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8 service desk automation examples to enhance IT support
NLP-powered chatbots, escalation algorithms, data insights, onboarding, SLA monitoring and faster response times are service desk automation examples boosting IT support.
Most large enterprises use some combination of software and tools, such as IT service management platforms, to automate service desk operations and improve IT department efficiency. The complexity of today's business environment often requires managing IT services that support a global hybrid workforce. Some businesses face intense competitive pressure and might struggle to withstand service disruptions or meet compliance requirements, especially with the increasing penalties for publicly disclosed data security breaches.
Competitive businesses can benefit from service desk automation if their engineering teams design and implement automated IT processes, using ticketing systems, AI chatbots, workflow automation, IT asset management and analytics. As more companies shift toward cloud environments, growth in managed services is likely -- lowering the IT service management (ITSM) bar for small and medium-sized businesses.
By reducing human intervention, IT service automation can cut costs and improve IT service response times. Many tools, such as ServiceNow ITSM, Atlassian's Jira Service Management and BMC Helix ITSM, now support AI chatbots and virtual agents for a large percentage of routine IT service requests by automatically categorizing and resolving tickets. By 2027, IT service desk analysts will engage with AI just as frequently as they do with business users, according to Gartner's "Hype Cycle for I&O Automation, 2024" report.
IT service desk automation can involve escalating level 1 technical support to a more experienced level 2 specialist -- using robotic process automation (RPA) for password resets, for example -- or implementing AI-driven self-service portals with knowledge management to resolve common issues. Eight use cases demonstrate how service desk automation can improve IT technical service and support.
1. Continuous implementation of chatbots powered by NLP
ITSM is moving from the first generation of rules-based chatbots, often built using RPA, to AI agents. More than half of successful generative AI (GenAI) projects in 2025 will be focused on employee support, particularly on operational processes, according to Forrester's "Predictions 2025: Automation" report. This trend is expected to be prominent in the financial and healthcare industries. But these implementations will not be a "cakewalk," Forrester noted. They will involve mapping multiple sources of enterprise and customer data that's often siloed, integrating with other systems and training employees on new processes.
Virtual assistants that use natural language processing (NLP) are continually updated and deployed, so the chatbots can better understand technical issues and improve services for users. These updates might consist of continuous AI model improvements, changes based on user feedback and integration with automated workflows.
There's significant investment in ITSM to reduce internal IT staff requirements, said Craig Le Clair, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. When an employee, for example, has a problem with their laptop or printer, they submit a help desk ticket. "A lot of that is moving to AI agents," he added.
2. Automated remediation scripts to solve common problems
IT service departments use automated remediation scripts to solve a host of reoccurring IT problems related to networks and connectivity, system and application performance, hardware and device management, and security and compliance, without the need for human intervention. Automated remediation is often used to reconnect VPNs and resolve DNS settings, such as flushing the cache. It's also applied for patch management, account lockouts, and incident logging and response. In many instances, automated remediation can significantly reduce mean time to resolution over manual processes.
Automated remediation scripts can be created and deployed using RPA tools, platforms such as Ansible and programming languages like Python, Microsoft's PowerShell and Bash. AIOps, which uses machine learning (ML) and big data, can help analyze logs and identify patterns that trigger remediation workflows.
3. Escalation management algorithms
Sometimes a service request needs routing to a higher authority or someone with more technical expertise. Escalation algorithms are predefined rules and procedures that help IT manage service requests and incidents.
The escalation automation system -- often an ITSM tool -- can be set up to support a hierarchy of tech support to IT management, time-based service level agreements (SLAs), severity or priority levels of the service request or incident, and the workload of customer service or IT personnel. An ITSM system typically logs the service request or incident, routes it based on preset escalation rules, sends notifications to the right parties via email or SMS, and manages the ticket routing process for resolution or further escalation.
Escalation management algorithms are used to automate workflows for IT help desks and security operations centers. AI-based systems can apply predictive analytics to help prevent the need for escalation by managing potential issues before they happen.
4. Onboarding and offboarding automations
High turnover and today's hybrid workforce have increased technology challenges and security risks for IT. More enterprises have implemented automation to streamline the process of adding new hires and contractors to their networks and, to a lesser extent, removing people who no longer need access to the organization's systems.
Onboarding new user identities to a network can involve provisioning accounts and device setup, human resources and payroll integrations, role- and group-based permissions, training and compliance. But finding the right tools and automating these workflows, which starts with defining the processes across domains based on policies and conditions, can prove challenging for IT service departments. It's not unusual for large enterprises to have hundreds of SaaS and cloud-based applications.
Selective automation can also ease offboarding when an employee leaves the company for such tasks as deactivating Slack, Teams and user accounts; sending alerts to IT and other departments; and forwarding the former employee's emails to a manager or the appropriate department. Companies report losing up to 10% of technology assets -- namely laptops and phones -- when employees exit the company. With complex infrastructures, it can be hard to successfully deprovision and prevent unauthorized access to data and cloud applications. Automating all or part of the offboarding process can lower costs by reducing IT workloads, eliminating unnecessary software licenses and improving security.
5. Account unlocking and password reset capabilities
One of the more common requests from help desk ticketing systems is account access and password resets. If, for example, an employee or outside contractor with access to internal systems uses the wrong password more than once, they're denied access to the network. Account lockouts can happen at the worst times -- after hours, for instance, with a major sales presentation scheduled for early the next morning.
Businesses use automation, self-service portals and AI to quickly handle these requests without human intervention. Some companies use web- and mobile-based self-service portals that integrate with Active Directory, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and cloud services. They have multifactor authentication in place to verify user identity and allow users to reset passwords. ITSM automation tools and RPA bots can access Active Directory and identity and access management (IAM) systems to assist employees with resetting passwords and unlocking accounts. Many IAM systems enforce automatic password resets based on security policies. Some chatbots are developed to handle routine service requests, such as password resets, through AI-driven interactions.
6. Automated SLA monitoring
As companies shift from on-premises to cloud computing environments, SLAs have become standard enterprise practice. Once thresholds have been established for uptime, latency, performance, security policies, compliance and more, automated SLA monitoring can alert IT managers to potential configuration and resource issues. Used in conjunction with ITSM tools, automated SLA monitoring can escalate incident-related tickets and track response time, time to resolution and escalation rate to prevent an SLA breach. These automation tools can also assist with reporting and analytics required for SLA compliance, and they can provide performance and historical data for SLA adjustments if changes are needed.
Many companies lack end-to-end visibility into automated business processes, data centers and cloud environments. This lack of visibility can result in SLA breaches and noncompliance. A Broadcom survey of 501 automation professionals released in January 2024 found that 61% of respondents reported SLA breaches monthly or more frequently. The vast majority of surveyed companies used three or more automation platforms and observability tools, which can produce excessive threshold alerts and overwhelm the IT specialist responsible for interpreting and prioritizing these "alert storms," according to Broadcom's findings.
7. Survey automation for chatbots
Feedback on the level of user satisfaction with IT service desks and technical support helps IT service managers identify weaknesses and improve performance. Survey automation using chatbots can follow up with employees immediately after an IT service request or ticket is resolved to measure user satisfaction with a simple rating of 1 to 5 and other data collection methods.
A chatbot can automatically change the survey's context or questions based on the type of IT request, such as account lockouts or printer problems. It can also ask questions about the chatbot's performance or level of customer satisfaction, or CSAT, regarding the resolution of a major event, such as a network outage or system downtime.
The feedback can be collected and stored in ITSM tools, then analyzed by AI tools to identify trends or escalate low ratings to management. Survey automation is expected to increase as more companies adopt chatbots. In addition to an ITSM platform, this type of automation can require integration with chatbot, survey and AI analytics software.
"More than 70% of companies are still taking a low-risk approach to 'everyday AI,'" reported Frances Karamouzis, analyst and group chief of research at Gartner. Businesses are using Microsoft 365 Copilot, coding assistants for developers, and tools like ChatGPT to access the entire knowledge base of trouble tickets. "This allows you to solve trouble tickets in a shorter timeframe," she explained.
8. Data collection and insights
IT managers rely on automated data collection to improve network environments and business processes for users within the organization as well as for customer service. Network traffic, machine data, application performance, security events, threshold alerts and IT service requests are all tracked and analyzed, sometimes in near real time. The information is collected using monitoring tools and logs, ITSM platforms, APIs and integrations, and AI/ML data and patterns.
Once collected, IT management can use IT automation tools to analyze the data using dashboards that provide performance metrics, resource optimization, SLA compliance, security vulnerability and incident tracking. These tools can manage IT workloads by automating key performance indicators and reporting requirements for business leaders.
Some companies are using AI-powered automation tools to prevent system failures and service disruptions. These tools can provide predictive analytics, build self-healing systems through automation and scripting, and automate root cause analysis by collecting and analyzing multiple alerts.
Kathleen Richards is a freelance journalist and industry veteran. She's a former features editor for TechTarget's Information Security magazine.
