In recent years, IT has undoubtedly made impressive progress – including in service desks. Yet, service desk employees confirm that this work is still plagued by numerous inefficiencies.
The solution lies in service desk automation. If implemented smoothly, automation for service desks can deliver highly valuable improvements. Teams see higher productivity, increasesd cost savings and greater value creation.
The best practices presented here show how this can be achieved.
The Problem with an Inefficient Service Desk
Traditionally, when an end user encountered an IT issue, they contacted the service desk. The agent handling the request would first put the caller on hold. They would create the necessary documentation to officially open the ticket.
Only then could the problem be resolved or escalated. And only once the process was completed would the end user receive feedback. Depending on the severity of the problem, this could take minutes, hours, or even days.
This outdated approach frustrated both customers and employees alike. It is also extremely inefficient.
Automations and AI integrations provide a far better solution. They guide the service desk reliably into the modern age while saving valuable time, effort, and opportunity costs.
"Automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. Automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."
10 Best Practices for Service Desk Automation
The following best practices show how organizations can work more efficiently. Service desk automation makes the best use of team resources.
1. Leverage Knowledge Management
Knowledge management is a central element of service desk automation. It allows both routine activities and complex processes to be handled in a more structured, organized, and standardized way.
To enhance service, use tools that make knowledge more engaging and interactive.
Example: The common HR question “What is parental leave?” can be broken down into a simple workflow. A tool that creates decision trees with automated workflows makes complex issues more dynamic. This is because it can account for multiple variables. Examples of variables are who needs help or what device requires support.
2. Reset Passwords and Unlock Accounts
Nowadays, almost everything requires a password. Therefore, a common issue is that people forget them regularly.
Automated, knowledge-based workflows should help. They can be made accessible through service portals. End users can follow the required steps to reset their passwords without contacting the service desk.
This significantly reduces first-level tickets and increases satisfaction, since users can solve problems on their own. Password managers provide further relief by storing all employee passwords in a central system. This requires a single master password.
3. Provide Automatic Answers and Solutions
Once again, knowledge management plays a key role here. Imagine an employee wants to install a new system on their laptop. There may already be a process in the IT service catalog.
If, instead, they contact the service desk, the assigned agent has to spend time handling it. While such a request may not seem critical, frequent interruptions of this kind have a clearly negative effect. They divert focus from truly important incoming tickets.
The right self-service automation tools give employees a way to ask questions and receive answers without requiring human intervention. Knowledge workflows can be integrated into portals, applications, community platforms, and AI chatbots.
4. Use AI
The use of artificial intelligence in the service desk offers companies clear benefits. By automating processes and preventing unnecessary tickets, operating costs decrease while sources of error are reduced.
At the same time, AI eases operational workloads. It handles routine tasks and gives employees valuable time for strategic and value-adding activities.
Customer satisfaction also rises. Users benefit from faster response times, more accurate solutions, and personalized support available around the clock. This strengthens trust and loyalty.
In addition, machine learning ensures that with each ticket creation, the AI-driven system becomes more efficient. This advances service delivery desk over time.
5. Route Tickets to the Right People
Too often, tickets end up with the wrong IT staff; teams spend too much time each day sorting new tickets. This is inefficient and negatively impacts the customer experience.
Sorting tickets can be automated. Teams can use an ITSM platform that automatically routes tickets to the correct departments from the start. Personalized dashboards and rules define the entire ticket flow.
When teams automate ticket routing, customers get the support they need more quickly. Agents spend less time dealing with administrative hassles.
6. Provide Timely and Regular Status Updates
One of the greatest frustrations for end users is not knowing the status of their issue. They want to know how much longer it will take to resolve. Automated ticketing systems can define rules to send updates to customers on time. This greatly reduces follow-up inquiries to the service desk.
Plus, if a ticket resolution falls outside the service level agreement (SLA), automated notifications can trigger escalation. This ensures the issue is not forgotten and still receives appropriate attention.
7. Escalate Critical Incidents
Some organizations have support teams available around the clock – but most do not. In the evenings or on weekends, systems or tickets are often not actively monitored. In these cases, it is crucial to have an automated system that immediately escalates critical issues in real time. This way they do not wait until regular business hours.
8. Measure Productivity
Data collection can also be automated to provide a comprehensive view of team performance.
This includes common service management measures and metrics such as:
- MTTR (Mean Time to Recover)
- First Contact Resolution rate
- Number of tickets recorded monthly/weekly
- Number of service requests recorded monthly/weekly
- Percentage of escalations
- SLA compliance rate
- Business hours lost due to outages
The right ITSM tools display this data in dashboards – individually visualized for team members, managers, or executives.
9. Close Tickets Automatically
Some requests take longer than others but should not remain open too long. With service desk software, rules can be defined to automatically close tickets when necessary. An example of this would be when the customer does not respond within a certain timeframe. This reduces manual effort for agents who have many cases to keep up with.
10. Collect Customer Feedback
There are many ways to measure the performance of a service desk. However, even the most positive metrics have limited value if service quality is lacking.
A good solution is to regularly conduct surveys and send them to customers. The best way to ensure continuous feedback is to automate the process. There are tools that automatically capture, collect, and prepare feedback for evaluation.
How OTRS Drives Service Desk Automation
Thanks to automated workflows in the service desk, OTRS ensures that no steps are ever overlooked. Team members can easily manage requests based on flexible templates and communicate directly with customers via the system.
Automatic notifications and intelligent ticket assignments significantly shorten otherwise time-consuming decision-making processes. In addition, custom ticket fields, clearly defined process management, and reusable process templates enable more efficiency, transparency, and better results.
Conclusion: Service Desk Automation Delivers High Value
Companies benefit extensively from service desk automation. It increases efficiency, enhances customer satisfaction, and reduces redundant tasks.
But such automation offers even more potential: it improves service quality for employees, enables tailored customer experiences, and creates transparency about achieved performance.
In short: with the right technologies and ITSM tools, the work of a service desk can be significantly improved. This is critical – not only for employees and customers but also for overall organizational growth.
