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With Velentix Conversational AI, WesternU had a seamless implementation and tied the chatbot into its existing automation platform enabling end users to take action from the chat.
WesternU estimates the conversational AI chatbot can now handle at least 20 percent of the questions coming into tech support – freeing up IT staff to work on more strategic projects.
By building out integrations and automations within the chatbot, WesternU has a versatile chatbot that brings significant value to end users and empowers better IT self-service.
Industry: Higher Education
End-users: 4,000+
Previous System: Ivy.AI
Western University of Health Sciences (WesternU), a private health professions university in Pomona, California, and Lebanon, Oregon supports nearly 4,000 students across more than twenty academic programs. To shift some of the tech support burden off IT staff members while enabling students and employees to have their questions answered more quickly, WesternU has added a conversational AI chatbot to its IT service portal.
WesternU is using Velentix to manage IT services. In venturing into conversational AI, the university’s IT team initially tried a chatbot from another service provider, but they didn’t get very far with this project. The chatbot itself wasn’t easy to implement, and support was lacking from this other vendor, Janet Magana, Systems Administrator, explains.
When the team learned that Velentix was introducing its own AI chatbot with an automation layer for action-based self-service, they jumped at the opportunity to swap out their current chatbot in favor of an integrated solution that could also leverage automation to take action.
“It’s so much easier to implement and use,” Magana says. “We’ve gotten much further with the Velentix chatbot than we ever did with our other one. The implementation process was really seamless. It is also tied into their automation and integration platform which means that the chatbot can actually take action versus just answer a question.”
The university’s IT staff started training on the chatbot in February 2024, and they did a soft launch of the service for their user community at the end of June. Moving forward, IT leaders believe the chatbot could handle about 20 percent of the questions tech support receives—freeing up IT staff for more strategic work.
The Velentix platform with automation and integration allows system administrators to create integrations and workflows between applications and processes with no knowledge of coding required.
Building utterances and intents within the Velentix chatbot uses a similar process. Because Magana and her colleagues were already familiar with this process from their use of Velentix for ITSM, learning how to program the Velentix chatbot was fairly simple for them, Magana says.
What’s more, having integration and automation capabilities within the chatbot makes it extremely versatile. WesternU is leveraging these capabilities to build simple integrations with third-party software programs, bringing a lot of value to end users.
Already, they’ve created several use cases to help WesternU students and employees get immediate help with specific IT questions. For example:
Checking for assets: Employees can ask the chatbot what IT assets they’ve been assigned, and the bot will connect with the Velentix asset management module to retrieve this information and report it back to the user.
Adobe software licensing: Certain employees of the university can use Acrobat software under an institutional agreement that WesternU has with Adobe. Employees can ask the bot if they have an Adobe license, and it will verify the user as an employee and check whether they have a license for the Adobe software or not. If they don’t have a license, the bot can provision a license for them automatically by interfacing with the Adobe Admin Center. If they do have a license, the bot will ask if they are having issues with Adobe, and if they are they will be redirected to tech support.
Accessibility information: If a user has a question about accessibility, the bot will run a check to see if they’re an employee or student. Students will be redirected to the university’s accessibility center. Employees will be asked to clarify what type of machine they’re using. Depending on the device they’re using, the bot will provide contextually relevant articles from the university’s knowledge base.
Wi-Fi Troubleshooting: If a user is experiencing issues with connecting to the Wi-Fi on campus, the bot will ask which network they’re trying to access and give two options to choose from, eduroam or guest. Once a response is chosen the corresponding KB article will show. The bot will then follow up with a question to ask if they were able to connect to the Wi-Fi and present two options, Yes or No. If the user selects yes, the bot will thank them for confirming. If the user selects no, the bot will ask if they’re trying to connect to eduroam and present two options, Yes or No. If yes is selected, the corresponding KB article will show. If no is selected, the bot will recommend the user restart their device. The bot will then follow up with a question to ask if they were able to connect to the Wi-Fi and present two options, Yes or No. If no is selected, the corresponding KB article will show. If yes is selected, the bot will thank them for confirming.
Password resets: WesternU’s IT team receives many requests for password resets through email and phone calls. Users can request a password reset using the chatbot. The bot will ask users if they’re a student, employee or alum. Depending on their response, it will give them the correct instructions for resetting their password.
Update or View Ticket: If a user wants to update or view one of their tickets, the bot will ask if they want to update or view a ticket. If the user selects update, the bot will respond with steps on how to update their ticket along with a link to their ticket requests. If the user wants to view a ticket they’ve submitted, the bot will ask for the ticket number.
University IT leaders are checking daily to see what kinds of questions are being asked of the bot, and they’re using this insight to plan future intents and utterances.
Although the chatbot was launched with the goal of answering IT-related questions only, Magana and her colleagues have found that many people are using it to ask about other issues, such as how to submit requests for time off. This could lead the university to expand the bot’s use for enterprise service requests as well, Magana says.
Finding the right balance in promoting the bot’s availability was a little bit of a challenge initially. When it first launched, the bot was available as an icon in the bottom right corner of the university’s service portal, but it wasn’t being used. The IT team changed this setup to have the chatbot window open automatically when users accessed the portal.
Although usage skyrocketed, some users complained they were annoyed by the presence of the chat window. Now, this window is minimized, but the bot’s icon bounces to call attention to the service.
“We want to keep our customers happy,” Magana explains.
Adding a conversational AI chatbot to improve IT self-service has been a win-win for WesternU tech staff and stakeholders alike.
“It doesn’t have to be scary,” Operations Support Specialist Tia Bemis concludes. “It looks like a lot to learn, but it’s actually quite easy to pick up.”
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