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April 24, 2019

ManageEngine Debuts Conversational Virtual Support Agent for its ITSM Solution at its 2019 User Conference

Zia Helps Service Desk Plus Users Reduce Response Times Boost Technician Efficiency

  • Service desk teams can offload L1 tickets by programming Zia to fulfill requests
  • Zia answers FAQs, updates records, interacts with third-party apps, and more
  • Supports end users over chat and voice interfaces on multiple devices and platforms

PLEASANTON, Calif. - April 24, 2019 - ManageEngine, the IT management division of Zoho Corporation, today announced that the cloud version of ServiceDesk Plus, its flagship IT service management solution, now includes Zia, Zoho's AI assistant as a virtual IT support agent. Zia can answer simple questions, perform service desk operations, and interact with third-party apps, reducing response times and boosting technician efficiency. End users and technicians can chat with Zia in a conversational interface, or converse with Zia Voice to access more than a dozen out-of-the-box Zia actions, as well as any custom Zia actions created by service desk teams.

ManageEngine will debut Zia for ServiceDesk Plus at its 2019 User Conference in Dallas, Texas from April 24-26.

One of the biggest challenges for service desk teams is striking the right balance between business-critical ITSM projects and keeping up with daily firefighting or answering less crucial questions from end users. The lack of immediate access to the service desk team and service desk information can lead to end user frustration and lower satisfaction rates. A 24/7 virtual support agent helps address these challenges by offering end users prompt support. Virtual support agents are also valuable for technicians working in the field who may not have access to standard service desk interface and resources. Being able to interface by voice commands with a virtual support agent is beneficial for troubleshooting and implementing corrective actions.

"While business end users want on-demand access to IT service desk personnel, IT support staff prefer to focus on higher priority activities and do away with attending to level 1 support. Zia brings perfect balance to service desk operations by offering end users the same quality of support they’d receive from technicians, relieving support staff so they can focus on far more important tasks,” said Rajesh Ganesan, vice president of product management at ManageEngine. “We envision Zia will evolve into a smart AI-powered personal assistant offering contextual support, providing immediate assistance for every user in the organization, and elevating the user experience many notches."

Redefining First Point of Contact for IT Service Desk Users

"With the debut of Zia as a virtual support agent, we are laying the groundwork for enhancing service delivery and service desk efficiency with AI,” said Umasankar Narayanasamy, director of engineering at ManageEngine. “We plan to add predictive analytics and intelligent automations to Zia, so customers won’t need to write manual rules."

Zia can perform a wide variety of tasks, including:

  • Providing answers to straightforward questions.
  • Pulling up service desk data to answer more complex questions.
  • Triggering service desk operations through a tree-structured interaction.
  • Sharing relevant knowledge base articles based on end users’ inputs.
  • Automatically handing off user requests to technicians via live chat or by creating a new request.

To learn more about Zia's ITSM capabilities, visit http://bit.ly/sdp-zia.

Building Custom Zia Actions for ServiceDesk Plus

Apart from the out-of-the-box Zia actions available, service desk teams can script custom Zia actions to answer questions, perform activities in external tools that integrate with ServiceDesk Plus, and more. The serverless Zia developer console offers development and production modes, making it easier for service desk teams to script and save custom Zia actions for immediate use in ServiceDesk Plus. Each custom Zia action can be built with multiple conversations, and IT staff can add provisions for Zia to collect appropriate inputs at every stage of an interaction.

Pricing and Availability

Zia is freely available in all editions of the cloud version of ServiceDesk Plus. IT service desk teams can sign up for a 30-day free trial of ServiceDesk Plus at http://bit.ly/signupsdp.

About ServiceDesk Plus

ServiceDesk Plus is ITIL-ready service desk software with integrated asset and project management capabilities. With advanced ITSM functionality and easy-to-use capability, ServiceDesk Plus helps IT support teams deliver world-class service to end users with reduced costs and complexity. It comes in three editions and is available in 29 different languages. More than 100,000 organizations across 185 countries trust ServiceDesk Plus to optimize IT service desk performance and achieve high end user satisfaction.

To learn more about ServiceDesk Plus, and its features, please click on the following link: www.manageengine.com/service-desk.

About ManageEngine

ManageEngine is the enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corporation. Established and emerging enterprises - including more than 60 percent of the Fortune 500 - rely on our real-time IT management tools to ensure optimal performance of their IT infrastructure, including networks, servers, applications, desktops and more. We have offices worldwide, including the United States, the Netherlands, India, Singapore, Japan, China, and Australia as well as a network of 200+ global partners to help organizations tightly align their businesses and IT. For more information, please visit www.manageengine.com; follow the company blog at blogs.manageengine.com and on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/manageengine, Facebook at www.facebook.com/ManageEngine and Twitter @ManageEngine.

Media Contact:

Avinash Kagava
ManageEngine
avinash.kagava@zohocorp.com
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