Espressive Introduces Barista Conversational Surveys and Smart Ticketing, Delivering Improved Workforce Productivity and Fast Time to Value

Advancements in AI-Based Virtual Support Agent Barista Improve MTTR and Employee Satisfaction while Accelerating Digital Transformation During Times of Change

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Espressive, a pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI) for enterprise service management (ESM) and a 2019 Gartner Cool Vendor, today announced the latest advances in its virtual support agent (VSA) Espressive Barista, including Barista Conversational Surveys, the first AI-based survey to inform decision making while triggering actions in real time. Additionally, the new Barista Smart Ticketing capability employs machine learning (ML) to build a predictive model to accurately classify, assign, and prioritize tickets, enabling fast deployment and improved mean time to resolve (MTTR).

“In today’s economic climate, it has become extremely important for enterprises to implement digital technologies enabling them to innovate, execute, and pivot faster than the competition,” said Pat Calhoun, CEO and founder of Espressive. “The challenge CIOs face is that any new technology has to deliver an extremely fast time to value with a positive impact on workforce productivity. Today’s announcements further position Espressive customers to meet both of those objectives.”

Barista Conversational Surveys Improve Workforce Productivity During Change

Barista Conversational Surveys are a dynamic survey tool designed to inform decision making while triggering actions in real time. The interactive survey can be deployed to proactively gauge an employee’s well-being during any time of change, from crisis to a company-wide technology transition.

For example, when a crisis, such as a pandemic, forces employees to work from home for an extended period of time, there can be significant concern about the idea of returning to the office. A Barista Conversational Survey can help gauge employee readiness over time to inform decisions on policies and practices related to returning to the workplace.

“With Barista, capturing employee sentiment is simple through a conversation that is designed to be brief and timely,” said Calhoun. “As a result, there is higher employee participation so leadership can make informed decisions. Enterprises can then take immediate action such as connecting high anxiety employees to counseling services or triggering actions like ordering a new computer monitor or connecting an employee with an ergonomics specialist.”

Barista Conversational Surveys enable leadership to:

• Make decisions in real time that trigger immediate action: While traditional surveys gather answers to a set of questions for analysis, Barista Conversational Surveys are dynamic and interactive with the respondent, mimicking a conversation that triggers actions in real time.
• Understand employee sentiment over time: Leaders can get an ongoing pulse when trying to monitor employee sentiment during times of crisis or change, enabling them to make critical decisions while connecting employees to resources.
• Launch new technologies with confidence: Leaders can proactively take the pulse of employees to see if they feel more, the same, or less productive when they launch new technologies (e.g., Office 365), guiding them to the help they need if productivity has been impacted.

Barista Smart Ticketing Uses Machine Learning to Deploy Fast and Improve MTTR

In traditional ITSM systems, 30–40% of IT tickets are created incorrectly or routed to the wrong team, resulting in a phenomenon called “ticket ping pong.” Smart Ticketing is an exclusive new feature within Espressive Barista that eliminates the time help desk agents spend classifying, assigning, and prioritizing tickets. By using machine learning to build a predictive model from customer historical tickets, newly created tickets, and agent actions, customers can deploy fast without the requirement to build and maintain a large index of static rules. Because tickets are created correctly and automatically assigned to the right team from the start, Espressive customers reduce MTTR while providing a better employee experience and contributing to overall employee happiness. That is especially important during the pandemic when up to 31 percent of employees are struggling with working from home.

“ITSM Tools recently shared research that demonstrates the impact of ticket ping pong. Every time a ticket is reassigned, employee happiness drops by approximately 10 points while productivity loss increases more than one hour for every reassignment,” said Calhoun. “The employee lifecycle experience is critically important to CIOs. Smart Ticketing will help alleviate some of the distress related to getting issues solved.”

Additional Resources

• Visit espressive.com
• Read the Espressive blog
• View a Barista Conversational Surveys demo
• Learn more about Smart Ticketing
• Follow Espressive on Twitter and LinkedIn

About Espressive

Espressive, the pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI) for enterprise service management and a 2019 Gartner Cool Vendor, redefines how employees get help by delivering exceptional employee experiences. Barista, the company’s virtual support agent (VSA), brings the ease of consumer virtual assistants, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, into the workplace. Barista automates resolution of employee questions, issues, and requests with personalized experiences that result in employee adoption of 80 to 85% and reduced help desk call volume of 40 to 60%. Espressive is backed by Insight Partners, General Catalyst, and Wing Venture Capital, and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Visit www.espressive.com for more information.

Contacts

Jocelynn Stidham

Bhava Communications for Espressive

espressive@bhavacom.com