11 ITSM best practices to boost efficiency in 2023

IT service management (ITSM) solutions streamline processes by giving your tech team one tool to rule them all. But deploying an ITSM platform is just one part of the success equation. To achieve continuous process improvements, tech leaders need to understand and implement ITSM best practices.

This page provides an in-depth look at the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework along with 11 best practices for you to upgrade your ITSM.

The ITIL framework and service management

ITSM is a systematic approach to designing, delivering, supporting, and managing IT services across your organization. These services include everything from basic IT support and asset management to infrastructure-building and network security.

Effective ITSM requires having one platform to unite your technology and one playbook to unite your team. Combining ITSM software and IT management best practices enables your tech team to streamline workflows, ensure consistent service delivery, and align IT service delivery with overall business needs.

Organizations that have implemented ITIL already have some key ITSM best practices in place. That’s because ITIL is a widely used ITSM framework—a set of best practices to guide ITSM efforts.

ITIL is not the only ITSM framework, but it is the most common. It focuses on four dimensions of service management: 

• Organizations and people

• Information and technology

• Partners and suppliers

• Value streams and processes

The terms ITIL and ITSM are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. ITSM is how your tech team manages service delivery; ITIL is one possible guidebook for achieving that.

When it comes to ITIL and ITSM best practices, there is significant overlap but also some knowledge gaps. ITIL guidance has been updated four times since 1980, most recently in 2019. Yet tech trends have evolved even faster, leading to new business imperatives and thus new ITSM best practices.

11 IT service management best practices

In recent years, companies have adopted new technologies at an exponential pace. Without the right tools and processes in place to handle the deluge, many IT departments are now challenged by siloed systems, fragmented data, and an overwhelming number of tools to manage.

A recent Hackett Group report, The Future of IT Service Management, notes:

Modernizing service delivery means implementing an ITSM tool that enables automation, integration, and leveraging AI to power both self-service and process improvements. It also means implementing ITSM processes that improve both the user and agent experience.

What are ITSM best practices to handle real-life IT challenges?

1. Embrace automation

The less time your tech team spends solving the same problems, the more time they have to spend on big-picture, high-value projects. By identifying repetitive tasks and manual processes that can be automated using technology, you free up human resources, reduce errors, and boost end-user satisfaction.

More than 88% of organizations have automated IT workflows, according to the 2023 Freshservice Service Management Benchmark Report. Depending on the size of the business, these automations decrease average resolution time (ART) by anywhere between ~14% and ~36%.

Starting with your service desk, what are the common Tier 1 issues that agents receive every day? Tasks like password resets, application access requests, and employee onboarding/offboarding can be digitized using workflow automation tools and/or AI-enabled chatbots. Even the IT ticketing process itself can be automated with ITSM tools that categorize and prioritize tickets and assign them to the best agent (or chatbot) for the job.

Your service desk isn’t the only opportunity for workflow automations. Even change control and asset management processes can be digitized. For example, using the Freshservice  workflows module, you can set up multilevel change advisory board (CAB) approvals, design custom change lifecycles, and automate asset allocation and recovery processes.

"Improving agent productivity is a major goal and benefit of ITSM software,” says Jiten Rajani, Freshservice product marketing manager. “With higher productivity, a company improves the quality of service, reduces costs, and achieves better outcomes faster. ITSM software enables agents to improve  employee experiences, fostering a happier workforce.”

2. Capitalizing on AI

As with most types of enterprise technology, ITSM trends are closely tied to developments in artificial intelligence. The Hackett Group explains: 

“AIOps can provide benefits across a spectrum of service and performance management use cases, including anomaly detection, parsing and responding to machine alerts and signals, root cause analysis, service desk automation, event escalation, and predictive maintenance.”

Leveraging AI in ITSM creates new opportunities for everyone, including:

• A chatbot-enabled self-service portal for IT users

• Contextual insights for IT agents

• Predictive analytics for IT management

For example, with Freddy AI from Freshservice, chatbots can complete Tier 1 incident management workflows without ever involving a human agent. Better yet, our AI can anticipate and design its own workflows.

“Imagine your AI analyzing the most common types of IT tickets logged, organizing the data for you, identifying the most common types of tickets, and automating the resolution using a bot flow,” says Mukesh Mirchandani, senior vice president of global solution engineering at Freshworks. “Imagine the AI then deploying the bot flow across the company’s messaging channels. You can execute analyses, builds, and deployments (that typically take days or weeks) in a matter of minutes.”

Freddy AI doesn’t just power self-service. It also empowers agents to deliver faster, more consistent service. When agents receive a ticket, they also receive guidance from Freddy, including:

• Insights about how to resolve the issue, gleaned from your knowledge base as well as public sources

• Context about the user, including details about their previous interactions with IT and sentiment analysis data to help agents better understand how the customer is feeling

• Suggested responses to requests and FAQs

With bot assistance, agents can manage and resolve tickets 57% faster and resolve problems on first contact 92.3% of the time, according to the Freshservice benchmark report.

AI can also help tech teams avoid problems. When you integrate your ITSM platform with asset management tools, machine monitoring systems, and other key business applications, AI solutions such as Freddy can use alerts from these systems to automatically create tickets if a system goes down or is at risk of deteriorating. 

3. Bust knowledge silos

To fully embrace automation and leverage advanced machine learning tools like Freddy AI, you need all your data—and your team’s knowledge—in one well-organized place.

If the information your IT engineers need to solve problems is spread across various databases (or worse, across various people’s minds), they’ll waste time looking for resources. Plus, your chatbots will never be as smart as they could be.

The backbone of any ITSM solution is a robust knowledge base—a repository of all the information your agents and employees need to answer their own questions about IT products and services. A good knowledge base should include:

• A list of services and products your IT department offers

• How-to guides for all those services and products

• Answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs)

• Step-by-step guides to resolve common IT issues

• IT policies that users should know about

• Video tutorials and demos of product features

• Onboarding and training resources for new users

This information should be categorized and organized so it’s easy to navigate. It should also support multiple learning formats, including articles, FAQ lists, product manuals, video and written tutorials, and troubleshooting guides.

4. Implement Agile methodologies

Speed and flexibility are mission-critical in today’s ever-evolving business environment. Technology changes seemingly overnight. IT departments must be prepared to upgrade to the latest devices and applications quickly and without interrupting normal business operations.

To do so, IT service professionals can take a lesson from their counterparts on the development side of the house. App developers have long used Agile project management methodologies such as Scrum (which emphasizes working in iterative sprints) or Kanban (which uses workflow visualization tools to optimize planning and task execution).

Agile ITSM brings these methodologies—and more importantly, the principles that inspire them—into the service management space. Agility means emphasizing:

• Individuals and interactions over process and tools—focus on understanding your users, their business needs, and their expectations of IT interactions

• Working software over comprehensive documentation—focus on solving problems first, documenting processes second

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation—focus on service quality more than a speedy recovery

• Responding to change over following a plan—focus on responding to adopting new ITSM trends without losing stability 

In a nutshell: Business applications must be flexible in terms of customization and implementation, and so must ITSM processes.

5. Foster a culture of continuous learning

Agile ITSM is one way to embrace change; continuous learning is another. That’s because technical skills become outdated within about 2.5 years, according to Deloitte.

When you build a robust knowledge base and deploy an AI-enabled ITSM solution, your IT agents can easily find the information they need to provide quality tech support. But so can your chatbots. This frees up your human agents to spend more time driving innovation and future-proofing your organization—if they know how.

To help your IT agents transition from troubleshooters to change agents, encourage them to enhance their skills and knowledge through ongoing training, certifications, and professional development opportunities. This enables them to gain in-demand ITSM skills, such as:

• AI and automation: scripting, machine learning algorithms, source-code management, Kubernetes and containers, network management 

• Information security management: ethical hacking, threat modeling, vulnerability testing, application security and encryption, firewall protocols

• DevOps: infrastructure-as-code, integration, Agile management practices

• Blockchain: blockchain architecture and web development, cryptography, data structures, algorithms, and programming languages

In addition to these specialized skills, they can be trained to help improve your overall ITSM processes by obtaining ITIL certification. 

6. Take a customer-centric approach

Most ITSM best practices focus on boosting agent efficiency and effectiveness. But the internal customer experience is also an important piece of the ITSM puzzle.

A good ITSM solution makes it easy for users to request services, view the status of ongoing tickets, and provide feedback. However, there are some things your team can do to improve the customer experience, including:

• Evaluate and optimize communication channels: Find out which channels employees prefer to use and ensure they can easily request IT services via those channels. Beyond the basic channels (phone, email, in-person), you can integrate their favorite collaboration apps (such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, or WhatsApp) into your ITSM solution. 

• Create automated alerts: Keep users in the loop about the status of their tickets with automated alerts and canned responses. 

• Gather feedback: ITSM solutions provide analytics that help you evaluate performance and make process improvements, but user feedback is still essential. Focus on understanding and meeting customer needs by implementing customer feedback mechanisms. Conduct user surveys to find out how they feel about recent interactions with IT, what agents did well, and what could have gone better. 

• Analyze customer journey maps: Use ITSM metrics and customer feedback to improve products, services, and customer support processes, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

7. Implement performance metrics and KPIs

One of the main goals of ITSM is to align service delivery with business needs and strategy. But how do you know if you’re accomplishing that goal? By defining clear performance metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with organizational goals. 

The most useful ITSM metrics include:

• Customer satisfaction scores (CSAT)

• Average response time

• Average resolution time 

• Average first assignment time

• First contact resolution

• Resolution SLA percent

• First response SLA percent

Regularly monitor and analyze these metrics to identify areas for improvement, track progress, and make data-driven decisions. Your ITSM solution can track these metrics for you, and depending on its AI capabilities, can make suggestions to help you improve them. 

8. Enhance data security and privacy

As enterprise technology has advanced, so has its value—and so have the risks. Data breaches have become increasingly common and increasingly expensive. The majority of companies now have reportedly experienced more than one breach.

Cybersecurity has never been more important. To protect your organization, IT must strengthen data security measures by implementing robust cybersecurity protocols, data encryption, access controls, and regular security audits.

At the same time, they must ensure compliance with relevant data privacy regulations—including location-based regulations such as GDPR (Europe) or CCPA (California), as well as industry-specific regulations such as HIPAA (healthcare) and PCI DSS (financial services).

ITSM software can enable better cybersecurity by automating security controls, ensuring regular testing and security review, and managing security incidents. It’s also critical to ensure that your ITSM vendor has designed the solution with security and privacy top of mind.

9. Optimize IT infrastructure

By evaluating your IT infrastructure—including hardware, software, and networking components—you can identify areas for optimization and cost savings. As Prasad Ramakrishnan, CIO of Freshworks, puts it:

“IT plays a critical role in optimizing processes and the use of resources across all functions. IT leaders should not forget to optimize the ‘business of IT.’ Tool utilization tracking and optimization, tool rationalization, and optimization of service delivery are key focus areas that will enable IT to run as an efficient business function. Having tools that allow rapid deployment of process changes is equally important for IT and the business to realize value faster.”

IT is invaluable, but it’s also costly. In many organizations, it’s more expensive than it has to be. For example, the average company uses 130 apps, according to Vendr, but many of those apps are unnecessary or redundant. This happens because different teams purchase their own software in departmental silos, not knowing the functionality they need is available via an app that another department has already purchased.

ITSM software streamlines the software that the entire company uses, so IT can easily identify redundant apps. According to the Freshservice Benchmark Report, 40% of IT pros have recently eliminated redundant apps, freeing up IT resources for new tech capabilities.

Yet while ITSM tools can help your company avoid software bloat, one-size-fits-all solutions can also cause it. According to Gartner, “Through 2023, [IT] leaders will overspend by $750 million on buying unused features of ITSM tools, up from $600 million in 2019.” Thus, it’s important to invest in a right-sized solution that meets your needs without forcing you to pay for features you don’t need.

Cloud computing is another way to optimize your IT infrastructure and reduce spend. Virtual and hybrid software solutions can enhance scalability, reliability, and flexibility—usually at a fraction of the cost of onsite solutions. For example, cloud service desk software can be implemented faster than on-premises software, costs less, lets your agents work from anywhere, is updated and secured by the vendor, and can be easily integrated with third-party applications. 

10. Integrate to innovate

Your tech team relies on a variety of services to manage your organization’s technology, including: 

• Asset management software

• Infrastructure monitoring solutions

• Remote machine monitoring sensors 

• HR and CRM databases

• Collaboration and productivity apps

These and other key software can be integrated into a single IT ecosystem, turning your ITSM platform into a central hub for all technology-related activities.

ITSM tool integrations bridge data silos, improve collaboration, and help tech teams deliver uninterrupted, multichannel user experiences. 

11. Foster employee engagement and well-being

In the wake of the Great Resignation, employee engagement and turnover are still major challenges for many businesses. According to Gallup, which has been reporting on global employee engagement trends for nearly 15 years:

• 59% of workers are “quiet quitting” (not engaged) 

• 18% are “loud quitting” (actively disengaged)

• 51% are actively looking for another job

To improve the situation, quiet quitters say employers should focus on improving culture, pay and benefits, and employee well-being.

Moral of the story for tech team leaders: To boost employee engagement and retention, it’s important to prioritize agent well-being. That means creating a positive work environment that encourages collaboration, creativity, and work-life balance.

IT tends to be a stressful job, and agents who don’t have the support they need are more likely to look for it elsewhere. Employee engagement initiatives, recognition programs, and flexible work arrangements can help enhance job satisfaction and productivity. It’s also important to ensure they have the right technology in place to set them up for success.

“When agents have the proper tools and support, there's the added benefit of improving retention of your support workers,” Rajani explains. “This has been highlighted by Harvard Business Review research, indicating that 77% of the agents surveyed would consider a job change if they were not equipped with the right tools and technology."

Successfully implementing ITSM processes

Deploying ITSM is a digital transformation in itself. Like any change, it requires careful planning, execution, continuous evaluation, and process improvements. You can’t just deploy service management technology and expect seamless service delivery.

Putting ITSM best practices into practice is a cultural shift—it requires buy-in and involvement from all leadership levels. And it requires involvement from IT agents themselves.

Over time, you’ll discover more and more opportunities to:

• Automate workflows

• Integrate AI capabilities

• Implement Agile methodologies

• Encourage employee development and engagement

• Improve customer service communication (and thus user satisfaction)

• Use ITSM metrics to improve processes

• Enhance data security and privacy

• Optimize your IT infrastructure

ITSM is a continuous learning process, and with the right combination of technology and best practices, you’ll redefine what ITSM success looks like for your organization.

What does success look like?

Implementation varies from one organization to the next, as does the end result. But there are some ITSM benefits that successful organizations have in common, including:

Faster, more consistent service delivery

The IT department at OfficeMax was challenged by a lack of transparency across IT teams, an inefficient ITSM system, and unhappy users. They wanted an ITIL-aligned system with self-service options, a robust knowledge base for agents, and the ability to deliver consistent service across locations. By deploying Freshservice, IT has increased SLA adherence for IT service delivery by 97.1% and increased first call resolution to 88.7%.

“Freshservice delivers a faster IT service with greater insights, which creates opportunities for continuous innovation,” says Joseph Orquejo, e-business and IT service delivery manager at OfficeMax Australia.

Improved user confidence and satisfaction

When employees don’t trust IT to solve their problems quickly and thoroughly, they solve those problems with shadow IT, which leads to unnecessary security risks and expenses. That was the problem at Barkley advertising agency, which previously used an overly complicated enterprise-grade ITSM solution. By replacing it with a right-sized solution from Freshservice, Barkley improved their IT department’s “bad reputation,” earned the trust of end users, and boosted customer satisfaction by 160%.

“Freshservice allowed us to just ‘get to the point’!” says Lambert Tomeldan, head of IT at Barkley. “If our employees had a problem, they just needed to submit a ticket and our team would be able to respond to it immediately. Partnering with Freshservice has helped reverse the reputation of IT and has created a lot of efficiencies.”

Cloud-based software for fast deployment and remote work capabilities

Deploying a new ITSM solution can take months with some vendors, but Freshservice’s easy-to-use, quick-to-customize cloud-based solution can be deployed fast. For example, the National Rugby League onboarded its IT team in just an hour, and the transition was so smooth that end users didn’t even realize it had happened. For RingCentral, which needed to quickly turn 1,000+ office employees into remote workers due to COVID-19, it took a few days.

“Typically, to justify and roll out a proper implementation takes six to nine months. We had to deploy a solution to thousands of users in a week,” says Fred Chin, senior director of IT end-user services at RingCentral. “Freshservice has opened up our eyes to deploying new processes in a new fashion. We’re no longer constrained by our legacy ITSM system. Previously, everything was manual. Freshservice automation gives us peace of mind.”