Charles Lalieu, Senior Managing Director for Middle East and Africa, Freshworks

The modern CIO sits at the forefront of driving digital transformation, implementing intelligent tools, and achieving more with fewer resources. For the business to grow and deliver better service, it is crucial – particularly in today’s rapidly evolving IT landscape – that the CIO selects and deploys the most effective tools into the organisation.

In the 2024 Freshservice IT Service Management Benchmark Report (FBR 2024), special emphasis is placed on the transformative role of generative AI (GenAI), highlighting its disruptive impact on the IT landscape. For CIOs and IT organisations, the advent of GenAI signifies a definite paradigm shift, as this technology offers unprecedented opportunities for innovation, efficiency, and strategic advantage.

According to Charles Lalieu, Senior Managing Director for Middle East and Africa at Freshworks, GenAI is an extremely valuable tool that can be leveraged to improve both customer service and the internal functioning of the business. “GenAI-powered self-service, for example, enables near instant conversational support for employees in channels they frequent, such as Microsoft Teams and Slack. Moreover, unlike traditional form-based and ticket-based systems, virtual agents can learn from interactions, adapt to new enquiries, and generate human-like responses,” he says.

“These agents utilise advanced AI models to assist employees or end users in the language of their choice, leading to an accessible and inclusive service experience. By integrating GenAI into self-service tools, businesses can offer 24/7 support, effectively resolve queries, and free up agents to focus on high value, complex tasks. In other words, it enables companies to foster a high-performing, empowered workforce.”

Lalieu notes that GenAI assistance also equips agents with intelligent tools that automate repetitive, low-value tasks and standardise service delivery across teams. In this way, businesses can drive high-quality ticket responses, craft concise ticket summaries, develop informative help articles, all while being both scalable and maintaining a high standard of service delivery.

The FBR 2024 indicates that GenAI adoption can drive significant ticket deflection rates of up to 53%, enabling organisations to mitigate commonly recurring issues and empower agents to focus on critical business tasks.

“Workflow automation is another way to transform service delivery and operations, by replacing mundane, routine tasks with efficient processes. By focusing automation on time consuming and lower-value tasks, organisations can optimise time management and concentrate on core objectives, allowing IT personnel to utilise their unique skills more effectively. With GenAI-powered assistance, agents experience a 26.55% improvement in response time and achieve 34.58% faster ticket resolutions.

“Of course, with AI currently flavour-of-the-month, CIOs need to focus on charting a course grounded in practicality. This means identifying genuine use cases and measuring ROI. They should avoid adopting AI for its own sake, and focus on leveraging AI-powered tools strategically, to drive business results and optimise workflows.”

Lalieu is quick to note that in the evolving landscape of IT service management in 2024, businesses simply cannot ignore the transformative impact of GenAI. This disruptive technology has ushered in a new era of efficiency and innovation, and is reshaping traditional service management paradigms. “Technology leaders today find themselves at a pivotal juncture, tasked with translating promises into tangible outcomes. There is no doubt that the journey ahead demands a strategic approach to making use of emerging technologies, navigating shifting market landscapes, and fostering collaborative partnerships across the C-suite.

“Enhancing employee experience remains a pivotal focus for IT leaders globally. The deployment and adoption of GenAI capabilities, including self-service options and agent assistance tools, represents a significant opportunity to enrich employee interactions both internally, with the company, and externally, with customers, and should set a new standard for operational excellence within IT services,” concludes Lalieu.

To download the report go to: https://www.freshworks.com/freshservice/benchmark-report-2024/