Top Strategies for Achieving Ticket Deflection with AI

What is Ticket Deflection?

Ticket deflection in a service desk context refers to strategies to reduce the volume of incoming support tickets that need to be handled by human agents. The goal is to empower users or customers to resolve their issues themselves without submitting a ticket, which improves efficiency and reduces the workload of the service desk team.

What are some legacy ways of doing ticket deflection, and what are the issues with these approaches?

Five common legacy methods of ticket deflection include:

1. Knowledge Base/FAQs: these provide self-service articles, guides, and FAQs that help users find answers independently.
2. Self-Service Web Portals: these allow the users to do essential self-service – look and update information and do other transactions
3. Telephone IVR: Interactive Voice Response is a simple telephony add-on that can respond to phone calls with pre-built menus for users to look for information or get to the right help
4. Community Forums: Encouraging users to ask questions in forums where other users or community members can provide answers.
5. Pre-Ticket Suggestions: Offer possible solutions based on the user’s input when they fill out a ticket submission form.

These approaches had several limitations that often frustrated end users and gave ticket deflection a negative connotation. These limitations included:

• Ability to handle only simple tasks – the inherent nature of the methods lends itself to some very basic automations. Users with more complex issues still needed human support after spending much time in self-service.
• Reluctance to route to human help—Systems designed to discourage users from getting to human help, even when unable to resolve the issue, were often a source of great frustration.
• Inaccurate: Many times, legacy systems fail to comprehend the user’s needs and offer irrelevant and unhelpful suggestions.
• Impersonal: The systems were rigid and inflexible and unable to adapt to each user’s personality, unique needs and history.
• Poor ROI – Many legacy systems delivered low levels of deflection and consequently were not delivering the promised ROI to the enterprises

How is ticket deflection changing with AI and what are the advantages of AI-based systems? 

Several new Generative AI-based agentic systems are altogether redefining what ticket deflection means. The three most common types of AI-based ticket deflection service platforms are:

1. AI Chatbots: AI-powered chatbots use Generative AI and Retrieval Augmented Architecture (RAG) that can answer complex questions and autonomously handle very involved user requests and incidents.

2. AI Email Automation: These systems can automatically respond to user queries over email using Generative AI. This helps answer

3. AI Voice Bots: Automate call center support by setting up AI bots that respond with natural voice conversations. These are similar to chatbots, but they are voice-based. Unlike IVR applications, they offer a more human-like, fluid and natural experience.

AI-based systems offer a generational leap forward from the legacy self-service strategies. They offer 3 significant benefits over legacy approaches.

Frustrating user experience and low deflection were the bane of legacy self-service strategies. The aforementioned advantages not only enable the vision of instant support that is also cost-effective but, more importantly, power a highly personalized and smart experience that users love.

What are some leading AI tools that deliver this new modern approach to ticket deflection?

Generative AI platforms have rapidly matured in the last few years, and leaders have emerged in different areas. Here are some examples of leading AI-based Service platforms that power high levels of ticket deflection:

Customer Support

• Salesforce Agentforce: Salesforce Agentforce is a platform designed to empower customer service agents by providing AI-driven tools, integrated workflows, and omnichannel support.
• Dialpad AI: Dialpad AI Contact Center integrates several AI capabilities into its cloud platform to increase self-service.

Employee Support and ITSM

• Rezolve.ai Sidekick: Rezolve.ai offers the deepest, most comprehensive AI-based employee support automation capability, purpose-built for IT and HR support automation. It effectively eliminates the need for human-provided L1 support so that IT and HR support teams can focus on higher-level user needs.
• ServiceNow AI Agents: The ServiceNow AI platform allows users to create agents that can manage workflows, integrations, and data across a business. 

What is the best way to get started and maximize ROI with AI-based ticket deflection? 

One of the best approaches to implementing effective AI-based strategies for automating incoming service tickets is to analyze historical data. AI-based tools can analyze past service requests to develop insights into what could have been automated and how the experience could have been improved.

Rezolve.ai Aura insights is a powerful platform for analyzing historical data to develop automation insights and assess the potential ROI of implementing AI. You can get started by requesting this free assessment here.