AI improves ITSM for University of Aberdeen

The University of Aberdeen is a prestigious Scottish institution with over 500 years of history, 14,000 students, 3,600 professors and staff, and one previously overwhelmed 180-person IT team. 

Working with a legacy IT support system that felt as old as the campus’s medieval architecture, rigid, manual processes and limited automation were a constant source of frustration. Tickets would languish for days, and a lack of proper analytics made it impossible to identify and address recurring issues.

The University of Aberdeen turned to Freshservice to modernize its IT infrastructure and improve the overall user experience. AI and automation capabilities helped the university streamline its workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and gain valuable insights through advanced analytics. This reduced resolution times by 81%, saving an estimated 405 working days per year across the IT team. Improved response times and the ability to track and resolve issues efficiently pleased students and staff, who delivered a CSAT score of 98.6%. The university’s technology has since caught up to modern times.

The organization

The University of Aberdeen, a prestigious Scottish institution established in 1495, ranks among the top 200 universities worldwide. With over 14,000 students, the university strives to provide exceptional educational experiences.

The challenge

In 2009, the University of Aberdeen's IT team implemented a support system that served the needs of students in the first decade of the century but had since fallen behind the times. It lacked the ability to prioritize and categorize the 50,000 annual tickets from students and staff, creating a chaotic and disorganized environment. New tickets, updates, high-priority tickets, and regular tickets—they all appeared in the same inbox, making triage complex and time-consuming.

It was a cumbersome system that required expert understanding and coding to make any changes. Reporting and analytics involved SQL queries exported to third-party software. Without the ability to create scheduled and ad-hoc reports, the team had limited visibility to make informed decisions about performance or where many of the issues needed addressing.

The cumulative effect of these challenges was a strained IT team and a decline in overall service quality. The university sought a new platform to bring order and automation to ticketing and IT service management.

The solution

After a thorough evaluation, the University of Aberdeen was drawn to Freshservice’s AI and automation features. "Freshservice seriously interested us from the get-go,” says Iain Cameron, user services manager at the University of Aberdeen.

Once Freshservice was installed, the IT team created over 100 automation and 84 canned responses focused on the most frequent queries—ones they identified through Freshworks Analytics, which gave them real-time insights. Response and resolution times decreased and incident management improved with the ability to link incidents, changes, and problems. Asset management improved with the ability to track and manage end-user devices, ensuring student laptops don’t go missing or break down without support.

“Moving to Freshworks Analytics was a real game changer for us. Not only did we have the data, but we could do things with them,” says Cameron. 

Freddy AI chatbots in Freshservice played a crucial role in deflecting 10,200 tickets and automating common responses like "thank you" messages. Automating these responses saves the equivalent of seven working weeks per year per agent.

“We were very much taken with the codeless Workflow Automator,” says Cameron. “You can create workflows with drag and drop. You do not need to be a coder to make magic happen.” 

Impact

With Freshservice, built on Neo Platform and powered by AWS, Aberdeen’s IT service management began to reflect the pace and expectations of a leading higher education institution. Automation capabilities saved an estimated 405 working days annually across the IT team, while resolution times decreased by 81%. Some 10,200 tickets were deflected with Freshservice's Thank You Detector, powered by Freddy AI chatbots, saving an estimated 35 working days per person per year. 

Capacity soared. Freshservice empowered the team to handle a massive ticket volume of up to 2,000 per week, more than double the previous 50,000 per year. By automating routine tasks like ticket appending and response generation, agents could dedicate more time to resolving complex issues. The platform's robust analytics provided valuable insights into service performance, enabling data-driven decision-making.

“We’ve been delighted with Freshservice and are proud to be partners,” says Cameron. “The increasing amount of machine learning and AI has started to bear fruit with Freshservice.”

By implementing Freshservice, the University of Aberdeen has successfully transformed its IT service management. Now, students and faculty can focus on essays and activities, not IT issues.