Apple support services with Watson

End-user support just got a lot easier with the use of Workplace Support Services with Watson. In today’s Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) session, Stephen Nekolaichuk, GTS, Infrastructure Services, and Greg Gustafson, Workplace Support Services, addressed how after years of experience with artificial intelligence and cognitive learning, IBM Watson is solving a challenge that many organizations experience: how to support a highly mobile, global workforce that has a huge variety of technology needs.

Nekolaichuk said, “Users want the support they want, on whatever device they want to use, at the time and format of their choosing.”

One key element to delivering this level of service is staffing a service desk and supporting engineers. IBM CIO, Fletcher Previn, addressed this issue at last year’s JNUC. Today, Nekolaichuk and Gustafson showed us how IBM Watson can complement a Workplace Support team and deliver a premier service experience. It starts with intelligence.

Watson is trained on the top call drivers that are typically handled within service desks. Information architects then use Periodic Ticket Analysis, a proprietary approach for analyzing both structured and unstructured ticket data, to leverage output and subsequently train Watson. When the Workplace Support Services with Watson application is integrated into a user’s existing service management and ID management environment, end users can chat with Watson to get support. But why is re-inventing how users get support important? Nekolaichuk and Gustafson highlighted three main reasons:

1. Increasing workplace complexity: Need deeper insights
2. Changing users: Require new user experience
3. Productivity focus: Driven by innovation and automation

By increasing the complexity of the workplace, users are able to obtain deeper insights of their environments. Watson can also help support employees directly with Watson Chat. Gustafson showed an example of a Watson chat session. It answered questions with a combination of step-by-step instruction, video guides or links to self-help resources like Jamf Self Service. Even if a ticket requires transferring a chat to a live agent, Watson learns from the experience and helps accelerate ticket resolution. Watson is also multilingual, so it’s available to a global workforce.

In the end, Gustafson and Nekolaichuk said it’s through a strong understanding of an organization’s environment that innovation and automation can help transform the overall user experience. They recognized that users are at the center of Workplace Support, and said the value for technology devices is how they’re used by the people using them. That’s why IBM is building a more user-oriented support model that allows users to get the support where and when they need it.