Microsoft is revolutionizing its internal IT helpdesk operations, focusing on improving employee experiences through a strategic partnership with ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM). This collaboration involves migrating legacy IT tools and features to ServiceNow ITSM, leading to significant advancements across several key areas.
Automation is now a key focus, which includes streamlining IT workflows and processes, improving service level agreements (SLAs), integrating AI and machine learning (ML), and deploying virtual agents. Furthermore, data visualization, robust monitoring, and improved reporting capabilities have been added across the IT helpdesk organization. The collaboration’s aim is to enhance its internal IT environment and improve the experience for mutual customers.
Accelerating Digital Transformation
The Microsoft Global Helpdesk supports over 170,000 employees and partners across 150 countries and regions. This new ITSM environment handles over 3,000 user requests daily, showcasing its enterprise scale. Through collaboration, Microsoft and ServiceNow have accelerated their IT transformation and improved IT service management effectiveness. The Global IT Helpdesk provides key insights and feedback to ServiceNow, while ServiceNow provides a large-scale feedback mechanism for continuous platform enhancements.
Modernizing the Internal Support Experience
Previously, in instances where internal support needs exceeded the capabilities of existing systems, Microsoft engineers would develop custom tools. Today, the combined effort leverages the ServiceNow platform, which delivers a unified IT helpdesk experience, scalability, enhanced productivity, and accelerated digital IT transformation.
ServiceNow provides core functionality, with Microsoft integrating their custom tools and processes into the platform. ServiceNow regularly adds and improves functionality, often based on Microsoft’s feedback, creating a collaborative relationship that benefits both organizations and their customers.
Rapid Innovation Through Collaboration
Microsoft-developed tools often serve as a foundation for new ServiceNow features. For example, the recent implementation of ServiceNow ITSM Predictive Intelligence began as an experimental, machine learning-based solution within Microsoft’s environment. This system automatically routed a selection of helpdesk incidents, reducing the need for manual triage from support agents. The data allowed Microsoft to develop its model further, and the knowledge gathered was shared with ServiceNow. By transitioning from the experimental solution to ServiceNow ITSM Predictive Intelligence, Microsoft benefited from the platform’s built-in flexibility and scalability, streamlining the adoption of predictive intelligence within its helpdesk services landscape.
Establishing Practical Goals
Predictive intelligence is one among many ongoing ITSM modernization efforts. Other initiatives include virtual agent integration, sentiment analysis, anomaly detection, troubleshooting workflows, and natural-language processing. Microsoft’s focus on improving the helpdesk agent experience using ServiceNow ITSM revolves around three key areas: automation, monitoring, and self-help.
- Automation: Automating processes, like incident triaging, allows helpdesk agents more time to focus on more complex tasks. Feature implementations include orchestration and AI. ServiceNow Playbooks provide step-by-step guidance for service incident resolution; many include automated steps that reduce human error and mean time to resolution (MTTR).
- Monitoring: Enhanced monitoring provides improved responsiveness. Implementations include proactive remediation, knowledge cataloging, and trend identification. Integration with Microsoft Endpoint Manager provides device context and alerts within ServiceNow to support agents.
- Self-Help: Self-service capabilities help users resolve issues independently, reducing the workload on IT helpdesk agents. Features include natural language understanding and bot-to-bot interactions. ServiceNow Virtual Agent, for example, integrates with Microsoft Teams for bot-to-bot interactions to enable self-help options. Integration with Microsoft support provides access to Microsoft 365 service-health information and recommended solutions within ServiceNow.
Examining the Modern Support Experience
Microsoft adopts a holistic approach to unify its internal service desk platform under ServiceNow. The agent and user experiences are shaped by the functionality and health of the Global Helpdesk organization. All aspects of the support environment are examined, including tool usage, agent experience, and potential gaps in the toolset.
Analysis is organized into several categories:
- Comprehensive Best Practices: Emphasizing the Global Helpdesk team as a strategic partner in support at Microsoft.
- Interaction Management: Examining how helpdesk agents and users interact with the platform.
- Incident Management: Assessing how incidents are created, managed, triaged, and resolved. This includes integrating virtual agents and automating incident routing.
- Knowledge Management: Improving how agents and users access knowledge for support, standardizing knowledge content and improving self-service capabilities.
- Governance and Platform Management: Managing and overseeing the ServiceNow ITSM platform and its interaction with the wider environment.
Creating Value Within the Helpdesk Support Experience
Microsoft and ServiceNow continue to enhance the ServiceNow environment, evaluating features from various organizational and product perspectives. Microsoft’s general feature evaluation and migration process includes:
- Evaluating business needs
- Determining product roadmaps, organizational goals, and support requirements
- Identifying risks, benefits, and effects of migration
- Obtaining organizational support
- Establishing plans for transition, deallocation, and retirement of legacy tools and systems
- Engaging in feature implementation
- Measuring progress and review results
Integrating ServiceNow ITSM and Microsoft Products
Microsoft and ServiceNow are working together to deeply integrate their products. This includes integrating device-management capabilities and reporting data from Microsoft Intune, improving contextual data and extending the capabilities of ServiceNow. The Microsoft Global Helpdesk team has observed significant benefits, including:
- Increased business value
- Reduced service-desk management effort
- Improved helpdesk agent experience
- Reduced mean time to resolution
Microsoft continues to learn about the migration process, aiming to transform the IT helpdesk environment for greater efficiency. Key lessons include starting with small-scale implementations and expanding scope as a feature matures, gaining stakeholder buy-in early, and testing scalability and establishing monitoring early. The company is working on deeper integrations, including the use of AI and machine learning, to simplify and strengthen automation capabilities.
