The SolarWinds State of ITSM Report has arrived. To uncover key trends, challenges, and practices in today's IT Service Management (ITSM) landscape, we’ve analyzed over 2,000 ITSM systems and more than 60,000 aggregated, anonymized data points spanning 13 months from July 1, 2023, to July 31, 2024. Here are a few things we found interesting.
More Agents Isn’t the Answer
The more service desk agents on hand to tackle tickets, the faster issues get resolved, right? Maybe not. Data showed no meaningful impact when comparing the ratio of employees to agents. On the contrary, the findings suggest an inverse relationship between the number of incidents per agent and the average resolution time—agents handling more tickets tend to resolve them faster, challenging the intuitive belief that fewer tickets mean quicker responses. The report suggests that the necessity for agents to focus harder to adapt to higher ticket volumes may, in fact, be a notable efficiency driver.
Automation Saves an Average of Three Hours Per Ticket
The report found that implementing automated processes and protocols reduces average ticket resolution time by over three hours. Strategies like automatic ticket routing, self-service portals, incident identification and categorization, centralized knowledge articles, AI enhancements, and smart notifications can greatly boost efficiency and user satisfaction. The report finds that automation also helps cut missed service-level agreements (SLAs) in half, and that industries embracing automation are seeing faster resolution times across the board.
Teams that Use SLAs Resolve Tickets Two Hours Faster on Average
The findings are clear: teams who create and enforce service-level agreements have an edge over those who don’t. By establishing clear performance benchmarks and consistently monitoring progress towards these goals, SLAs help organizations optimize their operations and drive down resolution times. SLAs function as a learning mechanism, offering the transparency necessary to pinpoint inefficiencies in response times, escalation methods, or other elements of service delivery. From here, organizations can implement accurate, data-informed changes to help bring any lagging standards up to scratch.
Self-Service Portals and Knowledge Base Articles Really Work
Self-service portals are designed to free up service desk agents by enabling employees to find solutions to problems independently, and the report suggests that it's working—self-service portals reduce ticket resolution times by over two hours on average. By creating space for users to submit tickets directly, share details of the issue at hand, and access resources to help find the cause of the problem, self-service portals cut down on time-consuming back-and-forth between the service desk and users. Access to Knowledge Base Articles is a key component of the self-service approach, and it is reaping dividends for companies who embrace it. The report found it enables service desk agents to resolve incidents an impressive six hours faster on average.
Understanding current trends and assessing how your organization aligns with them is essential for advancing your IT Service Management (ITSM). The SolarWinds State of ITSM Report is designed to help you navigate the realities of the industry.
