Slashing Service Desk Ticket Costs: How Automation Can Save Your Business Millions

Are you aware of the millions of dollars businesses can unknowingly spend on service desk tickets? The good news is that automation can significantly reduce these costs. In 2017, Thinkhdi conducted research on the cost of desktop support per ticket and found that the key to understanding this KPI is in analyzing the range of operating expenses that businesses incur. In this article, we'll explore how automation can reduce the costs associated with salaries and benefits, technology and telecom expenses, facilities expenses, travel, training, and office supplies. So if you're looking to save your business millions, read on to discover how automation can help you slash service desk ticket costs.

In 2017, Thinkhdi completed research that focused on desktop support cost per ticket. This business KPI can be quickly calculated by dividing the total monthly operating expense of desktop support by the monthly ticket volume. 

Service Desk operating expenses typically comprise a range of items such as:

1.     salaries and benefits for desktop support technicians

2.     salaries and benefits for indirect personnel (e.g., team leads, supervisors, workforce schedulers, dispatchers, QA/QC personnel, trainers, and managers)

3.     technology and telecom expenses (computers, software licensing fees, etc.)

4.     facilities expenses (office space, utilities, insurance, etc.),

5.     travel, training, and office supplies.

Unsurprisingly, personnel-related costs are the major component of desktop support expenses. The average breakdown of costs for North American desktop support organizations in 2017 is presented in the figure below. A deeper analysis of this KPI can enable organizations to better understand the drivers of desktop support costs, and devise strategies to optimize their performance in this critical area.

Why it's important?

In the realm of desktop support, there are two fundamental metrics that are often deemed as the building blocks for success: cost per ticket and customer satisfaction. These two metrics are considered to be the most vital because they ultimately determine the success of the operation, as cost containment (measured by cost per ticket) and quality of service (measured by customer satisfaction) are paramount.

In any service delivery organization, cost, or more precisely unit cost, is of utmost importance. Cost per ticket serves as a measure of how efficiently desktop support conducts its business. It is worth noting that a higher-than-average cost per ticket does not necessarily equate to poor performance, especially if accompanied by above-average quality levels and lower mean times to resolve. 

Conversely, a low cost per ticket is not always indicative of optimal performance, particularly if achieved at the expense of quality of service or leads to prolonged resolution times. As such, it is imperative for every desktop support organization to monitor and analyze cost-per-ticket trends on a monthly basis to ensure continued performance optimization.

Deconstructing the cost per desktop support ticket

The composition of desktop support tickets is classified into two primary categories - incidents and service requests, as illustrated in the figure below. 

ThinkHdi suggested by calculating cost per incident and cost per service request, desktop support organizations can gain a deeper understanding of the unit costs associated with their service delivery and identify any areas that require improvement. These metrics enable organizations to pinpoint specific cost drivers and track the effectiveness of cost reduction initiatives. Thus, cost per incident and cost per service request serve as critical KPIs in determining the operational efficiency of desktop support.

In the context of desktop support, the resolution of incidents is typically quicker than that of service requests, resulting in a lower cost per incident compared to the cost per service request. This is significant because the overall cost per ticket is a weighted average of the cost per incident and the cost per service request, and therefore the balance between these two types of tickets strongly impacts the cost per ticket.

As an example, let us consider Company ABC, where the cost per incident is $50 and the cost per service request is $100. Moreover, 75% of their tickets are incidents and the remaining 25% are service requests. Using a weighted average approach, the cost per ticket for ABC is calculated as follows: ($50 X 75%) + ($100 X 25%) = $62.50.

In contrast, consider Company XYZ, which has the same cost per incident and cost per service request as Company ABC, but with a different mix of tickets. Specifically, only 40% of their tickets are incidents, while the remaining 60% are service requests. 

Applying the same weighted average formula as before, the cost per ticket for XYZ is calculated as ($50 X 40%) + ($100 X 60%) = $80.00.

Thus, although both companies have identical costs for resolving incidents and service requests, their different mix of tickets results in a disparate cost per ticket. For instance, if both companies handle 2,000 tickets per month, Company XYZ would incur an additional cost of $35,000 per month on desktop support compared to Company ABC, solely due to a larger percentage of their tickets being service requests.

In addition to the mix of tickets, another key factor that influences the cost per ticket is user population density. Desktop support technicians serving high-density user environments can handle a greater volume of tickets per month compared to those supporting a geographically dispersed work environment, such as desktop support for a retail bank with numerous branches across the country.

Cost per desktop ticket

The variations in the ranges of key metrics for desktop support are significant, with the minimum and maximum values differing by more than an order of magnitude (10X). These differences are driven by factors such as user population density’ desktop support technicians’ salaries, average handle time, time to travel to different office locations as well as the unique mix of incidents and service requests.

Are you surprised at what ThinkHdi found? We were too. And there are a lot of service desks in business not just the IT departments e.g., HR, finance, and business operations all have service desk ticketing systems.  

But how can you go about reducing the costs of services?  By leveraging intelligent automation, service desk teams can significantly reduce the cost of desktop service desk tickets, while improving efficiency and providing better support to employees.  

“Whilst the cost per ticket may seem high to some, it is not untypical for fortune 2000 companies to handle between 10,000 to 50,000 tickets per month. 50,000 tickets a month times $30 per ticket times 12 months a year equals a cost of $18m per year. That is considerable!” Olivier Gomez, CEO and Co-Founder of IAC.ai

Conclusion:

Intelligent automation can be a game-changer for reducing the cost of IT desktop service desk tickets. By leveraging automation technologies such as machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA), and natural language processing (NLP), businesses can automate many of the routine tasks and processes associated with IT support.

For example, intelligent automation can be used to automatically categorize and prioritize service desk tickets based on their urgency and impact, reducing the need for human intervention. Additionally, chatbots and virtual assistants can be deployed to handle simple and repetitive tasks, such as resetting passwords or providing basic troubleshooting guidance, freeing up human support agents to focus on more complex issues. 

Intelligent automation can also help to streamline the resolution process by providing support agents with real-time access to relevant information and insights. By leveraging predictive analytics and machine learning, businesses can proactively identify and resolve issues before they escalate, reducing the number of service desk tickets generated.

Overall, by reducing the time and effort required to manage service desk tickets, intelligent automation can significantly reduce the cost of IT desktop support, while also improving the quality and consistency of service delivery.