AI-enabled support cuts downtime
No matter how robust systems and processes are, service disruptions are impossible to eliminate entirely. And when downtime happens, productivity slumps. IT teams often struggle to respond to downtime fast enough to offset costly delays for customers. But AI is changing the game and offering organizations a solution.
Generative AI does not have working hours or a time zone and can respond to events as soon as they happen. It can also automatically summarize and triage tickets according to urgency, which makes it easier for human agents to prioritize cases and get employees back to work.
There are also benefits for IT teams, who are often stretched and under pressure to reduce the impact of downtime. Again, Productivity Leaders understand this: 92% say that generative AI–powered support systems have reduced the burden on IT teams, compared with just 42% of Late Adopters.
AI also has the potential to prevent incidents in the first place. Australian construction and property development company Built uses AI for predictive monitoring and analytics, according to Kurt Brissett, Built's chief digital and innovation officer.
“We're increasingly implementing contemporary digital tools and leveraging AI to detect and protect against cyber threats and proactively measure and predict cloud infrastructure performance," says Brissett. "We have also implemented a range of real-time dashboards for our support staff. These capabilities have provided the team with improved situational awareness, including the ability to track system health, usage trends and make rapid evidence-based decisions.”
Productivity Leaders have seen early returns on investment and are doubling down on generative AI. Now that they understand the technology's role within their business environment, they are starting to relax their guardrails: 92% say they are comfortable allowing generative AI to work autonomously in IT support. By contrast, Late Adopters are much more hesitant: Just 32% feel this way.
76% have increased investment in their generative AI–supported service desks in the past 12 months, compared with only about one-third of Late Adopters.
93% plan to accelerate AI business transformation in the coming year, compared with only 38% of Late Adopters.
Forward-thinking organizations are starting to focus on agentic AI, which could resolve employee downtime incidents proactively.
“With traditional AI, it actually responds to you in all the permutations you’ve prepared it to do, which currently provides value in our organization. However, agentic AI has the ability to autonomously provide unique solutions, situations and generate new "permutations" that its creators didn't explicitly prompt it for an answer,” says Sean Moore, chief information officer at global logistics organization CJ Logistics America. "The best use cases right now are hybrid, where it sits hand in hand with humans. We’re already piloting capabilities while taking a pragmatic approach to make sure it delivers value before going all in.”
Almost every Productivity Leader has started experimenting with agentic AI to see how it can augment traditional support models (91%, compared with only 20% of the Late Adopters).
Once again, Productivity Leaders are getting ahead of their competition, and this is translating into better performance against commercial targets.
