Gen AI Service Desks: Drive Digital Transformation

In our previous stacks of articles on Generative AI, we’ve covered a diverse range of topics 一 if one dived deep to explain the cost-effectiveness of Generative AI for ITSM, the other went on to talk about how Generative AI can reshape ITOps in the future.

Given its immense potential to create unique content from scratch, Generative AI can expand content generation across industries with varied perspectives.

Today, we will discuss content generation for IT Support Documentation with Generative AI.

IT support documentation is essential for IT knowledge workers to maximize integrated knowledge bases that help run IT operations smoothly.

In fact, ITSM management, end-to-end IT service delivery,employee productivity and efficiency, and customer experience largely depend on comprehensive employee IT support documentation.

But, it isn’t easy to manage the end-to-end production of IT Support documentation.

Sometimes, the publication of documentation on the intranet or company websites gets delayed due to the complicated nature of production.

Generative AI provides astounding scale to the production, accessibility, and application of IT support documentation in the enterprise context.

In this article, we deep dive to explore Generative AI in making IT support documentation a breeze while providing ample ways to overcome the existing challenges.

In the report, ‘The economic potential of Generative AI: The next productivity frontier,’ McKinsey has claimed that Generative AI could unleash 63 use cases across 16 business functions.

Generative AI is likely to fetch economic value worth up to $4.4 trillion annually if applied across business applications.

One that could contribute to these massive economic benefits is improved labor productivity.

We can certainly relate the productivity gains to documentation generation, which has direct implications for cost reduction.

As per McKinsey, there are multiple ways Generative AI can be used for content documentation across business functions,

• Risk model documentation in banking

• Customer documentation in pharma

• Regulatory compliance documentation in every industry

• Commercial documentation in marketing

• Software engineering documentation

Since content creation is one powerful capability of Generative AI, the use case is also effective for IT support documentation.

Employee IT support documentation is closely related to a set of instructions, procedures, or best practices for internal employees to keep an IT infrastructure and environment running while ensuring the good health of the IT systems.

At the core, employee IT support documentation aims at improving IT service delivery, user productivity, regulatory compliance, and driving business success.

Common use cases of IT support documentation include creating new products, troubleshooting existing or new IT issues, assisting in user onboarding, and helping users adopt business products.

Some examples of documentation for employee IT support are,

• User manuals

• FAQs

• Knowledge bases

• Wikis

• Other learning resources

It is imperative to share knowledge across teams so they can learn fast and apply the best practice to optimize resources and drive improved results.

If knowledge is disorganized or they are not documented, it is tough to disseminate consistent knowledge across teams to address a specific issue.

Say a bug issue in a software application that an expert fixed appears again. If it is not documented, diagnosing symptoms and determining the corrective steps would be repeated. Troubleshooting steps may be error-prone.

But a documented troubleshooting guide makes handling an incident faster and more seamless.

Image description: Atlassian IT support documentation for developers and community

Source: Atlassian

As a result, documenting IT procedures helps reduce the impact of downtime and enables real-time problem-solving consistently with an improved focus on regulatory compliance at the workplace.

IT documentation perhaps helps customers get along well with the product and maximize product output for their business functions.

Image description: Workativ customer onboarding documentation

For example, if any customer uses the Workativ conversational AI platform for automating IT or HR support, they can make great use of knowledgebase resources to learn steps to create an issue within the collaboration channels, such as MS Teams or Slack, to solve employee issues and improve their experiences.

Consistent and standardized IT support documentation is needed for any enterprise service or solution provider.

But the adversity emerges for an organization as they lack ample resources to work consistently to build effective documentation.

• Delayed production of IT documentation

Technical documentation is a time-consuming activity. The process may take several months, if not years, from ideation to strategizing and development to publishing.

The direct impact is the product is ready to hit the market, but the documentation is incomplete.

• Lack of real-time revision

Software suites or applications go through many changes over time for seamless adoption and user experience.

The challenge is if the technical writers are available to capture the latest change in the product, the product engineers are hardly available. Besides, the pain of getting approval from subject matter experts is another level of challenge.

• Inappropriate knowledge delivery

Sometimes, a product update needs less than a minute to make a change. Unfortunately, this iteration does not happen because employees are busy with their specific jobs, disseminating wrong information and impacting user experience.

• Inconsistent documentation

This happens when technical writers working on content creation do not align properly.

As a result, content layout, design, and formation lack consistency and restrict readability.

• No uniformity in the design structure

There are chances to have IT documentation disorganized, meaning they do not follow proper steps for a particular procedure and even lack illustrations or diagrams.

The possibilities are endless when you have Generative AI to help with IT support documentation.

Generative AI can generate various IT support documentation more flexibly and conveniently.

• Product documentation

Generative AI makes it easy for you to build product documents, also known as user guides, used by users who want to know how to appropriately use a specific product and gain maximum benefits from its features.

Below is an example of a product document from Workativ for its conversational AI platform.

• API documentation

The application programming interface can be created in a more simplified manner using Generative AI. API reference documentation and API tutorials are great resources for developers and the community.

This is how Dwolla’s API documentation looks.

Source: Dwolla

• Support knowledge bases

Customers who use products need support knowledge bases for the autonomous resolution of a particular issue. Generative AI helps create these documents easily.

• SDK documentation

Software development kit or SDK provides essential tips and guides for developers to use features to develop applications or any platform appropriately.

Source: Adobe Commerce

Many other types of employee IT support documentation can be created with the help of Generative AI, such as SOP, whitepapers, FAQs, etc.

• Development of consistent documentation

When developed using Generative AI-powered systems, IT support documentation contains accurate information and fewer errors, helping users optimize resources and drive faster results.

• Contextual help for problem resolution

Generative eliminates mistakes and provides contextual awareness to the technical documentation for employees and customers, enabling real-time problem-solving.

• Integrated collaboration with stakeholders

With technical documentation reflecting consistent information, stakeholders stay on the same page, reducing excessive efforts for knowledge transfers and making discussions productive and effective.

• Optimized utilization of resources

Generative AI automates the process of technical documentation, thus reducing dependency on people top-down. As a result, Generative AI helps accelerate production and reduce costs.

• Reduction of support calls

Generative AI improves documentation readability and context, which helps enhance self-service capability and reduce support calls.

Workativ provides the easiest way to help you build the app workflow automation for conversational AI bots to ease HR and IT support.

The bot engine leverages the power of large language models or, specifically, Generative AI properties to help you rapidly create conversation dialog without spending huge time on the activity.

Besides, you can have the flexibility to upload any size of content to the bot environment to build your enterprise database or IT support documentation, enabling you to deliver efficient KnowledgeAI search capability to accelerate employee support through self-service enablement.

If you want to build your workplace virtual bot that simplifies employee communications and collaboration while enhancing productivity, Workativ is the answer.

Get in touch to learn more about your options to facilitate IT support in the workplace.

Generative AI brings massive opportunity to every business function. Organizations start realizing the benefits of LLM-powered content for various purposes across business operations.

Employee IT support documentation can be transformative using Generative AI use cases.

When it comes to delivering humanized content experience, Generative AI can meet your expectations with its ability to unleash natural language understanding. So, your technical documentation looks more intuitive and meaningful for users to apply conveniently.

Connect with Workativ to learn more about enriching the user experience with Generative AI-driven IT support documentation. You can also book a demo for a real-time experience with Generative AI.