Introduction

In today's fast-paced and increasingly globalized business landscape, organizations face an array of challenges that demand innovative solutions. Scaling operations to meet rising demands, catering to a diverse set of customer needs and navigating through global headwinds such as economic fluctuations or regulatory changes are just a few of the hurdles that companies must overcome.

To address these multifaceted challenges, forward-thinking enterprises are deploying Agentic AI, a sophisticated automation technology that empowers businesses to streamline their services and enhance efficiency. It doesn’t just answer questions—it automates routine tasks, optimizes decision-making processes and improves overall productivity, allowing enterprises to serve their internal and external stakeholders better.

Transforming internal operations with custom AI agents

At HCLTech, we have long been using GenAI and Agentic AI to enable the full potential of employees and internal stakeholders for our customers and increasingly for ourselves.

From a technology standpoint, while almost all global hyperscalers are offering GenAI and Agentic AI capabilities, it has been Microsoft Copilot and especially custom agents with Copilot Studio that have evinced tremendous interest across our end user landscape.

Copilot Studio-driven custom agents are revolutionizing employee services for enterprises and organizations by harnessing the power of AI to deliver unparalleled support and efficiency. These custom agents can seamlessly integrate with existing workflows, providing personalized and real-time assistance to employees across various functions.

The benefits are manifold, including reduced operational costs, improved decision-making capabilities and a more engaged and motivated workforce.

As a real-world engagement with the tool, we're piloting an innovative approach with our HR teams that positions Copilot Studio-driven agents as the primary interface for all employee interactions, replacing traditional support portals and ticketing systems with a unified, intelligent touchpoint.

Leveraging Copilot's ServiceNow integration capability, the agent resolves issues on first contact whenever possible. When escalation is needed, it automatically generates detailed tickets with complete context, eliminating typical back-and-forth delays. This approach delivers significant cost savings through reduced ServiceNow licensing, streamlined configuration and decreased manual intervention, while measurably reducing overall ticket volume.

Beyond operational efficiency, this Copilot-first strategy will allow the leadership to get valuable insights based on the rich analytics generated from user engagement with Copilot and make continuous improvements.

Addressing challenges, limitations and plans for the future

Microsoft Copilot-driven Agentic AI solutions are significantly transforming how enterprises enhance employee and internal user experiences, introducing efficiencies and personalized interactions.

However, technology is evolving rapidly, presenting new challenges along the way. We discuss some of the commonly faced challenges below:

• Accuracy and hallucination: AI systems can sometimes provide incorrect answers or reference irrelevant documents, leading to confusion and dissatisfaction. Context and data source accuracy are the key aspects that need to be kept in mind when designing the solution.
• Misinterpretation of queries: AI may misinterpret user queries, resulting in irrelevant associations and responses. The key is to expand the AI’s vocabulary with keywords, topics and flows (positive and negative response flows) to address all possible variations and continue to add and learn.
• Limited feedback mechanisms: Feedback mechanisms need to be robustly built as a part of design to ensure that end user feedback is fed back into the design and architecture enabling continuous improvement across releases.
• Integration challenges: Integrating AI systems with existing line-of-business platforms like SAP, Jira, ServiceNow can be complex and require careful planning to ensure a seamless user experience.

Looking into the future, Agentic AI solutions will continue to revolutionize customer interactions while increasingly focusing on internal workloads, thereby benefiting employees, partners and various business functions within our own organizations.

By leveraging these solutions, we can expect to see enhanced decision-making capabilities, reduced operational costs and a more engaged workforce. However, it is crucial to maintain clarity in design, ensuring the AI accurately understands queries and provides contextual responses to avoid confusion and dissatisfaction.