OREANDA-NEWS. IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it is bringing the cognitive capabilities of Watson to the service desk for a more intelligent workplace, which will work to anticipate, predict and act to meet current and future tech support requirements.

IBM’s Workplace Support Service with Watson willtransform how service and support is delivered by integratingIBM’s helpdesk services with analytics and Watson’s cognitive capabilities, learning from user behavior and improving over time. It can support individuals on any device, any time and at any location, and will offer faster resolution of IT issues, handling the majority of support tickets when integrated with other helpdesk automation functions.

"Today, governments and enterprises need to provide an effective set of capabilities to their workforce, so that their employees can deliver a superior interaction and experience for their citizens and consumers," said Richard Esposito, general manager, GTS Mobility Services, IBM. "We need a system that can understand and communicate in a natural language conversation, one that solves problems and continues to learn while engaging with employees. Our Workplace Support Services with Watson delivers this value."

The solution sets the standard for organizations that are looking to provide consistent around-the-clock IT support to a geographically dispersed, mobile workforce, for a growing range of devices, at a set price point, as well as:

• Deliver superior personalized experience from non-technical to tech-savvy personnel

• Provide a single-point-of-contact solution, which supports both the traditional IT workplace as well as complex mobile environments

• Transform the IT user environment into a more intelligent, scalable and security-rich workplace

Watson understands and learns from virtually every interaction and proposes new possibilities through applying this learning to objectively identify the most probable answers or actions to solve user problems. As a result, the experience will be redefined as service requests are promptly resolved by ‘chatting’ with Watson in a natural and personal manner. The overall user experience will continue to improve as Watson gets to know them better. If Watson has not been trained to answer for a specific problem, the individual can be seamlessly transferred to a human service agent.

Watson's ability to address a growing volume of calls and resolve the support request is enabled by anonymously leveraging continuous feedback across all IBM clients (e.g. clicks, time spent, task completion), as well as tracking non-explicit actions (e.g. not using a survey) by the user to "grade" its responses for accuracy and quality. This ground-breaking innovation, along with IBM's more than 30 years of unrivalled experience in end-user support services, provides a globally consistent support infrastructure with leading-edge tools for the enterprise so that clients can meet the dynamic demands of supporting an increasingly mobile workforce.

IBM’s Workplace Support Services with Watson is "always-on", never takes a new job, never forgets what it has been taught and is continuously learning with each interaction. It takes a more action oriented approach rather than just offering suggestions. For example, automation integrated with Watson can perform support actions such as adding additional storage to an email account, unlocking a password, ordering of a new phone etc. Watson also provides true natural language support for the world’s most common languages, which means that it ‘thinks’ in the language the user interacts with it in and doesn't simply translate. This ensures sensitivity to language nuances and cultural differences in communication.