Adopting a modernized service transformation strategy is critical to achieving measurable improvements in overall IT efficiency and driving customer and employee satisfaction, according to The State of Service Transformation Report commissioned by EasyVista.
The report found 67 percent of organizations are most interested in leveraging a self-service portal, with another 60 percent seeking a self-help solution to meet on-demand needs and deliver better employee and customer experiences.
The study also found that while 97 percent of companies surveyed are eager to adopt a service transformation strategy, half (50%) believe that legacy IT infrastructure remains a top-three barrier to digital transformation initiatives within their organization.
In an increasingly digitized world, these findings further validate the critical need for organizations to evolve how they meet the service needs of employees and customers alike.
The report also revealed that AI and machine learning-powered innovations, such as chatbots, are gaining widespread use as part of organizations’ efforts to provide intelligent, on-demand customer service and personalized end-user engagement. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of IT managers say their organization currently implements machine learning, compared to half (50%) who say the same regarding AI — indicating the opportunity across many enterprises to further improve customer engagement through intelligent service automation.
We see a tremendous opportunity to leverage AI for improving service experiences. The value of AI is dramatically increased by access to knowledge and organizations that focus on a knowledge-first self-help strategy will reap great rewards from the strategic use of AI for natural language processing, search, virtual agents, and more.
Additional report findings include:
■ 4 out of 5 (79%) IT managers say their organization plans to increase investment in service transformation solutions.
■ 8 out of 10 (83%) plan to increase their use of self-help solutions as a component of their service transformation program in the next 12 months.
■ 63 percent (63%) see focusing on employee and customer experience initiatives as important for achieving digital transformation.
■ More than half (51%) report their organization has adopted a self-service portal and self-help to help reduce tier 1 calls.
Methodology: The State of Service Transformation report is based on a survey conducted by LEWIS on behalf of EasyVista among 350 IT managers of companies with 1,000 or more employees on December 12-17, 2018 with a margin of error of +/- 5.2 percentage points.
