## TL;DR
Scope the bot to two flows done well (password reset guidance and VPN triage), with a prominent human-escalation path on every screen. Measure containment vs escalation and user satisfaction. A bot that handles two things reliably beats one that attempts twenty badly.

## The error
```text
(Automation project; no error.)
```

## Steps
1. Pick the two flows: password reset (link to SSPR + enrollment help) and VPN triage (the three-way isolation test as a decision tree). Expected: scoped. These are the highest-volume tier-1 tickets.
2. Design the escalation first: a visible "talk to a human" option at every step, passing the conversation history to the human agent. Expected: designed. Escalation is the feature users remember.
3. Build the flows with clear success criteria per step. Expected: built. Each step should have a "did this work? yes/no" branch.
4. Pilot with a friendly user group for a month. Expected: feedback collected. Watch where users abandon; that is where the flow is wrong.
5. Measure: containment rate, escalation rate, CSAT for bot-handled vs human-handled. Expected: reported. Expand scope only when the first two flows are solid.

## When to use
- Tier-1 deflection pilot
- High volume of simple repetitive tickets

## When not to use
- Complex diagnostics (beyond decision trees)
- Orgs without SSPR (the bot cannot reset passwords itself securely)

## Compatibility
- Any chatbot platform integrated with the ITSM

## Variants
### Bot inside Slack/Teams
Meet users where they are; adoption is much higher than a separate portal.
### AI-powered bot
Can handle more varied phrasing, but needs guardrails and the same escalation design.

## Why it happens
Tier 1 is mostly a small set of flows repeated endlessly. A chatbot is economical exactly to the extent its flows are narrow and its escalation is graceful.

## Edge cases
- Never let the bot handle account recovery end-to-end without strong verification.
- Review bot transcripts weekly; they reveal both bot bugs and process gaps.

## Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_ynpBdh-uGgkrCpDwgA5RTw