow, which is getting more and more complex every time. There are many nuts and bolts, and if they don't have full dominion over it, it can appear to be not as stable. The problem is not the platform; the problem is the knowledgeability of the people.

How are customer service and support?

The support from ServiceNow is good. They are very helpful, and they always want to be there so that customers have the best experience of it, but ServiceNow Virtual Agent or the conversational interface is something relatively new and very complex. So, the solution is not always as fast as you would expect.

Some of their products have been on the market for a long time, so they know all the bugs and everything about the product, whereas for ServiceNow Virtual Agent, sometimes, it takes a little bit of research. If the problem is complex, it takes longer. However, there are a lot of resources. There are many groups and documents available for free. So, you have a lot of help, but because it's something new, even though they are very open and very helpful, the solution is not always so fast.

How was the initial setup?

Normally, when a company uses ServiceNow as a platform to get all the intranet, knowledge base, IT support, and requests for hardware, software, or other features, it gets a basic package with all of these. Virtual Agent is not necessarily included or activated in that package. So, the IT department from the customer can go to the ServiceNow store and select the plugin that they want. In this case, it will be the Virtual Agent and its dependencies, which are specified on the store for this particular application. It's very intuitive. Of course, they have to speak to the procurement team to be sure of its cost, approvals, and so on. After that, they just need to click on install, and that's it. It's very easy. The technical part is very easy.

Normally, the number of people involved depends on how a company wants to configure the accesses, but if it's very stratified, then you would have multiple teams involved in it. You can have one team that is involved just in the deployment. You can get several instances for the security of ServiceNow. You can get the normal production environment or the normal instance that runs in the server instance, which is just for normal or standard use, but before you get to that, there are in-development instances and quality analysis instances. You can also add another instance for staging. 

Whenever you deploy something, you need to develop it on the development instance, then it goes to a quality test instance, then staging or pre-production, and then production. When you develop a new solution, such as a new topic, for ServiceNow, you develop it in the development instance, which is handled by the development team. When that is done, you need the quality analysis team to do the tests. You also need a test management team to manage it and a business analysis team to do all the paperwork and document what's the new product and how it will impact the customers and the end-users. When everything is documented, you run the tests, and you need the deployment team to move it to the next instance, which, if stratified, would be the quality instance where quality testers will test it. Then, it will go to the next instance, such as staging, and you need the staging people to move it from QA to staging, and then, you need the production people to move from staging to production. So, you would have multiple teams with different accesses. They are responsible for each department. It can take ten different groups, for example.

The duration depends on the deployment cycles. Developing something simple could be done within a week, but deploying it from development to production can take a minimum of two weeks. It goes through quality, and then, staging, and finally, production. You have to take into consideration that for security, normally, you'd have planned deployments. You don't just do it on a regular basis or every day. You have to do it, for example, every two weeks or every month so that it's secure and safe and can be properly tracked. It depends on the deployment cycles.

What other advice do I have?

I'd definitely recommend it to any company. Whether it's a big or small company, having a Virtual Agent installed is a good idea. It doesn't depend on the volume of the company because it's a chatbot. You can just keep it simple. You do not need to invest in something. You can just put ready-made solutions. For example, the ITSM plugin that you can install with it has a standard solution. You don't even need to invest in developers or something like that. If you are a big company, you can make it as specialized as you want. So, I'd recommend it irrespective of the volume of the company.

Overall, I'd rate it an eight out of ten. It's not a ten because it's still a young product, and it still has room for improvement and room to mature. It's a very good product with a wonderful learning platform. Personally, I like it a lot. I have seen multiple ticketing systems in different types of intranets and so on. This one works pretty well, and it's also visually attractive. 

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Saves time and helpful for repetitive user requests, but NLU and multilingual features can be better
Pros and Cons
  • "The ITSM topics were valuable. They reduced service desk usage and freed agents. They saved 40% to 50% of the time, and the agents were able to do other tasks instead of just replying to customers, replying to their emails, or logging the incidents themselves. That percentage of work was now done directly by end-users who were also happy because they were able to get the query response within seconds instead of waiting in a queue or waiting for an agent to reply."
  • "There were occurrences where the machine was not recognizing the topic correctly and not routing the users to the correct topic. It was specifically related to the Spanish language."

What is our primary use case?

We did a project for a client last year. We used the Paris release and did more than 15 use cases for the client with the Paris release. We also customized it a lot because the client wanted a different workflow for it. After that, San Diego and Tokyo releases came, but I've not done any virtual agent development with those versions. There've been no major changes in these newer versions. They just added extra functionalities for virtual agents. For example, they added extra languages for a multilingual bot. 

It was mainly used for service desk help. The main use cases were related to incidents, service catalogs, and checking ticket status. We also did some integrations where the client wanted password resets through an external system. They were maintaining the data through a different system. When end-users came into ServiceNow Virtual Agent and said password issues, they were redirected to a third party where they were required to enter their unique user ID. With that, another system recognized it and did the needful, such as giving them the link, redirecting them, or giving them a KB article showing them the procedure for what they were asking.

How has it helped my organization?

It has been useful for mundane and repetitive user requests handled by the service desk. In the case of any laptop issues, password reset issues, or incidents that users were facing related to IT, instead of going to the service desk and talking to a service agent, they could place a request via a virtual agent. It was a guided, step-by-step procedure to help them log an incident. 

It has also been helpful for catalog requests where an end-user could place a request for a device, such as a mobile phone or something else. Within the virtual agent, we didn't have complex steps. Our client wanted just a hyperlink so that the end-users were redirected to the service catalog. They would go to the portal and order it, but the initial conversation would start when an end-user came to the chatbot and typed in the request. That request was automatically understood by the machine, and it was redirected to a particular catalog or whatever the user is asking for. The end-users could also check the status of the raised IT tickets.

ServiceNow comes with a dashboard where performance analytics reports are generated. You get visuals of how a virtual agent is performing, which is helpful for the head of the service desk to analyze how well a feature is helping them. Dashboard reports help them understand the impact.

What is most valuable?

The ITSM topics were valuable. They reduced service desk usage and freed agents. They saved 40% to 50% of the time, and the agents were able to do other tasks instead of just replying to customers, replying to their emails, or logging the incidents themselves. That percentage of work was now done directly by end-users who were also happy because they were able to get the query response within seconds instead of waiting in a queue or waiting for an agent to reply. There was no delay in the first response. There was 50% or 60% less overhead on the agents, and we also saw customer satisfaction because we provided them with a survey. After a conversation ended, we would give end-users or customers a survey to rate their conversation with the virtual agent.

Virtual Agent is also a scoped application. ServiceNow has a really nice migration system.

What needs improvement?

While interacting with the virtual agent, sometimes, in the middle of the conversation, the end-users wanted to go to a live agent because the natural language model (NLU) of ServiceNow couldn't understand what the end-user was saying. There were some occurrences where users would just opt for the live agent support, and the virtual agent would directly route them to a live agent. However, there were some ServiceNow bugs that we had reported. There was also a known error where if a virtual agent wanted to connect to a live agent, the live agent was not able to monitor whether the end-user was still there in the chat or not. If the end-user left the chat, the agent was not able to know that. The agents were just waiting for two or three hours, and the conversation was not ended by the system as well. So, the problem was that the conversation was not ending. An end-user left the chat, but the agent didn't know if the user was there on the other end or not. This problem was fixed in the San Diego release.

The language or multilingual features where the machine was doing the whole thing was a little bit tricky. They have been improving the NLU models, but if we wanted to opt for a multilingual virtual agent, we had to train it for NLU properly. That was still a tricky part of ServiceNow. There were occurrences where the machine was not recognizing the topic correctly and not routing the users to the correct topic. It was specifically related to the Spanish language.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable, and they have been improving it. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's scalable because they're also giving us the option to use models that are outside of ServiceNow. They give you a ServiceNow model, but they are also allowing you to use the IBM bot model, which is IBM Watson. So, you can integrate it with other third-party tools as well. If you want to use WhatsApp or Microsoft Teams as the channel for the end-users to communicate, and you don't want your users to go to the ServiceNow service portal and go to the virtual agent, you can do that as well. You can integrate it with Microsoft Teams, Slack, or WhatsApp. WhatsApp would be a custom integration, whereas, for Microsoft Teams and Slack, out-of-the-box integrations are available. Nowadays, ChatGPT is there. There is a possibility to integrate ChatGPT with a virtual agent. It would give really nice results. For the general queries of the users, it can be integrated with ChatGPT.

How are customer service and support?

Their response was quick, and they assigned us an Indian colleague who helped us to understand the actual issue. We recognized the issue, and they told us it is a known error. The client was not happy with that, but they told us that it'll be rectified soon, and they are going to release the patch to rectify the problem. That made it easy because it was a very quick response. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I've only worked with ServiceNow Virtual Agent. However, I have an understanding of other vendors and tools. They use chatbots. Chatbots and virtual agents are quite similar, but chatbots have a predefined workflow. There is no dynamic input, or they can't understand a dynamic input coming from an end-user. The flow is very static and specific to a particular process. Chatbots don't understand natural language like ServiceNow. They don't try to understand your query, and repeatedly, they give you the same replies, whereas ServiceNow Virtual Agent tries to understand, and if it's not able to recognize or identify your issue, it'll just ask you to talk to a live agent and route you to a live agent. It tries to understand the language. That's the plus point here.

How was the initial setup?

We had three instances. We used to develop in the Development (Dev) instance. For the user acceptance test (UAT), we would migrate it to the Test instance where the stakeholders did the testing. After they approved it, we would move it to the Pre-release or Pre-prod instance, which was a duplicate of the production system where nobody would test it. It was just to maintain a replica of the Production (Prod) instance. From Pre-prod, it would go to Prod. So, the release cycle they maintained was from Dev to Test, from Test to Pre-prod, and then from Pre-prod to Prod.

We used to do deployments via update sets. ServiceNow deals with update sets. So, the entire work we were doing in the Dev instance was captured via update sets, and we could migrate it via XML, which means we could just export it and import it to the other system. We could also just link the Dev instance to the Test instance, the Test instance to the Pre-prod instance, and the Pre-prod instance to the Prod instance. It was a chain of connections. From the Test instance, it would go to the Pre-prod system because we needed the UAT to be done, and whatever successfully reached the Pre-prod system would go to the Prod system. The Pre-prod and Prod systems had an out-of-the-box connection.

For the deployment, we didn't need ServiceNow's involvement. It was done by the team handling or doing the development. Usually, the project teams decide their deployment window to be on the weekends or Saturday nights. If it was a US project, then it would be nighttime in India. We had to give them the entire Excel sheet or plan for deployment, but all core activities were handled by the person handling the core ServiceNow operations. The people involved were a part of the release team. Two or three persons were enough for the deployment, and it was usually done within three to four hours. If there is a huge amount of data to be transferred, import would take 20 to 30 minutes. If there were a small number of topics or very small workflows, the import would take two to three minutes. Once you import, you just have to preview it and publish it, and it will come into the Production system. After that, you have to do just one test, which is a release test. So, all these activities were performed during the three to four hours deployment window.

In terms of maintenance, if you want to include some extra topics or modify existing workflows, you need an operations team. Every ServiceNow project that is being delivered to clients would have an operations team for enhancements. generally, two people would be enough for that. Other than that, there is no maintenance. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I am a developer, so I've not been involved with its licensing, but I've read about it. Based on what I know, when you purchase ServiceNow ITSM, ServiceNow Virtual Agent comes out of the box with it. You don't have to pay extra for the ServiceNow Virtual Agent license. So, there's no extra cost. It also depends on the features and functionalities you are going for. There's ITSM and ITSM Pro, and it comes with ITSM Pro.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise starting with very simple workflows. You should first set up the live agent support and then go with very simple workflows, such as incident or IT status check. You should progress slowly. Go with the pilot release first with two or three topics, and when the users are getting used to it and are enjoying using the virtual agent, enhance the workflow. That will be helpful. The planning should be proper. Do a pilot project and then go with more and more topics once you're familiar with all the features. You can use the dashboard reports to see how much it has been utilized and how many times the users are using it.

They have been coming up with a lot of new features. They recently launched small talk topics. For instance, a user starts the conversation by saying that he is facing some issue, and the virtual agent recognizes it and starts a topic for raising an incident. To raise an incident, two things are important: the description and the urgency of the issue. Once they fill in those details, the system will log the issue and give them the ticket number created in the system. However, while filling that description and urgency, if the user asks the virtual agent how's the weather or something else, to address such things, they have come up with small talk topics so that NLU is able to recognize it. Of course, you need to build the model in a way that it understands that and gives a proper, valid reply, and then continues the flow, but it's an interesting feature. They have been improving it and making it a little bit smart. Let's see how it goes in the future.

As the developer of all the topics and as the end-user role that I played for the unit testing, I would rate ServiceNow Virtual Agent a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner