Ticketing automation is “low hanging fruit” for most IT organizations: with the potential to increase efficiency, improve end-user experience and make life easier for techs, the right solution can produce tangible benefits almost-overnight.
But given how important a functioning service desk is, it’s important to address the potential hurdles involved in automating the system.
This article explores the benefits and challenges of automated ticketing systems, helping you choose a solution that will deliver the full benefits of automation.
Expect to learn:
- How help desk automation helps solve one of IT leaders’ toughest dilemmas
- Why custom configuration is an essential part of any effective automation system
- How DeskDirector’s automated ticketing system can resolve tickets 4x faster
What Is Help Desk Automation?
Help desk automation involves programming your help desk software to initiate and complete various tasks automatically. Important use cases include:
- Automated ticketing workflows: Rather than manually issuing tickets, assessing their requirements and sending them to specific person, automation allows you to create simple rules and tags that accelerate these processes. From routing tickets based on their category and urgency level to attaching task lists to ensure consistency, these automations create a new level of efficiency for most IT teams.
- Automated end-user communications: When techs are required to update end-users manually, communication often becomes slow and inconsistent. But automation software can send pre-written messages at various stages of the ticketing process, helping to reassure users that their issues are being dealt with quickly.
- Reports and analytics: Most help desk software generates data, but the right automation software can gather, analyze and present this information in a way that makes it easy to understand and turn it into actionable insights.
Why Is Help Desk Automation So Popular?
Help desk automation is the perfect solution to a problem almost every IT leader faces:
- Help desks are essential: 51% of high-growth services teams are reliant on their help desk, and few modern organizations can function without some form of on-demand IT support.
- But they are also expensive to run: IT leaders are always under pressure to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their services, and manual service desks are a big cost center.
By automating these processes, it is possible to not only cut costs but simultaneously improve the vital service help desks offer. Leaders can:
- Reduce overheads: With fewer staff members to pay, automation immediately cuts IT costs.
- Eliminate bottlenecks: By reducing the pressures on staff, there are fewer queues and human tech support can focus on the toughest problems your users face.
- Improve end-user experience: Engagement is faster and more consistent, while simple tasks are resolved more quickly.
All of which helps explain why the market for IT help desk automation is now worth over $8 billion. But implementing these systems is not quite so straight forward.
4 Challenges When Introducing an Automated Ticketing System
1. System Configuration
Automation relies on detailed rules to ensure every ticket is dealt with in the right way. But many systems either:
- Do not allow you to create custom configurations, which forces you to use a set of pre-existing automations which likely don’t meet your specific requirements.
- Or make custom configurations difficult to create, which means skilled personnel spend a lot of time manually configuring the system.
2. Organizational Complexity
Most organizations today use IT across every department, and there may be 100s of different reasons for submitting a ticket. But this creates a big lift for techs: they must create many automated workflows to achieve the level of efficiency they desire – and this can lead to slow implementation.
3. Tech buy-in
Automation benefits your techs a lot, but many suffer from “FOBO”: the fear of being automated. This can create friction when introducing automated systems, as they require buy-in from techs to ensure you don’t end up with a fragmented workforce, where some employees use manual processes and others use automated ones.
4. Finding the right tools
As help desk automation has become more popular, the volume of solutions on the market has skyrocketed. As a result, many IT leaders struggle to decide which platform will best serve their purposes – until they discover DeskDirector.
Why is DeskDirector the Best Automated Ticketing System?
DeskDirector offers a comprehensive set of ticketing automation tools that enable:
- Full lifecycle automation: Unlike many platforms, DeskDirector enables you to automate every phase of the ticket lifecycle – from automatically issuing tickets to routing and end-user communication.
- Unparalleled customization: From building custom workflows with Power Automate to embedding SOPs directly within tickets, DeskDirector makes it faster and easier to configure ticketing automation to meet your specific requirements.
- Microsoft integrations: DeskDirector enables you to issue, manage and resolve tickets directly within the Microsoft environment, reducing tasks shifting and making life easier for techs and end-users.
The net result? DeskDirector empowers organizations to resolve tickets 4x faster and increase ticketing adoption by 20%.
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