Digital Experience Monitoring Insights

DEM solutions can help identify and resolve issues, improve observability and automate routine tasks in the helpdesk, while enhancing personalization of services and increase operational efficiency. The focus on employee experience is crucial, and organizations can use user data and sentiment analysis to improve engagement.  

Harness AI/ML to proactively manage end user experience

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) are increasingly integrated into various technology solutions, with Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) solutions leading the way. While some solutions merely add AI/ML as an extension for tasks like natural language queries and generative AI, true innovation lies in DEM tools that integrate it into their core functionalities. These solutions utilize AI/ML to proactively manage and enhance the user experience, thereby reducing the mean time to resolve (MTTR) incidents in IT management.

Numerous innovative applications of AI within DEM solutions or product roadmaps include:

• Anomaly detection: Identifying trends and making early predictions on emerging issues or capacity constraints.
• Automation of Root Cause Analysis (RCA): Utilizing gathered data to understand its context, thereby reducing noise from tangential alerts.
• Generative AI for natural language queries: Facilitating data queries and creating scripted remediation where applicable.
• Intelligent assistants: Analyzing detected problems and suggesting solutions, specifically targeting affected users or systems.

An example showcasing the impact of AI/ML on a DEM solution could be as it observes the monitored systems it determines that only laptops equipped with a specific webcam firmware are experiencing crashes when running the latest versions of MS Teams. Conversely, laptops with newer firmware or Teams versions remain unaffected. The AI system advises administrators to address this issue by deploying the updated firmware version and it offers a sample deployment script tailored to target only the affected systems, which is executed after thorough testing. Furthermore, to proactively prevent such incidents in the future, a trigger is implemented. If MS Teams crashes and the older firmware version is detected, the system prompts the end-user with the choice to self-resolve by applying the update, thus avoiding the need for a service desk call.

In the future as data models are improved, systems mature, and trust is gained, it is anticipated that a fully automated AI assistant will be capable of independently identifying, analyzing, and remedying issues, either autonomously or with human approval.

Eliminate gaps in observability

Understanding and troubleshooting IT has become increasingly complex due to the shift from traditional datacenter setups to hybrid and multi-cloud environments, the rise of API-interconnected application services and the emergence of distributed workforces operating from diverse locations. Tools that were effective when all users were within the same physical site or using uniform devices are no longer sufficient in today's remote or hybrid work environments, where users employ a wide range of devices, including Windows, Mac, mobile devices and even automobiles.

Organizations are swiftly embracing new technologies to enhance their capacity to discern normalcy and identify root causes when issues arise. Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) assists organizations in maintaining a high level of observability by furnishing the necessary tools and insights to monitor, analyze and optimize digital experiences efficiently. 

By leveraging data-driven insights derived from collecting performance metrics and logs from end-user devices, organizations can pinpoint the direct impact on business users. Combining employee experience monitoring with traditional infrastructure data as part of an AIOPs observability pipeline accelerates the correlation between data sources to isolate root causes, and streamlining the process compared to individual teams analyzing data silos in isolation; this all works toward a mean time to innocence.

When enhancing observability, it's crucial to avoid merely adding more tools, as this can increase overall system load and complexity.  Organizations can derive substantial benefits when they first map detailed technical and business requirements for observability against a comprehensive assessment of existing tools and capabilities. This approach facilitates the identification of overlaps, underutilization and gaps in the existing tooling. While new tools may address some of these gaps, it's also common to find existing tools that are not fully optimized or utilized to their potential.

DEM is a core part of increasing an organization's observability enabling them to leverage data insights to identify issues and integrating employee experience monitoring for faster root cause identification.

Deploy intelligent helpdesk for seamless employee experience

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can help to automate routine tasks, such as password resets and other basic troubleshooting. This will free human agents to take on more complex issues and will improve the overall efficiency of the helpdesk. AI can also help to improve response time; this is done by using algorithms to more efficiently route incoming tickets based on urgency and complexity.

The power of an AI knowledge base is almost unquantifiable. Utilizing AI to help organize data from multiple repositories to streamline the human agent's ability to search SOPs, FAQs and troubleshooting documentation will both improve mean-time-to-resolution, while also creating both improved employee and customer experiences. AI solutions can also improve the helpdesk's ability to continuously improve by providing deep insights into performance, efficiency, sentiment and response times. 

Hybrid work has created an immense amount of flexibility for workers and improved employee experience over the last several years. However, it has also created a more complex environment that IT needs to support. What used to be 10,000 users with the exact same devices sitting on an IT controlled network, now requires IT to support multiple disparate devices per user across uncontrolled and unknown networks. Automating tickets for the helpdesk will no longer be a luxury and will become a requirement to ensure the helpdesk can even maintain the status quo. Organizations will have to look at AIOps solutions and best practices to scale to these new requirements. 

AI can also be leveraged to improve the end users' support experience, giving us the ability to provide proactive support via virtual assistants. We have moved well past chatbots automating password resets. Digital Employee Experience (DEX) solutions, for example, can provide us insights to determine if a user attempts to launch an app which fails which then can trigger a virtual assistant that can proactively offer support or steps to resolve the issue. 

We can also use AI to help enhance the personalization of services provided to each individual customer contacting the helpdesk. This includes 24/7 support from AI powered virtual assistants and chatbots and automated systems engaging users using natural language. This provides a drastically different customer experience than previous chatbots and automated services. AI solutions can also monitor customer sentiment to measure success and derive insights from each experience helping to improve future engagements. It is important to note that all these AI solutions require human oversight and continued training to avoid purpose drift and hallucinations. AI is not meant to replace workers, but workers will need to effectively and responsibly be able to take advantage of the efficiencies created by these AI solutions.

Leverage technology to increase operational efficiency

When assessing the benefits of DEM solutions, it's crucial to consider their impact on both improving the end-user experience and efficiency, as well as IT gains.  Operational efficiencies can stem from reductions in software and hardware costs, as well as minimizing digital friction that affects productivity and user satisfaction.

Several benefits of DEM contribute to enhancing the efficiency of IT solutions that end-users interact with include:

• Enhancing productivity: Improving digital employee experience by ensuring availability and frictionless access to applications and data which improves user productivity by allowing them to focus on tasks rather than waiting for IT support.
• Talent attraction and retention: Prioritize the digital employee experience to attract top-tier talent and retain skilled staff with a contemporary and user-friendly digital work environment.
• Understanding employee preferences: Utilize endpoint data and analytics to delve into employee preferences regarding digital tools and usage patterns which provide valuable insights to enable organizations to make well-informed decisions about resource allocation, process enhancements and future digital initiatives.

When considering the benefits to IT from a DEM solution, some of the improvements that could be realized are:

• Software license optimization: With detailed metrics of what software is deployed and used over time, businesses can recognize savings by reclaiming and reducing licenses.
• Hardware optimization: Allows for a data-driven approach to endpoint lifecycle processes by evaluating if a device under-performing is impacting the end-user and should be cycled early, or still meeting needs and capable of an extended refresh cycle.

The true value of DEM emerges when insights are gained through a business-aligned iterative process and then implemented to ensure a seamless end-user experience, thereby aligning IT initiatives with business objectives.

The digital employee experience matters

The primary source of employee frustration often lies in technology-related issues, which can subsequently translate into dissatisfaction among customers. Fortunately, these challenges are easily addressable. Forward-thinking organizations leverage employee experience as a competitive advantage. This umbrella term encompasses various strategies and initiatives aimed at boosting employee satisfaction within a company.

In the domain of digital experience management (DEM), the emphasis of employee experience is on optimizing user interactions with IT applications. Modern approaches to enhancing the employee experience rely on the proactive involvement of the IT department. By systematically monitoring user experiences, organizations can identify and rectify weaknesses in the employee journey.

Concrete measures to improve the employee experience are diverse and encompass the provision of contemporary hardware, user-friendly tools, responsive helpdesks and accessible access systems. The significance of remote work is underscored, with an increasing number of companies ensuring that employees have network access and can use collaboration tools regardless of time and location. This requirement extends beyond laptops to include all mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

Utilizing user data and sentiment analysis proves to be a powerful tool for assessing and improving employee engagement within organizations. For instance, enhancing the right workstream can be subjective; a 10x improvement from 10 to 1 second has a more significant impact than a shift from 1 to 0.1 seconds.