What can you do about it?<\/p>\n
In this article, we\u2019ll review the most common help desk ticket issues and provide solutions to enable your internal help desk<\/a> and customer support teams with the knowledge, tools, and strategies to overcome them proactively.<\/p>\n TL;DR \/ KEY TAKEAWAYS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u2192 More than half of enterprises expect ticket volume to rise, which means IT needs a plan to manage the load.<\/p>\n \u2192 Password resets remain the top request, showing the value of simple self-service.<\/p>\n \u2192 About 67% of employees report device issues, which highlights how much downtime comes from preventable problems.<\/p>\n \u2192 Poorly managed access requests slow work and add to backlogs.<\/p>\n \u2192 Self-help tools and in-app guidance reduce routine tickets and free IT for higher-value work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While every organization\u2019s help desk and customer support team will face contextual issues to their industry, niche, size, and more, these eleven support issues are frequently encountered by help desk teams supporting internal employees or external customers and end-users.<\/p>\n A survey by ExpressVPN found that 52%<\/a> of respondents in the United States lose their passwords at least once a month. Most of us can relate to this predicament and can likely recall a time when we\u2019ve frustratingly attempted to log into our accounts over and over again \u2014 sometimes up until the point that we\u2019re locked out of essential systems altogether. What do users tend to do when this happens?<\/p>\n You guessed it \u2014 submit an IT support ticket.<\/p>\n Organizations are responsible for creating seamless password reset flows within products and services so users don\u2019t have to rely on additional password management tools or dependencies on other people to log back into an application. Teams can significantly reduce the number of password reset requests and shorten the time taken for users to reset passwords by creating a quick and easy self-service channel to resolve this issue.<\/p>\n Today, users typically expect to see this prompt to reset their password during the login process:<\/p>\n Don\u2019t assume all your users know how to find and use this prompt. Document this self-service flow in your knowledge base so users can quickly look it up and find a helpful article. The example below shows how Whatfix gives our customers an intuitive search experience that automatically surfaces related articles based on keywords in the search bar.<\/p>\n With a digital adoption platform<\/a> like Whatfix DAP, organizations can embed a self-help wiki over customer-facing and internal applications that aggregate all end-user documentation<\/a>, knowledge base<\/a> articles, FAQs<\/a>, process docs, videos, and more into one searchable interface. End-users are contextually shown support resources based on where they are in an application, which prompts in-app guided experiences that walk users through issues and help them solve help desk issues on their own.<\/p>\n The software applications we use today are more advanced and comprehensive than ever. From solutions enhanced with emerging technologies like AI and RPA to platforms built with extensive customization functions, consumers today have no shortage of options to implement personalized solutions for their specific needs. But with more software maturity comes more complex installation and update processes. Customers often submit help desk tickets to solve challenges such as software that fails to install properly, freezes during or after updates, crashes, or runs into corrupted files and programs.<\/p>\n To resolve these issues, customer support representatives can educate customers on user permissions and system compatibility. An organization delegates user permissions to ensure employees can install and update software.<\/p>\n Train them to handle these processes and stay on top of assessing hardware and software requirements before making any changes to the system. Opening this responsibility up to everyone increases the risk of errors because not everybody will have the in-depth IT training and familiarity to complete it correctly.<\/p>\n Network outages have become more frequent in recent years, with <\/span>44%<\/span><\/a> of data center operators growing more concerned about the resilience of IT services. Customers will turn to help desks if they encounter problems like slow, inconsistent, or limited network connections to specific locations, websites, and devices.<\/span><\/p>\n Failure to resolve these connectivity issues efficiently will drive customers away and dwindle growth opportunities. \u201cNetwork outages lasting mere minutes can mean millions or billions of dollars in lost revenue, reputational damage, and recovery efforts,\u201d Song Pang, senior vice president of customer engineering at NetBrain, writes for <\/span>Forbes<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Organizations can better manage network interruptions by implementing preventative measures like continuous monitoring and dedicating a schedule to maintain network devices like routers and modems. Making network troubleshooting knowledge accessible to more stakeholders and easier to digest can also decrease the time spent resolving tickets.<\/span><\/p>\n The number of individuals using email is expected to reach close to 4.6 billion in 2025, making it one of the most popular digital communication methods.<\/p>\n Email is easy to access and requires little resources to use and scale, attracting users across age groups, digital proficiency levels, industries, and company sizes. But this lower barrier to entry can also make it difficult for email providers to enforce user education and troubleshooting guidance at scale.<\/p>\n This leads to high volumes of support requests for issues like:<\/p>\n The inability to access email functionalities properly can significantly impede business continuity \u2014 it halts communication, puts processes at a standstill, and delays decisions.<\/p>\n Implementing standardized email configurations and settings can help companies avoid the hassle of waiting for IT to solve email tickets. Develop and distribute clear email guidelines that outline policies for security and privacy, email data backup systems, email templates, server updates, employee feedback collection, and more.<\/p>\n Employees submit hardware malfunction reports when their devices are slow, broken, or incapable of performing important tasks properly.<\/p>\n A 2022 study of workers in the United Kingdom found that 67%<\/a> of employees were experiencing device issues, like laptops and keyboards. These issues dampen productivity, create friction in the employee experience, and reduce trust in leadership.<\/p>\n Support tickets reporting malfunctioning office hardware include problems with hard drives, network connectivity, laptops, and desktop monitors that randomly shut down, restart, and overheat.<\/p>\n Your organization\u2019s IT departments can create a strategy that minimizes disruptions from hardware issues by prioritizing preventative measures such as regular maintenance and updates and hardware monitoring systems that alert responsible parties when an abnormality is detected on company devices.<\/p>\n IT teams can also equip employees with resources and best practices to help them keep devices up-to-date and protected.<\/p>\n For example, companies can document guidelines on downloading software and files onto a device, charging and handling devices, and maintaining clean workplaces to avoid unwanted damage.<\/p>\n Siloed information is a rampant problem in the modern digital workplace, with 60%<\/a> of employees finding it difficult to get essential information from colleagues and do their most productive work. Companies could overcome this problem by using shared drives, knowledge bases, and project management software to make information easier to locate and share among team members.<\/p>\n But what happens when these systems don\u2019t give employees the convenience they were promised? It becomes a technical issue that requires intervention from leaders, operations teams, or IT departments.<\/p>\n Many of these issues stem from outdated access control lists that prevent operations managers from giving the right people the necessary permissions. As your organizational structure shifts and grows, you\u2019ll want to create a system for maintaining these access control lists to reflect changes such as new hires, resignations, promotions, evolving job descriptions, and more.<\/p>\n Here are a few tactics you can use to prevent unnecessary tickets for these issues:<\/p>\n With a digital adoption platform (DAP)<\/a> like Whatfix, organizations can ensure employees seamlessly navigate internal software applications and digital processes, reducing friction and frustration when accessing shared resources. Whatfix Self Help enables employees to instantly find relevant support documentation, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides within the application, eliminating the need to submit tickets for routine access issues.<\/p>\n For more complex access challenges, Whatfix\u2019s in-app guidance provides step-by-step, interactive walkthroughs that guide users through permission requests, access approvals, and security protocols in real-time, ensuring they follow the correct process without needing IT intervention. <\/span><\/p>\n Whatfix\u2019s automation and contextual nudges can also proactively surface reminders to update access control lists, helping IT teams avoid permission-related bottlenecks as organizational structures evolve.<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t \u2192 Guide users through complex apps with contextual, role-based in-app guidance.<\/p> \u2192 Support users at the moment of need with AI-powered Self Help and embedded workflow assistance.<\/p> \u2192 Analyze user engagement to identify friction points and optimize business processes.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t Much like help desk tickets for hardware malfunctions and connectivity issues, performance complaints revolve around requests to fill user experience gaps in digital devices and systems. The biggest difference is that these requests are more closely tied to an employee\u2019s ability to perform a task efficiently with the necessary software or process,<\/p>\n Let\u2019s break this comparison down. An employee would submit a hardware malfunction ticket if their office-issued laptop shuts down frequently without warning. They would submit a ticket for connectivity issues if they can\u2019t access a stable and strong internet connection.<\/p>\n However, they would submit a performance complaint if their cloud-based enterprise software takes too long to load a specific dashboard, impacting their ability to collaborate with team members and move a task forward.<\/p>\n Software users submit bug reports to help desks when encountering errors in their digital applications or devices. Bugs are a natural part of coding and can happen to any product, regardless of its sophistication or organization.<\/p>\n Coming across a few bugs now and then isn\u2019t detrimental to the user experience \u2014 but it can be if companies don\u2019t prioritize regular updates and patches in their development lifecycle.<\/p>\n IT and customer support teams deal with tickets reporting bugs such as unresponsive software, sudden crashes, user interface abnormalities, functionality errors within software features, and more. These issues are disruptive and can completely halt a user\u2019s workflow.<\/p>\n If your UI\/UX designers can\u2019t log onto their design tool without it freezing and crashing, their work gets pushed back for hours or days until their ticket is solved. Companies can avoid this worst-case scenario by implementing continuous, real-time monitoring, crisis management processes, alerts, and training content to educate users about necessary software updates.<\/p>\n A study of computer owners found that 62% had lost their data before, while 61%<\/a> lost their data due to a security accident. With the frequency of cyberattacks and the growing number of software applications consumers use daily, data security and protection will only become a more significant focus area for all organizations.<\/p>\n Although it\u2019s crucial to equip help desks with the resources to support data loss and retrieval requests, risk mitigation efforts will be the most effective. Data that\u2019s lost is extremely challenging to get back.<\/p>\n Teams must equip their data infrastructures with automated backup systems, which gives technical and non-technical users a simple way to adopt a \u201cset it and forget it\u201d approach to data backups. Beyond that, product and customer support teams must define a data recovery process to help users retrieve sensitive and vital data.<\/p>\n Device onboarding and configuration issues happen when users struggle to set up their devices for intended use. This is common in workplaces, considering employees\u2019 different levels of familiarity and proficiency with device settings and software.<\/p>\n Conducting onboarding and configuration can be even more complex for companies with a remote or hybrid work model. The last thing you want is for new hires to be stuck waiting for help desk tickets to be resolved on their first day.<\/p>\n Standardizing device onboarding and configuration processes will save companies the time and hassle of one-on-one meetings, live training, and back-and-forth messages. Document these processes into your knowledge base, categorize them clearly, and make them accessible to employees anytime.<\/p>\n You can even surface self-service channels like task lists and searchable resource centers within your workforce management software<\/a> to make these processes visible throughout onboarding.<\/p>\n Research by the Harvard Business Review found that employees today toggle between digital applications 1,200<\/a> times daily, adding up to under four hours of toggling a week. This may not be surprising, considering the average department uses 40 to 60 tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a lot of tools to manage, many licenses to stay on top of, and many support tickets sent out regarding license renewals, permissions, and activation.<\/p>\n For example, an expired subscription or overused software license will lock users out and interrupt their work while they wait to hear back from customer support representatives. Organizations can avoid these bottlenecks by using software license management<\/a> tools to automate processes like renewals, monitor license usage, log records of all subscriptions, and manage permissions.<\/p>\n Few things are more frustrating than experiencing a system crash in the middle of an important task. Whether it’s a sudden blue screen, an endless reboot loop, or an application that forces the entire system to shut down, these disruptions create immediate productivity roadblocks.<\/p>\n System crashes and reboot issues often stem from software conflicts, outdated drivers, hardware failures, or insufficient system resources. Employees or customers encountering these issues typically submit urgent support tickets, as crashes can result in lost work, corrupted files, or even complete system failures that prevent them from accessing key applications.<\/p>\n Organizations can minimize these disruptions by enforcing proactive IT policies like regular system updates, driver management, and automated error logging to identify potential failures before they escalate. IT teams should also provide clear troubleshooting steps in self-service portals, helping users resolve minor crashes independently.<\/p>\n In cases where issues persist, remote diagnostic tools can allow IT support teams to assess and fix system problems more efficiently without requiring extensive back-and-forth communication.<\/p>\n Modern organizations rely on role-based access control to maintain security, streamline operations, and ensure that employees can access the tools and data they need\u2014all while keeping sensitive information protected. But as companies scale and team structures evolve, help desks also see a spike in tickets related to user role and permission changes.<\/p>\n Requests like these might look like granting new employees access to necessary systems, modifying permissions as employees take on new roles, or revoking access for those who leave the company. Without a well-structured access management system, these tickets can create bottlenecks, delaying employees from completing critical tasks and increasing security risks due to misconfigured permissions.<\/p>\n IT teams can reduce these requests by implementing automated role-based provisioning, allowing permissions to be assigned dynamically based on predefined criteria. Self-service access request workflows can also empower employees to request changes through an approval process, reducing IT workload while maintaining security.<\/p>\n Organizations should stay vigilant by regularly auditing access logs and permissions to prevent unauthorized access and ensure compliance with security policies.<\/p>\n Related Resources:<\/strong><\/p>\n Most common help desk issues have simple resolutions, but the sheer number of these requests can bog down support teams. What can you start implementing today to deflect these support tickets<\/a>?<\/p>\n Here are some actionable recommendations that will help you proactively overcome these common help desk challenges, enabling help desk teams to focus on more unique issues, improve time-to-resolution<\/a> for tickets, and better manage support ticket queues<\/a>:<\/p>\n Sandbox environments<\/a> provide organizations with replicate versions of their applications for user testing and training. With a tool like Whatfix Mirror<\/a>, you can easily create sandbox environments for your help desk and its support flows and tasks. Use this cloned application for interactive, hands-on user training in a risk-free software environment. This accelerates time to proficiency and prepares new agents for common flows and issues.<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike help desk tickets that require intervention from IT and customer support representatives, self-help user support channels like a service desk empower users with the resources they need to resolve support queries on their own time. This is one of the critical differences between help desks and service desks.<\/p>\n This autonomy is especially useful to reduce the volume of tickets submitted for simple user questions like how to request access or permissions to apps and services, manage password resets, avoid installation errors, and more.<\/p>\n Fewer support tickets mean less time and cost spent solving avoidable issues and more bandwidth for support teams to tackle complex product challenges and implementation projects.<\/p>\n What does self-help user support look like in action? Customer self-service support<\/a> and internal employee self-support resources can include:<\/p>\n When the recruiting company, Reed<\/a>, transitioned to a new CRM software, its service desk was bogged down by high volumes of assistance calls on simple \u201chow to\u201d questions. Reed used Whatfix\u2019s digital adoption platform to create and implement self-help guides within the CRM, resulting in a 23% reduction in support calls per user in six months.<\/p>\n As we\u2019ve already explored in the example above, in-app guidance<\/a> works to reduce support tickets by creating more empowered, expert end-users with contextual experiences and self-help support.<\/p>\n Unlike external knowledge bases<\/a> and training modules, in-app guidance centralizes software education and task execution within a single platform. Users aren\u2019t pulled out of their workflow and don\u2019t have to spend extra time jumping between systems or waiting for others to access information.<\/p>\n In-app guidance like tooltips<\/a>, task lists, product tours<\/a>, pop-ups, and interactive flows<\/a> give users contextual knowledge of essential features and on-screen elements. Unlike sitting through a training course or watching a video tutorial, these interactive content formats give users instant access to knowledge in their time of need. No dependencies. No wasting time searching for answers from disparate sources.<\/p>\n Submitting queries to a help desk is a reactive form of user support. Organizations today have the opportunity to drive user activation and retention with proactive customer engagement.<\/p>\n Instead of waiting for users to run into an issue and submit a help desk ticket, product teams can analyze user behavior to predict areas within the product where users might encounter friction or drop off a journey. Companies use Whatfix\u2019s product analytics<\/a> capabilities to capture how users move through their products \u2013 whether it\u2019s a custom customer-facing application or internal enterprise software for employees like a CRM, HCM, or ERP.<\/p>\n By segmenting data into specific user groups and product flows, teams can build accurate conversion funnels, create personalized onboarding and training programs for different user cohorts, and deliver guidance before users even encounter an issue.<\/p>\nWhat are the most common help desk support issues?<\/h2>\n
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13 Most Common Help Desk Issues Raised in Support Tickets<\/h2>\n
<\/a>1. Password reset requests<\/h3>\n
![\"Wrong](\"https:\/\/whatfix.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Wrong-password-screenshot-727x1024.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Whatfix](\"https:\/\/whatfix.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Whatfix-search-experience-1024x255.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Whatfix-DAP-Self-Help-Gif\"](\"https:\/\/whatfix.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Whatfix-SelfHelp-Gif.gif\")
<\/p>\n<\/a>2. Software installation\/update errors<\/h3>\n
<\/a>3. Connectivity issues<\/h3>\n
<\/a>4. Email-related problems<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>5. Hardware malfunction reports<\/h3>\n
<\/a>6. Access issues to shared resources<\/h3>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/whatfix.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/self-help.gif\")
<\/p>\n![\"whatfix](\"https:\/\/whatfix.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image08.gif\")
<\/p>\n![\"whatfix-task-list\"](\"https:\/\/whatfix.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Frame-1272631005-1024x462.png\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>7. Performance complaints<\/h3>\n
<\/a>8. Software bug reports<\/h3>\n
<\/a>9. Data loss or retrieval requests<\/h3>\n
<\/a>10. Device onboarding and configuration challenges<\/h3>\n
<\/a>11. License and subscription management<\/h3>\n
<\/a>12. System crash and reboot issues<\/h3>\n
<\/a>13. User role and permission changes<\/h3>\n
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Tips for Overcoming Common Help Desk Issues<\/h2>\n
1. Provide hands-on training for help desk agents with sandbox environments<\/h3>\n
![\"Whatfix-Mirror-Capture-Screen-GIF\"](\"https:\/\/whatfix.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Whatfix-Mirror-Capture-Screen-GIF.gif\")
<\/p>\n2. Provide self-help user support solutions<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\n3. Proactively provide in-app guidance to avoid support issues<\/h3>\n
![\"whatfix-DAP\"](\"https:\/\/whatfix.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/image1.gif\")
<\/p>\n4. Use product analytics to identify friction areas in your application\u2019s UI<\/h3>\n
![\"user-cohort-and-paths-whatfix-analytics\"](\"https:\/\/whatfix.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/user-cohort-and-paths-whatfix-analytics.gif\")
<\/p>\n5. Make data-driven product and UX improvements<\/h3>\n