Source: Own Illustration
With approximately 45,000 students, around 10,000 employees, and a steadily growing number of digital offerings, the IT-ServiceDesk receives a wide variety of questions every day: from setting up Wi-Fi and software access to special services for research and teaching. In order to process these efficiently and promptly, the IT Center has recently started testing a modern solution: Ritchy – an AI-supported chatbot that assists users of IT Center services. In this article, we show how Ritchy works, what makes it special, and what advantages it offers.
How Ritchy Was Created
With around 65,000 support requests per year, the IT-ServiceDesk is facing growing challenges. This is not only due to the increasing number of students, but also to the growing internationalization of users. As a result, the variety of issues is increasing, as is the number of English-language requests. At the same time, the range of digital services is expanding, which further increases the complexity of the requests. To better meet this growing demand, Ritchy is used to provide support for frequently asked standard questions, thereby helping to significantly reduce waiting times.
What Makes Ritchy Special
Ritchy is no ordinary chatbot: it not only uses powerful language models from Microsoft Azure OpenAI, but also AI technology called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). This enables structured knowledge databases to be integrated as additional sources of information. When a query is received, Ritchy accesses content in real time from the IT Center’s specially prepared documentation portal: IT Center Help.
This is where its name comes from: RWTH IT Center Helps You – Ritchy for short. The answers provided by do not come “from the internet,” but are based on verified, context-related expertise directly from the IT Center. This makes them not only particularly reliable, but also specifically helpful for the respective use case. This makes Ritchy a valuable addition to traditional support – around the clock.
Support Around the Clock
Whether late at night or on the weekend, IT problems don’t stick to business hours. In such cases, Ritchy provides quick support. If the answer is not sufficient, a support ticket can be created directly in the chat, including the chat history. This way, support staff know immediately what the issue is. An integrated feedback system allows users to rate each response directly, either with a thumbs up or thumbs down. This feedback is incorporated directly into the further development of the chatbot and documentation.
Now it’s your turn: Try Ritchy for yourself, give us your feedback, and help us to continuously improve our support!
More Than Just a Chatbot: A Real Team Player
With Ritchy, the IT Center is demonstrating how modern AI technology can be used sensibly and practically in everyday university life. Ritchy is a helpful tool that reduces the workload on support staff, cuts waiting times, and improves access to information. This makes Ritchy a digital assistant—and an integral part of the IT-ServiceDesk team.
Now Available
Ritchy is now available to all students and employees of RWTH Aachen University. It can be accessed via the Ritchy web interface.
You can find more blog posts on the topic of AI in our “KI” category.
Note: Ritchy is currently in the test phase. Please note that the answers may not always be completely correct. We recommend checking important information on the IT Center Help Portal as well.
Responsible for the content of this article is Melisa Berisha.
Leave a Reply