Artificial Intelligence: The Human Touch in AI Adoption – Why Bots Can’t Fully Replace IT Service Desk Agents

Since the opportunities of artificial intelligence (AI) use in IT service management (ITSM) first became an industry trend almost a decade ago, people have wondered whether AI-enabled capabilities would be job killers. Much of the early AI coverage explained that AI capabilities wouldn’t replace people. Instead, AI would pick up mundane and repetitive tasks, freeing people to focus on higher-value-add activities, and augment peoples’ knowledge and skills to make them more effective and productive.

These predictions have so far played out – with AI-enabled capabilities, particularly generative AI (GenAI) / Copilot capabilities, used to increase IT employee productivity and improve service experiences. But this is a somewhat “inside-out” view of AI – it takes an IT service provider view of AI’s use rather than considering the service consumer perspective.

This blog looks at the “outside-in” perspective and the need for the human touch in AI adoption, starting with the service consumer view of “people vs. machines.”

The drivers for AI “acceptance” and use

Much has been written about the many benefits of AI. In an ITSM context, AI-enabled capabilities can deliver against the ITSM holy grail of “better, faster, cheaper.” But this is only if the capabilities are effectively delivered.

The situation is not dissimilar to the issues many IT organizations have experienced with IT self-service. For end-users, if using the IT self-service portal was more complicated than calling the IT service desk, they would make a call (to the IT service desk) rather than trying to self-help. This meant that, for many IT organizations, employee adoption of IT self-service capabilities was low, and the new technology failed to deliver on its promise. But this was the visible symptom rather than the root cause.

Successfully adopting AI requires avoiding the many mistakes made with IT self-service portals. Mistakes that include:

• The wrong motivation – focusing on reduced costs over better employee experiences and outcomes
• Creating capabilities with “IT thinking” rather than based on end-user needs and expectations
• Failing to invest in organizational change management tools and techniques (to elicit the required change)
• Underappreciating the importance of effective knowledge management.

There are, of course, other root causes of the IT self-service issues experienced by IT organizations. The important point is that we have learned from these mistakes when adopting AI-enabled capabilities.

The human touch in AI adoption – the end user perspective

If you think about your personal use of AI bots in a consumer context, you’ll likely uncover many of the issues employees might experience with corporate IT capabilities. How often have you used an AI-powered chatbot that doesn’t seem to understand what you want and need (or that’s what you assume based on its inability to help you)? You really want to speak to someone rather than wasting more time unsuccessfully “throwing text” at the AI.

Thankfully, there might be the ability to converse with a human – whether this needs to be requested or is an automated escalation method when the technology understands it can’t help you. The same facility is required with corporate IT support. However, the “human touch” requirement is more than simply being passed to a person. The IT service desk agent “picking up” the engagement needs to understand two things. First, what has already been said and done (to avoid annoying repetition and time-wasting). Second, that the end-user is likely frustrated by their IT support experience so far.

But escalation is just part of the continued need for the human touch in IT support.

Context can necessitate the need for the human touch

The need to escalate an AI-based engagement to a person might be because of terminology and understanding issues or because some complex IT support requirements are currently beyond the capabilities of AI. There might also be infrequent issues where there’s insufficient training data for the AI to be effective. However, these scenarios all likely start with an unsuccessful AI engagement.

Notwithstanding personal preference, when an end-user might want to speak with a fellow human rather than engage with technology-based capability, as with IT self-service, an IT service desk often needs to offer a choice of contact and communication channels. Here, circumstances related to the issue or the end-user might necessitate the human touch. For example, an end-user might be unable to converse with a text-based interface, or an issue might be considered so critical that a “route one” support experience (and a call to the IT service desk) is needed.

What’s best for end-users and the business?

This point was touched on earlier in the IT self-service mistakes – the impact of AI use on employee experiences and productivity needs to be assessed. There will likely be some situations where using AI-enabled capabilities isn’t in the best interest of end-users and the business capabilities or services they’re delivering. For example, no matter how great the delivered AI capabilities are, there might be roles where the human touch is the better option.

This could be, for example, when high-fee-earners such as lawyers or critical personnel such as doctors require IT support. Before the advent of AI-based capabilities, these roles likely received concierge-like IT support rather than being expected to use IT self-service. It was simply in the best interest of the organization. The same might still be true with AI-based capabilities. So, expect to accommodate role-based exceptions that require the human touch for IT support.

Plus, IT service desk personnel do more than ticket handling

While the above examples relate to handling end-user issues and incident tickets, when considering why bots can’t fully replace IT service desk agents, there’s a need to appreciate their other roles. For example, a service desk agent might participate in technology delivery projects as a subject matter expert (SME) for corporate IT support capabilities. Whether this role could be effectively replicated by an AI-based capability is unknown. Especially where gut feelings are needed. Of course, AI-based capabilities can still be used for activities such as forecasting demand or risk management, but lacking the human touch might be detrimental to project success.

Right now, and for the foreseeable future, while AI-enabled capabilities can offer significant benefits to IT service desks and the people they serve, there’s still a need for the human touch. The key is understanding when the human touch is needed.

Here are some more resources we think you might be interested in:

Blog Post: A New Era of Service Desk Operations

Blog Post: AI Driven ITSM: Pioneering Workload Management for the Future

Blog Post: Microsoft Copilot: The AI and Automation Opportunity for ITSM

Blog Post: AI’s Potential Role in IT Service Management

Whitepaper: Cloud Lighthouse Crafting Your Future-Ready Enterprise AI Strategy

Stephen Mann is Principal Analyst and Content Director at the ITSM-focused industry analyst firm ITSM.tools. Also an independent IT and IT service management marketing content creator, and a frequent blogger, writer, and presenter on the challenges and opportunities for IT service management professionals.

Other posts by Stephen Mann include:

Why and Where ITSM Needs ITAM, The Evolution and Benefits of ITSM Tools, Why and How Your ITSM Capabilities Need to Change and The Skillsets IT Service Desk Agents and Managers Need in the Age of AI

Provance® sponsored the publication of this blog post to help inform and educate you about ITSM.

Provance empowers organizations with—AI-infused—Microsoft-centric IT Service and Asset Management products. Our ServiceTeam® ITSM and ServiceTeam® ITAM Power Apps, built on the Power Platform, maximize investments in Microsoft technologies. Leveraging the Azure, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft 365 clouds, Provance Power Apps posses the same digital DNA as the Microsoft platform and products ecosystem that drives your success. ServiceTeam ITSM ensures secure, scalable, and flexible IT service management, while ServiceTeam ITAM lets you proactively plan and manage IT assets cost-effectively. Achieve “best-of-platform” benefits along with service management excellence with ServiceTeam.