The future of IT support with Artificial Intelligence

Whenever I talk to older colleagues in IT, sooner or later the question arises: “So, how long before ChatGPT replaces us all?” The answer is usually not simple. From a Service Desk perspective, I look at the coming AI revolution (Copilot, ServiceNow Now Assist, and others) with hope rather than fear.

Here is my view of what the IT support of the future will look like.

1. “Tier 0” will become a reality

Today we have L1 (call reception, basic resolution), L2 (specialization), and L3 (architects and deep troubleshooting). Companies have been trying to introduce “Tier 0” for years – self-service portals where the user solves the problem themselves. But people don’t want to read manuals. People want to talk to someone who will help them.

And this is where AI steps in.

graph TD
    A[User has a problem] --> B{Contacts Support}
    
    subgraph Present
    B --> C[Clicks through IVR / Writes an Email]
    C --> D[L1 Agent reads and searches KB]
    D --> E[L1 Agent resolves (15 minutes)]
    end
    
    subgraph Future with AI
    B --> F[Voice AI takes the Call/Chat]
    F --> G{Is it a common problem?}
    G -- Yes --> H[AI acts directly e.g. Pass Reset (1 min)]
    G -- No --> I[AI hands it to Human Agent incl. summary]
    end
    
    style F fill:#d0f4de,stroke:#333
    style H fill:#d0f4de,stroke:#333

AI will not “search for articles.” AI will reach directly into Active Directory and reset the password. AI will examine the logs and tell the user: “Your VPN dropped out due to a local ISP outage, please try again in a moment.”

2. IT support agents will become “Prompt engineers” and auditors

We will not be repeatedly writing emails like: “Hello, please send a screenshot of the error.” That’s what the bot will be there for. Our job will be to check the more complex cases that the AI couldn’t handle because they require human empathy, circumventing processes, or applying common sense for which the AI doesn’t yet have data.

At the same time, we will be the ones who have to “feed” the bot with the right data (Knowledge Base articles). If we write bad documentation, the bot will draw from it and advise users nonsense. The quality of documentation will thus be more important than ever.

3. Empathy will remain our greatest advantage

Regardless of how advanced the language model you are facing is, if you are currently giving a presentation to the Board of Directors and your laptop freezes, you don’t want to talk to a robot. You want to hear a human voice that says: “I understand the urgency, we are playing against time, I am connecting to you and we are going to fix it.”

Artificial Intelligence will replace the robotic part of our work (resetting passwords, assigning licenses, checking network status). By doing so, it will finally free our hands so that we can do true IT support with a human face.