The AIOps Market and Its Operational Demands
AIOps—the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to IT operations—is one of the most rapidly adopted enterprise technology categories of the decade. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 40 percent of large enterprises will combine AIOps with application and infrastructure observability tools as primary IT operations enablers. The global AIOps market, valued at $3.1 billion in 2023 by MarketsandMarkets, is forecast to grow to $11.6 billion by 2028.
That growth trajectory means AIOps platform companies are managing more enterprise customers, more integrations, and more complex deployment environments than ever before. The customer success and account management functions inside these companies are under enormous pressure—and many are discovering that virtual assistants can absorb a meaningful share of the coordination work that would otherwise pull engineers away from the platform.
Where VAs Create the Most Leverage for AIOps Companies
Customer onboarding coordination is the highest-impact entry point. Enterprise AIOps deployments typically involve multi-stage rollouts: initial integration with ticketing systems, ITSM tools, and monitoring stacks; configuration of alert correlation rules; validation of baseline performance metrics; and phased expansion to additional use cases. A VA can own the scheduling, stakeholder communication, and document collection components of each onboarding stage, ensuring that customer success engineers spend their time on technical configuration, not logistics.
Renewal and expansion pipeline management is an area where VAs consistently deliver measurable ROI. Research by Gainsight found that customer success managers who spent more than 30 percent of their time on administrative tasks had renewal rates 12 percentage points lower than peers who delegated that work. A VA handling renewal reminder workflows, QBR preparation, and expansion opportunity tracking allows CSMs to stay focused on the relationships that drive revenue retention.
Technical documentation and release notes are a persistent pain point for AIOps platforms, which update frequently as new integrations and alert models are shipped. Engineers know the changes; they rarely have time to document them. A VA with strong writing skills, working from engineer-authored notes or changelogs, can produce polished documentation, release notes, and knowledge base articles on a consistent schedule.
Partner and integration ecosystem administration is another natural fit. AIOps platforms that support integrations with ServiceNow, PagerDuty, Splunk, Datadog, and dozens of other tools must maintain listing pages, partner communications, co-marketing coordination, and certification tracking. A VA managing this ecosystem administration keeps partner relationships active without consuming account management bandwidth.
Structuring a VA Engagement for an AIOps Environment
AIOps companies sometimes worry that a VA cannot operate effectively in their complex technical environment. In practice, the VA's scope is defined by workflows, not by the underlying platform technology. A VA working in a customer success context needs access to the CRM, the customer communication platform (Slack, email), the project management tool (Jira, Asana), and the scheduling system—none of which require deep AIOps expertise.
The most effective engagements begin with a two-week documentation sprint: the company maps its recurring operational processes into standard operating procedures, and the VA begins executing against them immediately. This approach also surfaces undocumented processes that benefit from standardization regardless of the VA engagement.
Financial Impact
According to SaaS industry benchmarks from KeyBanc Capital Markets, the average AIOps company spends 22 to 28 percent of ARR on sales and customer success operations. Shifting a portion of the coordination-heavy tasks in this category to VA support—at roughly one-fifth the cost of a full-time operations hire—can improve operational leverage meaningfully without sacrificing service quality.
The Right Time to Hire a VA
For AIOps companies, the trigger for VA hiring is usually one of two signals: customer onboarding timelines are stretching beyond 60 days because of coordination bottlenecks, or customer success managers are spending more than half their week on tasks that don't involve direct customer conversations.
If either of those conditions describes your organization, explore professional VA options at Stealth Agents.
Sources
- Gartner, "Predicts 2024: AIOps and Observability," 2023
- MarketsandMarkets, "AIOps Platform Market Forecast," 2023–2028
- Gainsight, "Customer Success Industry Survey," 2023
- KeyBanc Capital Markets, "SaaS Survey Results," 2024