Inland Revenue (IRD)

IRD is piloting 'Tech Buddy', an AI that fixes staff IT problems or logs a ticket

In plain words

New Zealand's tax department is testing an internal agent that answers IT questions and raises a ServiceNow ticket when it can't help.

Still a trial: Small trial running for real staff.

Source: taxpolicy.ird.govt.nz ↗

⏱ About Weeks to months to set up🎓 DeveloperEasier with a builder's help

How to do it yourself

Our suggested steps. The company didn't publish theirs.

1
Gather your top 30 IT questions (Wi-Fi, passwords, printer, new laptop) and the answers.
2
Create a Copilot Studio agent (or custom GPT) with that doc as knowledge.
3
Add one action: create a ticket in Jira/Trello/your help desk via Power Automate or Zapier.
4
Use the prompt below so it always answers or files a ticket.
5
Pilot with one team for 2 weeks; add answers for every ticket it filed.

The instructions to give the AI

Paste this into ChatGPT (the free plan is fine), swap the [brackets] for your details, and test it on a few real examples.

This is one part of the setup. It won't connect to your phone, inbox or other apps on its own; the steps above cover that.

Agent instructions (prompt)

You are the IT helper for [business] staff. Answer only from the IT guide below, step by step. If you can't solve it in 2 replies, create a ticket in this format: Title | Person | Device | Problem | Steps already tried | Urgency.
IT guide:
[paste]

[Highlighted] = replace with your own details before you run it.

What you should get back: "Step 1: open Settings > VPN… If that doesn't fix it, I've logged ticket #142 for IT."

Written by Quickly and Good, inspired by this case.

More detail: tools, prices and what you'll need

The company used: Microsoft Copilot Studio

You could use: Microsoft Copilot Studio (if on M365) or a Slack bot via Zapier + ChatGPT; your ticket tool

Microsoft Copilot
AI assistant and agent builder inside Microsoft 365 and Teams.
See pricing · Official site ↗
ChatGPT
General AI assistant: writes, summarises and answers from files you give it.
Free plan; paid plans available · Official site ↗
Zapier
No-code automation between 9,000+ apps, with AI steps.
Free plan; Professional from $19.99/mo · Official site ↗

Prices from each tool's own pricing page, checked Oct 2026.

What you'll need

☐An enterprise AI platform licence
☐Integration with your core systems (CRM, billing, identity)
☐Security, privacy and compliance review
☐A curated knowledge base
☐A testing and evaluation programme
☐Human escalation and monitoring

Can I do this myself?

Not on your own. These are enterprise platforms sold with implementation help. A small business can get part of the way with Intercom Fin or Tidio Lyro (3-7 days, no-code), but matching this result means hiring a builder.

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NewOct 2026