Tech Support of the Future Will Be Cognitive

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Today, retail shoppers expect to get consistency in brand interactions across channels. Thanks to advances in technologies like Internet of Things, analytics, social media, and more, they have come to expect relevant and timely offers based on their online behavior, purchase history, and “in-the-moment” experience, as well as on more personal or social events, such as holidays or anniversaries. Shoppers also now have visibility into available inventory and the flexibility into how their orders are fulfilled regardless of which purchasing channel they use.

What if we applied the same cognitive retail processes and technologies to the realm of technical support – the IT help desk? You could easily imagine that tech support would be more engaging. For example, users might be offered multiple ways in which to interact with support, and tech support would know which channels would optimize a particular end user’s experience, and ultimately better meet the company’s business objectives.

However possible, real challenges exist that can prevent such a tech support utopia. For starters, the promise of the anywhere, anytime, any device workplace typically results in a management nightmare, with too many choices available and too much information to store, manage and retrieve.

Currently, the average employee is distracted by system disruptions once every 11 minutes and needs an average of 25 minutes to refocus on tasks. People compensate by working faster (but not necessarily more effectively), and experience more stress, higher levels of frustration, and greater time pressures. I don’t have to tell you that this isn’t good for a company’s bottom line.

But it can be accomplished. Smarter tech support operations can be created by incorporating analytics and cognitive technologies into solutions that can learn what is important, contextually, and take the right actions on behalf of the user – sometimes before the user even realizes an issue has occurred. The new IBM Client Care Services – Powered by Watson delivers what end users and our clients’ enterprises need to transform the support experience by driving cognitive capabilities into the digital workplace.

Similar to how your favorite retailer can predict what promotions, items and trends might interest you the individual, the cognitive workplace will become an ever more personalized experience, anticipating, advising and assisting in ways that we never imagined possible. And this is just the beginning.

Today, creating a more effective and productive user experience is possible by using multichannel IT support, along with an optimized network, to manage the increased data workloads of monitoring, tracking and digitizing structured and unstructured data. The workplace of the future will embrace emerging new cognitive and analytic capabilities.

These tools can provide insights into how employees engage most effectively, the best technologies for each task and each individual, and help provide a seamless work environment—an environment that will help to attract and retain the best talent.