Betting on bots to better our employee technology support
October 20, 2020
Every day that Accenture people perform services for our clients, they are highly reliant on using technology to deliver results.
To efficiently enable technology for our more than 500,000 employees takes a robust technology support model that works at enterprise scale. The model consists of proactive support, self-service, automation and contact of the service desk, when needed.
We continuously fine-tune our model to provide support that is high quality, focuses on the employee experience and is cost-effective. Our employees embrace a self-service culture, and our global IT team is innovating with the use of digital assistants, better known as bots. Support bots are commonly used in our personal lives, and it’s an easy transition to encourage our people to use this type of self-service support.
MyTechHelp
Our employee technology support model incorporates several bots now, including one called MyTechHelp. It is an artificial intelligence bot, integrated into Microsoft Teams, that enables Accenture people to get quick answers, via an automated bot. We saw that with the shift to working from home following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, giving our employees the ability to retrieve technology support quickly was critical. Accenture employees can use the bot, directly within Teams, to quickly get answers to Microsoft Outlook problems, network connectivity issues, password reset questions and much more. If MyTechHelp can’t immediately provide the answer, the bot connects employees directly to the relevant support service desk team.
More than 140,000 employees have used MyTechHelp for support. During the initial months of the pandemic, the usage of this automated bot increased dramatically, helping on average of 1,600 employees each day. At its peak, it answered more than 5,000 queries in one day.
The bot also proactively ensures compliance of Accenture’s laptops and desktops. Employees not only get notified if their PCs are non-compliant with security requirements, but the bot also provides immediate remediation steps to fix the non-compliance. The bot also automatically logs a support ticket on the user’s behalf to help remediate the issue. This was a successful integration with our ServiceNow IT Service Management solution.
A Microsoft-based solution
MyTechHelp is built on the Microsoft Bot Framework, uses the Microsoft Cognitive Services product stack and is hosted in Microsoft Azure . The solution makes use of Microsoft Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS), Bing Spell Check and question-and-answer service Microsoft QnA Maker.
In developing MyTechHelp, the team closely monitored employee interactions to enhance the accuracy of the support response being provided. This information helped identify potential areas to improve. The team also conceived of a way to capture employees’ feedback, also helping to improve the bot. Overall, they express high satisfaction with MyTechHelp.
MyTechHelp’s integration with Microsoft Teams supports Accenture’s strategy of an elastic workplace, a highly extendable workplace environment that helps Accenture dynamically adapt to changing business needs based on global and local conditions.
Using bots to push the envelope on support
MyTechHelp is one element among many making up Accenture’s multidimensional employee technology support model that has a specific intent of making resolving an IT issue as simple as possible. In general, customer satisfaction with technology support at Accenture has been maintained at between 90 to 95 percent over many years. Newer services, like the use of bots, tend to have higher satisfaction scores than more established services, which helps corroborate the strategy of always pushing for the next innovation in support.
To learn more about how bots play a role in Accenture’s employee technology support model, read our full case study here.
