ServiceNow has introduced a conversational bot technology dubbed Virtual Agent, designed to improve customer and employee experiences through more natural interactions and real-time automated resolution.
ServiceNow's Virtual Agent can manage employee or customer requests from start to finish, leveraging ServiceNow's Now Platform to resolve conversational requests, such as resetting passwords.
"Our Virtual Agent enables a powerful conversation model built natively in the Now Platform," said C.J. Desai, chief product officer at ServiceNow, in a statement. "This enables our customers to develop a wide range of intelligent service conversations, from a quick question to an entire business action through the messaging platform of their choice."
ServiceNow's Virtual Agent provides personalized responses in context. For example, when an employee asks for a new phone, the chat knows what cell phone plan and carrier the employee already has, speeding the task and creating a personalized service experience.
Virtual Agent also enables companies to respond with instant, interactive conversations that can scale even during peak periods. ServiceNow estimates that 15 percent to 20 percent of routine interactions can be handled by Virtual Agent.
With self-service interactions, customers and employees engage in familiar places, via Microsoft Teams, Slack, or ServiceNow chat clients. Virtual Agent gather inquiries, requests, and conversations within a messaging format.
With the acquisition of Parlo, ServiceNow intends to inject more natural language understanding into its virtual agents, allowing users to train their bots to understand technical and jargon-laden content.
ServiceNow offers a prebuilt Virtual Agent for customer service that allows customers to create cases for products or orders and check product status through virtual agents. Customers can design their own virtual agent conversations through a drag-and-drop interface. Organizations can plug in their preferred messaging service. That includes web, mobile, and adapters for popular messaging apps, such as Microsoft Teams and Slack, that are delivered out-of-the-box with the Now Platform.
Virtual Agent will be available in ServiceNow’s next product release this year.