Will IT tickets go away?

The whole idea of creating a “ticket” for an IT issue feels anachronistic - like clicking a floppy disk icon to save a doc.

In a world of AI agents that resolve user requests instantly, does the concept of a ticket even make sense?

The answer depends on which side of the ticket you find yourself.

For end users making IT requests, the ticket has outlived its usefulness. Users should ask for what they need and get it immediately.

For the IT admin, the story is more complicated. Tickets are a record of a request, and can be valuable for tracking and prioritizing work, assigning tasks, and communicating on complex issues. Data from historical tickets is invaluable for measuring agent performance and identifying areas for improved procedures and automation. And tickets are essential for investigations and compliance audits.

We try to strike this balance at Serval. The end user is never expected to “create a ticket.”  They make requests - via Slack, email, etc - and Serval automates the resolution, escalating to a human when necessary.

Behind the scenes, Serval still creates a ticket for every request, using AI to generate titles, descriptions, priorities, labels, and other properties as needed. Even when the request is fully automated (most cases), it’s valuable to have the record of work being done.

As AI takes over an increasing number of IT requests, tickets will be treated more like audit logs; living on in the background for investigations and compliance, but not something anyone expects to interact with in the normal course of business.

So tickets are probably here to stay, even if you see them less and less.