Over coffee the other day, a friend of mine, who heads the service desk at an IT company, was casually scrolling through Outlook on his phone.
He opened the weekly ticketing report and said, “528 tickets closed this week.” On paper, the team was performing well. But then he looked up and said, “We’re closing so much… and yet, it doesn’t feel like we’re making progress.”
By all traditional metrics, they were flying. But here’s the catch: over 200 were access requests. Another 150 were password requests.
The rest? A cocktail of expired certificates, basic onboarding setups, and document pulls.
These weren’t IT problems. These were patterns: repetitive, predictable, and ready to be redesigned.
And yet, the team was exhausted. Because solving the same thing every day doesn’t feel like progress. It feels like… survival.
In service management, we’ve long tracked the visible metrics: ticket volume, average handling time, SLA compliance.
But the real inefficiencies often sit outside the dashboard:
The real question isn’t “How fast did we respond?”; It’s: “Why did this request exist in the first place?”
If we want our service desks to evolve, we need to move from resolution speed to resolution strategy.
Some thought starters for innovative IT Leaders include:
The most forward-thinking service organizations today aren’t just adding more agents or dashboards. They’re re-architecting the way work happens.
Here’s what they’re doing differently:
These teams are not replacing people, they’re returning purpose to them.
Your service desk isn’t just a support function. It’s a cultural signal.
It tells your employees whether their time matters, whether IT is a gatekeeper or a guide, whether innovation is encouraged, or just a word on a poster.
Maybe it’s time we stop solving the same problems faster…and start solving the right problems at the source, once.
After interacting with a wide range of IT Service Management leaders and spending years on the frontlines myself one thing has become painfully clear:
Meanwhile, the world outside is moving toward faster, smarter, and more automated support.
These aren’t isolated issues; they’re systemic and often overlooked.
I’ve captured these real-world IT Service management implementation challenges and the silent struggles IT organizations face in my newly launched book ‘IT Unchained’.
This isn’t another framework-heavy manual. It’s filled with use cases, human stories, and leadership reflections; it is for all who feel the gap between how IT works today and how much better it could be. If this resonates with you, I’d be delighted if you gave it a read!!
“IT Unchained - A Journey Beyond Technology ” book is available on Amazon.
