The News:
Digital employee experience (DEX) management provider Nexthink has introduced Nexthink Assist, a virtual assistant that leverages AI to help resource-constrained and overloaded IT teams address problems faster and more easily. This new tool uses large language models (LLMs) combined with Nexthink’s own technology and a pre-trained “natural language to query” AI generative model to support a range of activities including:
- Troubleshooting investigations
- Support in pulling together and targeting employee engagement surveys
- Creating intelligent alerts
- Analyzing digital employee experience scores to baseline and act on employee’s needs
Nexthink Assist will be generally available for Infinity customers starting in July. See the complete press release from Nexthink here.
Nexthink Assist Launched to Support Digital Employee Experience
Analyst Take:
There are a lot of digital assistants being introduced right now that leverage an easy, conversational approach, but Nexthink Assist is aimed squarely at the digital employee experience (EX). The AI-powered Nexthink Assist offers virtual assistance to IT employees and staff who are struggling with budget and time constraints, lengthy time to resolution, and inefficiencies. The ability to identify and resolve issues quickly helps to take the burden off IT staff, as well as support other employees who may be frustrated with technology issues affecting their EX.
Nexthink VP of Product Marketing Paul Gentile offered some insights into how Nexthink Assist will help improve efficiencies, make employee lives easier, and build trust in an organization.
Building Trust and Becoming Proactive
“Employees and IT are both stuck in a cycle where employees, when faced with issues don’t always go to IT first for the solution, either from a lack of trust or just learned behavior,” Gentile says. “Our own research shows that this is the 3rd option they choose (only 15% of people contact IT) only after rebooting the device and asking colleagues if they’re having the same problem. For IT, they’re not seeing or being alerted to the issues employees are having – resulting in a further disconnection and impacting the employee experience.”
Nexthink Assist helps to move organizations from being reactive to proactive by offering not just alerts, but intelligent alerts.
Gentile shares, “Alerts are only beneficial if they measure the right metric and are set up with the right context and parameters. Similar to pre-configured dashboards through the Nexthink Library, there are also various other out-of-the-box components available, including Alerts. This means that customers can implement a set of baseline alerts for their IT teams to keep an eye on through the automatic monitoring available on the platform. Furthermore, because these alert thresholds are pre-configured (and customizable) based on the benchmarking averages of the millions of other devices in the Nexthink ecosystem, IT Teams do not need to take a best guess as to what metrics should/shouldn’t trigger an alert.”
Onboarding Support and Faster ROI
Digital employee experience is a less mature area in the broader scope of employee experience, but it has been growing in importance as IT staff work to support with the hybrid work model and the challenges involved in creating a strong DEX in multiple settings. And it is an often-overlooked part of an overall EX, but could have serious repercussions if not given focus. Research points to the importance of digital employee experience with employees potentially leaving an organization that has poor DEX, but it is still often poorly understood.
“There is still a lot for companies to learn about DEX” says Gentile. “Nexthink offers a lot of public-facing industry content, but we also offer a lot of guidance when onboarding new customers.”
Nexthink Assist can be used for this purpose, being used for guided product onboarding and self-help. Compressing the time it takes to learn a platform means faster ramp-up in usage, getting value out of the technology investment faster, which will be an important consideration as budgets tighten.
Related Article: Digital Experience, AI, and Automation Are Critical to the Overall Employee Experience
Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
She brings more than 20 years of experience in technology research and marketing; prior to her current role, she was a Research Analyst at Omdia, authoring market and ecosystem reports on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and User Interface technologies. Sherril was previously Manager of Market Research at Intrado Life and Safety, providing competitive analysis and intelligence, business development support, and analyst relations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
