Let’s be honest, most support teams feel like they’re treading water. They’re bogged down by a constant stream of repetitive tickets that drain their energy and make the workday a slog. It’s a never-ending loop of password resets and "how-to" questions that leaves no room for the tricky, interesting work that actually makes a difference.
This is where we break the cycle. We’re going to walk through the most common help desk tickets and give you a practical playbook to automate them. By letting AI handle the simple stuff, your team can finally get back to what they do best: solving tough problems and keeping customers happy.
What is a help desk ticket?
A help desk ticket is really just a formal record of someone asking for help. Think of it as a digital folder for a specific problem. When a user runs into an issue, a ticket gets created in a system, capturing all the key details from the get-go.
From there, the ticket goes on a journey. It’s created, assigned to an agent, worked on, and eventually, resolved and closed. Every single conversation and action is logged right there in the ticket.
This is a big deal because it keeps things organized and ensures nothing gets lost in a cluttered email inbox or a forgotten chat. A ticketing system gives you a single source of truth, making it easy to track progress, see how your team is doing, and spot patterns over time. These tickets can be for anything from internal IT issues your employees are facing to questions from customers about your product.
Our criteria for this help desk ticket list
I didn’t just pull these issues out of a hat. This list comes from digging through industry reports, lurking in IT forums on Reddit, and seeing the same patterns pop up again and again. To make the cut, each ticket type had to be incredibly common, have a high probability of being solved with self-service or automation, and have a real, noticeable impact on an agent’s day-to-day workload.
Common help desk ticket types at a glance
For those who just want the highlights, here’s a quick look at the usual suspects, the headaches they cause, and the best way to handle them.
| Ticket Type | Common Impact | Ideal Resolution Method |
|---|---|---|
| Password Resets & Lockouts | High (Work Stoppage) | Self-Service / AI Automation |
| Software Access Requests | Medium (Delayed Work) | AI Automation |
| "How-To" Questions | Low (Productivity Dip) | Self-Service Knowledge Base / AI Chat |
| Hardware & Printer Issues | Medium (Frustration) | AI Triage & Manual Fix |
| Network Connectivity | High (Work Stoppage) | AI Triage & Manual Fix |
| Application Performance | Medium (Productivity Dip) | AI Triage & Manual Fix |
| Software Installation | Low (Delayed Start) | Self-Service Guide / AI Automation |
| Security Incident Reports | High (Risk) | AI Triage & Manual Intervention |
| Email Issues | Medium (Communication Block) | AI Triage & Manual Fix |
| Data Retrieval Requests | Varies (Risk/Compliance) | AI Triage & Manual Intervention |
The top 10 most common help desk ticket issues and how to solve them
Alright, let’s get into the nitty-gritty. Here are the top 10 tickets that are probably clogging up your queue right now, and more importantly, how you can use AI to make them a thing of the past.
1. Password resets and account lockouts: A common help desk ticket
The Problem: Ah, the classic. A user forgets their password, tries one too many times, and gets locked out. Suddenly, their work has ground to a halt, and they need help immediately.
The Traditional Fix: An agent has to drop what they’re doing, go through the process of verifying the user’s identity, and send a password reset link. It’s a simple task, but it can easily eat up precious minutes that an agent doesn’t have.
The AI-Powered Solution: An AI agent can handle this in seconds. By connecting to your user directory, it can instantly verify someone’s identity through a secure process and trigger the reset automatically. With a tool like eesel AI, you can build custom API actions that allow the AI to do this right from your help desk, without any human intervention. The user is back to work in a flash, and your agent never even has to see the ticket.
2. Software access and permission requests as a help desk ticket
The Problem: A new employee needs access to ten different applications, or a current team member needs higher permissions for a project. Each request kicks off a manual chain of approvals and provisioning tasks.
The Traditional Fix: Someone files a ticket. It sits in a queue until a manager spots it and replies with "Approved." Then, an IT agent has to manually log in to each system to grant the access. It’s slow, and it’s easy for things to get missed.
The AI-Powered Solution: AI can manage this entire flow. It can read the request, automatically ping the right manager for approval, and once it gets the green light, use an API action to grant the permissions. Products like the AI Triage from eesel AI can route these requests to the correct person automatically, so nothing gets stuck in limbo.
3. "How do I…?": The user training help desk ticket
The Problem: These are the "death by a thousand cuts" tickets. "How do I export this report?" "Where do I find the invoice template?" They aren’t complex, but they add up fast, draining your team’s time and focus.
The Traditional Fix: Agents essentially become broken records, typing out the same instructions over and over or spending time digging up links to the right knowledge base articles.
The AI-Powered Solution: An AI agent acts as your team’s personal guru, providing an instant and accurate answer. The best part is that it learns from your existing documentation. For instance, eesel AI can unify knowledge from your help center, Confluence, Google Docs, and even past ticket resolutions. This means the AI always has the context it needs to give the right answer.
4. The hardware and printer issues help desk ticket
The Problem: The dreaded "My printer isn’t working" ticket. This vague request is usually followed by a painful back-and-forth just to get basic details like the printer model, the user’s location, and what they’ve already tried.
The Traditional Fix: An agent has to play detective, asking a string of simple questions before they can even start diagnosing the actual problem.
The AI-Powered Solution: While AI can’t physically unjam a printer, it can act as a super-efficient first responder. It can ask all the important clarifying questions upfront, walk the user through basic troubleshooting steps (yes, including "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"), and gather all the necessary info. By the time a human gets the ticket, it’s fully documented and ready for a real fix.
5. Network connectivity problems as a help desk ticket
The Problem: A user submits a ticket simply saying, "The internet is down." Is it just their Wi-Fi? The whole office network? A massive service provider outage? Who knows.
The Traditional Fix: IT begins the slow process of figuring out the scope of the problem, wasting time that could be spent actually fixing it.
The AI-Powered Solution: An AI agent can do the initial legwork in seconds. It can check system status pages automatically, ask the user to run a quick speed test, and scan for similar reports from other users to see if there’s a wider pattern. Based on its findings, eesel AI can either send a quick update ("We’re aware of an outage and are working on it") or escalate a well-documented ticket for an individual issue.
6. The application performance issues help desk ticket
The Problem: A user reports that a key business app is "running slow" or "crashing." Without more information, it’s nearly impossible to troubleshoot effectively.
The Traditional Fix: An agent has to start from scratch, asking for the user’s operating system, browser version, what they were doing when the crash happened, and whether they saw an error message.
The AI-Powered Solution: AI can be set up to request all this diagnostic info right away. It can even guide the user on how to find their browser version or take a screenshot of an error, packaging all the details neatly for a Tier 2 support agent to take over.
7. The software installation and updates help desk ticket
The Problem: An employee needs to install a piece of company-approved software or is running into trouble with a mandatory update.
The Traditional Fix: IT either sends over a link to a long, often confusing guide or has to start a remote desktop session to handle the installation for them.
The AI-Powered Solution: An AI chatbot can serve as an interactive installation wizard. It can pull the correct download links from your knowledge base and walk the user through the process one step at a time, answering common questions as they come up.
8. The security incidents and phishing reports help desk ticket
The Problem: An employee gets a sketchy-looking email and isn’t sure if it’s a phishing attempt. A slow response here could put the entire company at risk.
The Traditional Fix: The ticket sits in the general queue until a security-minded agent hopefully sees it and gives the user the right advice.
The AI-Powered Solution: AI can be trained to recognize keywords like "phishing," "scam," or "suspicious email" and respond instantly with a standardized, safe set of instructions. Even better, a tool like AI Triage can automatically flag the ticket with the highest priority and route it directly to your security team.
9. The email-related issues help desk ticket
The Problem: A user can’t send or receive emails, or their Outlook isn’t syncing properly. Their communication is cut off, and they’re getting frustrated by the minute.
The Traditional Fix: An agent checks for server outages and then walks the user through the usual steps of re-authenticating their account or checking client settings.
The AI-Powered Solution: An AI agent can perform an instant health check on the email server through an API call. If the system is healthy, it can provide the user with a direct link to the right troubleshooting guide for their specific device and email client.
10. The data loss and retrieval requests help desk ticket
The Problem: A user accidentally deletes an important file. Panic sets in.
The Traditional Fix: An IT agent has to figure out exactly what was deleted, where it was saved, and when it went missing. Then, they have to navigate the backup system to try and recover it.
The AI-Powered Solution: AI can’t perform the restore itself, but it can gather all the critical information needed to make the process as smooth as possible. It can ask for the exact file name, the last known folder location, and the approximate time of deletion. It then creates a perfectly detailed ticket and sends it straight to the team that manages data backups.
Explore the top 10 most common IT help desk tickets.
Pro tips for submitting a better help desk ticket
Want to help your IT team help you faster? Share these simple tips with your colleagues. A little effort upfront can make a huge difference in how quickly things get resolved.
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Write a clear, specific subject line. Bad: "Help!" Good: "Cannot Access Salesforce Report – Getting ‘Permission Denied’ Error."
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Explain the impact. Let IT know if the issue is a total work-stopper or just a minor annoyance. This really helps with prioritization.
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List what you’ve already tried. Saying "I’ve already tried restarting my computer and clearing my browser cache" saves everyone from going over old ground.
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Include screenshots or error messages. A picture is worth a thousand words (and saves about ten back-and-forth emails).
Stop drowning in your help desk ticket queue, start automating resolutions
The main takeaway here is pretty simple: a huge portion of your help desk’s workload is predictable, repetitive, and practically begging for automation. The solution isn’t to hire more people or ask your team to work harder; it’s to work smarter. AI is the key to deflecting these common tickets and freeing up your agents to focus on challenges that actually require a human touch.
This is where a solution built for the real world comes in. Unlike rigid tools that force you to change your entire workflow, eesel AI plugs directly into the systems you already use, like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Slack. And the best part? You can test it out with zero risk. Our simulation mode shows you exactly how it would have handled your past tickets, so you can see the potential impact before you even go live.
Ready to see how you can automate up to 70% of your common help desk tickets? With eesel AI, you can be up and running in minutes, not months. Book a demo or start your free trial today and see how much time you can get back.
Frequently asked questions
Start with password resets and account lockouts. They are extremely common, follow a predictable process, and automating them provides an immediate and noticeable reduction in your team’s workload and a fast win for your automation strategy.
AI excels at resolving high-volume, repetitive tickets like access requests and "how-to" questions. For complex issues like hardware failures, AI’s primary role is to act as a first responder to gather key details and route a well-documented ticket to the right human expert.
Automation frees your agents to focus on high-value work that requires critical thinking. This includes solving difficult technical problems, improving internal processes, and providing in-depth, personalized support for critical incidents that truly require a human touch.
The AI is programmed to act as an intelligent investigator. It asks a series of clarifying questions to gather essential details, like whether other sites are working or if colleagues are affected, before it attempts to solve the issue or routes a detailed ticket to a human.
Besides sharing tips, using ticket templates is highly effective. By creating pre-filled forms in your help desk for common issues, you can prompt users for the exact information you need (like their location for a printer issue), making it easier for them to be specific.
The most important metric is your "automation rate" or "deflection rate." This tells you the percentage of incoming tickets that are fully resolved by AI without ever needing to be touched by a human agent, giving you a clear view of your ROI.
