On a typical day in a non-optimized organization, a support agent starts by accessing their ITSM tool. Here they find a large number of incident tickets, many of which have exceeded the set service-level objective. These tickets come from employees who need assistance due to unresponsive tools, and from systems that monitor the status of important services. The agent categorizes the tickets based on priority and age, and then works through the oldest and most critical ones first in a systematic way.
Unfortunately, by the time the agent accesses the systems to gather diagnostic information, the situation may have already changed and symptoms may have subsided, making the initial diagnostic information irrelevant. As a result, the agent may close the ticket as a false alert and proceed to the next one in the queue. This process continues until the end of the shift, and the cycle begins again with the next agent. It’s considered a good day when the agent is able to reduce the number of incident tickets in the queue and maybe assist some people during their shift. Wash, rinse, repeat.
This situation is a common occurrence for many organizations and their support staff, happening around the clock, every day of the year. Not only does it consume a significant amount of technical resources, but it also has a negative cumulative impact. When diagnostic information is not obtained promptly as part of the incident management process, it hinders the organization's ability to identify and address the underlying cause of incidents. As a result, the volume of incidents increases and consumes more IT resources.
If all you know how to do is fight fires, your strategy is limited to requesting more firefighters.
Humans alone are unable to reverse this trend and eliminate the accumulated technical debt that has built up over the years. They cannot be expected to improve their current processes while also meeting the uptime, response time, and resolution time service levels of new digital business services. Nevertheless, organizations still rely on manual labor to address legacy issues and support digital transformation of business services. It’s no wonder that burnout is so common among service desk personnel.
"Shifting left" is a popular strategy to improve customer experience, reduce costs, and simplify support activities by moving request fulfillment as close to the front line and customers as possible. This approach helps speed up the time to resolution and minimize the chaos of service request mess. For example, implementing a searchable knowledge base or customizing request intake forms to gather relevant information can help deflect tickets and streamline the support process.
To provide a seamless customer experience, it's important to centralize help-seeking resources in one easily accessible location. This can be achieved by creating a self-service portal that is tailored to the unique culture of your organization. However, the existence of a portal alone won’t solve anything. It's important to avoid the mistakes of other companies by ensuring that the portal is user-friendly and easy to find. Even the most robust self-service system is ineffective if customers can’t find it.
The shift left approach also places a strong emphasis on automation. IT organizations should utilize automation to release the necessary capacity to eliminate their technology debt and bridge the gap between the limited supply of IT support staff and the increasing demand for IT services. Automation can enhance the speed and quality of IT services, as well as free up labor capacity to redirect technical resources to more important activities. It also improves self-service capabilities by reducing repetitive tasks for IT teams and enhancing communication with customers. For example, automation of follow-up communications accelerates resolution time, predefined responses to certain requests enhance the customer experience, and routing service requests to the appropriate team results in faster resolution. Additionally, chatbots and virtual agents can be used to provide a personalized experience across desktop and mobile, by utilizing the company's existing service catalog and knowledge base articles to promptly resolve common requests.
The integration of AI into the shift left philosophy significantly enhances its effectiveness and efficiency. If shift left aims to move problem resolution closer to the front line by empowering end-users and lower-tier support with tools and knowledge to handle issues traditionally escalated to higher tiers, AI amplifies this approach by providing advanced automation, predictive analytics, and intelligent self-service capabilities.
AI-driven chatbots, for instance, can handle routine queries and troubleshooting, freeing up human agents for more complex tasks. Predictive analytics can preemptively identify and address potential issues before they impact users. Additionally, AI can continuously analyze and optimize processes, ensuring faster resolution times and improving overall service quality. This results in reduced operational costs, increased user satisfaction, and a more agile IT environment that can quickly adapt to changing demands.
Atlassian products have extensive automation capabilities that can empower your organization to dominate the day, not just survive it. Some examples include:
These are just some examples of ways to shift left using automation. Within your organization, there are likely dozens if not hundreds of other opportunities to automate routine rules or tasks, reduce the human input required, and, as Atlassian puts it, unleash the potential of every team. To explore how we can help you unlock your team's potential with automation, contact us today!