11 ITSM best practices to boost efficiency in 2025

IT teams often find themselves reacting to problems they should’ve seen coming. One ticket escalates, another falls through the cracks, and suddenly, everything’s urgent. The problem isn’t the tools. It’s the process. 

The right ITSM best practices turn temporary fixes into long-term solutions. They provide structure, automation, and visibility so that IT can operate as a strategic function and not just as a help desk. 

Let’s walk you through 11 proven ITSM processes that help teams work faster, solve issues smarter, and align IT operations with real business outcomes.

What is ITSM and why ITSM best practices matter?

IT Service Management (ITSM) is the structured approach companies use to deliver and manage IT services for employees and end-users. It defines how requests are handled, systems are maintained, and issues are resolved—from start to finish.

For example, when new employees join, ITSM ensures that they receive access to the right tools, apps, and devices, without having to chase multiple teams.

Why do ITSM best practices matter?

Deploying an ITSM tool is easy, but using it effectively requires best practices. These practices strategize the system, helping IT teams scale operations, set priorities, and provide sustainable business support.

ITSM best practices:

• Align IT with business goals:  Without clear processes, IT teams operate in silos. ITSM best practices help IT operate in line with company priorities, whether it’s enabling remote work, securing sensitive data, or supporting a product launch.

• Reduce wastage of time and complexity: Manual tasks, unclear handoffs, and repeated issues slow everything down. By standardizing workflows, enabling automation, and keeping teams focused on what matters, ITSM best practices help reduce bottlenecks.

• Improve service delivery and user satisfaction: Employees expect IT to be fast, reliable, and transparent. With the right ITSM processes, teams can respond faster, communicate better, and track every request, building trust while preventing agent burnout.

• Help prevent problems before they escalate: Downtime doesn’t just frustrate users. It costs money and breaks momentum. By following ITSM best practices, teams can flag recurrent issues early, implement fixes faster, and minimize unexpected disruptions.

ITIL framework and service management

ITSM is a structured approach to designing, delivering, managing, and improving IT services across an organization. It covers everything, from basic support and asset management to infrastructure and cybersecurity.

To make it effective, IT teams need two elements: a unified platform to centralize operations and a clear strategy to keep everyone aligned. Combining ITSM software with proven best practices helps streamline workflows, ensure consistent service delivery, and support business goals.

If you’ve adopted ITIL, chances are you’re already following some core ITSM best practices. ITIL is the most widely used ITSM framework, a structured set of principles that guide how teams run their IT operations.

Although ITIL is not the only framework, it’s the one that most teams start with. ITIL focuses on four key dimensions of service management best practices:

• Organizations and people

• Information and technology

• Partners and suppliers

• Value streams and processes

ITIL and ITSM aren’t the same. ITSM is the broader discipline—how your team manages service delivery—while ITIL is simply one well-known guide to doing it effectively.

While ITIL has continued to evolve, most recently with its 2019 update, technology and user needs have advanced even faster. That’s why today’s most effective teams go beyond the framework, building modern ITSM processes that reflect how work gets done today.

11 ITSM best practices

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

Modernizing service delivery requires implementing an ITSM tool that enables automation and integration, and leverages AI to power self-service and process improvements. It also involves implementing ITSM processes that improve both user and agent experiences.

Here are 11 ITSM best practices that that drive effective service management and support business growth:

1. Embracing automation

The less time your tech team spends on repetitive issues, the more they can focus on high-value projects. Identifying repetitive tasks and manual processes that can be automated using technology frees up human resources, reduces errors, and boosts end-user satisfaction.

Starting with your service desk, what are the common tier 1 issues that agents handle daily? Tasks like password resets, application access requests, and employee onboarding/offboarding can be automated with workflow automators and/or AI-enabled chatbots. Even the IT ticketing process 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 automation. Processes such as change control and asset management can also be digitized. For example, using tools such as the Freshservice workflows module, you can set up multilevel change advisory board (CAB) approvals, customize change lifecycles, and automate asset allocation and recovery processes.

"Improving agent productivity is a major goal and benefit of ITSM software,” says Jiten Rajani, Product Marketing Manager at Freshservice. “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 AI. Leveraging AI in ITSM processes 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 Freshservice, chatbots can complete Tier 1 incident management workflows without involving a human agent. Better yet, Freshservice’s AI can anticipate and design its workflows.

AI can also help tech teams prevent issues. By integrating your ITSM platform with asset management tools, machine monitoring systems, and other key business applications, AI solutions can use alerts from these systems to automatically create tickets if a system goes down or shows signs of potential failure.

3. Busting knowledge silos

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

When IT engineers have to dig through multiple databases for information, valuable time is lost searching instead of solving problems. Furthermore, your chatbots will never reach their full potential without centralized knowledge.

The backbone of any ITSM best practices approach is a robust knowledge base, a repository of all the information your agents and employees need to resolve questions about IT products and services. An effective 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 to facilitate easy navigation. It should also support multiple learning formats, including articles, FAQ lists, product manuals, video and written tutorials, and troubleshooting guides.

4. Implementing Agile methodologies

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

To achieve this, IT service professionals can learn from their counterparts in software development. 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 adopting new ITSM processes without losing stability.

Both business applications and ITSM processes must be flexible in terms of customization and implementation.

5. Fostering a culture of continuous learning

Agile ITSM is one way to embrace change; continuous learning is another. According to Deloitte, technical skills will become outdated within approximately 2.5 years on average.

When you build a robust knowledge base and deploy an AI-enabled ITSM solution, your IT agents and your chatbots can easily access the information they need to deliver quality tech support. This frees up human agents to focus on driving innovation and future-proofing your organization.

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

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

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

• DevOps: Infrastructure-as-code, integration, and Agile management practices

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

In addition to these specialized skills, agents can improve your overall ITSM processes by obtaining ITIL certification.

6. Adopting a customer-centric approach

Most ITSM best practices focus on boosting agent efficiency and effectiveness. However, the internal customer experience is just as essential to IT success.

A strong ITSM solution makes it easy for users to request services, track ticket status, and provide feedback. However, your team can do a few things to improve the employee experience, including:

• Evaluate and optimize communication channels: Identify which channels your employees prefer—phone, email, in-person, or collaboration apps such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, or WhatsApp—and ensure your ITSM solution integrates with them so that they can easily request IT services.

• Create automated alerts: With automated alerts and pre-written responses, keep users informed about the status of their tickets.

• Gather feedback: Although ITSM solutions provide analytics that help you evaluate performance and make process improvements, user feedback is still essential. Focus on understanding and meeting customer needs by implementing customer feedback mechanisms. Conduct user surveys to determine how they feel about recent interactions with IT— what the agents did well and what they could have done 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. Implementing performance metrics and KPIs

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

Monitor and analyze these metrics regularly to identify areas for improvement, track progress, and make data-driven decisions. Your ITSM solution can track these metrics and, with the help of AI, make suggestions to help you improve them. These insights play a key role in refining your ITSM processes and aligning with core service management best practice standards.

8. Enhancing data security and privacy

As enterprise technology evolves, its value increases along with the potential risks it brings. Data breaches have become more common and expensive, with the majority of companies experiencing multiple breaches.

Cybersecurity has never been more critical. To protect your organization, IT must strengthen data security 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) and CCPA (California), as well as industry-specific regulations, including HIPAA (healthcare) and PCI DSS (financial services).

ITSM software can improve cybersecurity by automating security controls, ensuring regular testing and security review, and managing security incidents. It’s also critical to ensure that your vendor has designed the solution with security and privacy at the foundational level, making it a key part of your ITSM processes and overall service management best practice efforts.

9. Optimizing 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. Tools that allow rapid deployment of process changes are equally important for IT and the business to realize value faster.”

IT is essential but often more expensively than it needs to be. On an average, a company uses 130 apps, many of which are redundant. This typically happens when different teams purchase software in departmental silos, unaware that the functionality they need already exists in tools purchased by other departments.

ITSM software streamlines an entire company's software, making it easier for IT to identify redundant apps. While ITSM tools can help your company avoid software bloat, overly complex solutions can create the very problem they’re meant to solve. 

Rather than choosing a one-size-fits-all platform packed with features you may never use, focus on selecting a right-sized ITSM solution that aligns with your team’s workflows, needs, and priorities.

Cloud computing offers another effective way to optimize your IT infrastructure and reduce costs. Virtual and hybrid software solutions can enhance scalability, reliability, and flexibility often at a fraction of the cost of on-site solutions. For example, cloud service desk software can be implemented faster than on-premises software, costs less, supports remote work, is updated and secured by the vendor, and can be easily integrated with third-party applications.

10. Integrating to innovate

Your tech team relies on various 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. Fostering employee engagement and well-being

Employee engagement and turnover are significant 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 that employers should focus on improving culture, compensation, benefits, and employee well-being.

The takeaway for tech team leaders? It’s essential to prioritize agent well-being to boost employee engagement and retention. This means creating a positive work environment that encourages collaboration, creativity, and work-life balance.

IT is a demanding field, and agents who don’t have the support they need are more likely to seek it elsewhere. Employee engagement initiatives, recognition programs, and flexible work arrangements can help enhance job satisfaction and productivity. It’s also essential to ensure that agents have the right technology and tools to succeed.

ITSM best practices for enhancing user experience

IT teams do more than just fix broken technology. They shape the entire employee experience. Every ticket, alert, and automated message contributes to the journey. When that journey feels clunky or slow, productivity takes a hit. ITSM best practices must go beyond resolution speed and focus on usability, personalization, and ease of access at every touchpoint.

ITSM best practices that directly enhance use experience:

• Design self-service portals with user intent: Don’t just build a portal. Create a decision tree. Use AI-enabled search, suggested articles, and contextual forms that adapt based on the user’s issue. With Freshservice, companies can turn Tier 1 support into a smooth, self-guided journey that resolves questions before they even become tickets.

• Surface real-time ticket updates in the apps users already rely on: Employees shouldn’t have to sift through email threads to know what’s happening. Integrate ITSM tools with Slack, Microsoft Teams, or WhatsApp to make real-time support updates visible and accessible. This lowers ticket anxiety and boosts transparency.

• Use AI to personalize user and agent experience: Platforms like Freshservice leverage AI to offer resolutions based on ticket history, employee behavior, or even device data. The result? Less back-and-forth, more first-contact resolution, and a smoother experience for everyone.

• Build knowledge bases that think like users: Tag articles based on common search terms, pain points, or job roles. A service management best practice is to treat your knowledge base as a product: constantly tested, optimized, and improved.

• Automate repetitive touchpoints to minimize user effort: Automation can eliminate tedious interactions, from pre-filling forms to auto-closing resolved tickets. With Freshservice workflows, IT teams can automate responses based on ticket type, history, and user profile, making support feel seamless and innovative.

Freshservice customer spotlight

The University of Aberdeen used Freshservice to modernize its IT operations and deliver a smarter, faster support experience. With AI-powered deflection, an intuitive self-service portal, and multi-channel ticketing, the university achieved:

• 81% reduction in ticket resolution time

• 10,200 tickets deflected via self-service

• 208% increase in ticket capacity

ITSM best practices for performance monitoring

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. In IT service management, metrics like CSAT, average resolution time (ART), and SLA compliance don’t just reflect performance but help you find where issues lie, enabling you to fix them before they escalate.

Here’s how high-performing teams use ITSM best practices to make performance monitoring meaningful, not just mechanical:

• Build a KPI dashboard your team uses: A cluttered dashboard is as ineffective as no dashboard. Identify the most important metrics for your team, such as first contact resolution, response time, and SLA adherence, and create a visual layout for easy tracking. Freshservice’s customizable dashboards allow filtering by agent, category, priority, or period, ensuring nothing gets overlooked.

• Benchmark service performance over time: Tracking a metric once offers limited insights. Comparing this month’s data against last quarter’s or last year’s helps you identify progress or potential issues. With Freshservice, you can set thresholds, alerts, and reports to track performance against your internal goals and industry best practice standards.

• Use analytics to uncover trends and not just report data: What types of tickets spike every Friday? Which teams consistently miss SLAs? Where do escalations pile up? Freshservice’s built-in analytics go beyond reporting. It reveals patterns and root causes, and enables faster corrective actions.

When applied correctly, performance monitoring becomes one of the most valuable ITSM processes, as it keeps IT accountable, agile, and aligned with business goals.

Integrating ITSM with Agile and DevOps methodologies

Agile and DevOps aren’t just for software teams anymore. When applied to ITSM processes, these approaches help IT teams move faster, stay flexible, and continuously improve, without sacrificing control.

Think of it this way: Agile brings the mindset, DevOps brings the tooling, and ITSM provides the structure. Together, they enable smarter, faster service management that doesn’t rely on outdated playbooks.

Here’s how it works in practice:

• Sprint-based service delivery: Instead of waiting months to review service performance or roll out improvements, Agile-minded IT teams work in short iterations to experiment, adapt, and scale faster. Freshservice supports sprint-style workflows, breaking large initiatives into manageable, reviewable pieces, such as knowledge base overhauls or onboarding process updates.

• CAB automation for faster change management: With Freshservice, you can build automated workflows for change advisory board (CAB) approvals, cutting weeks of back-and-forth to just a few clicks. This streamlines frequent changes with less friction and zero guesswork.

• Continuous feedback loops: Whether through CSAT surveys, ticket ratings, or internal retrospectives, high-performing teams treat feedback like a feature and not a formality. Embedding feedback into your ITSM best practices helps identify blind spots and prioritize important fixes.

• Unified visibility across DevOps, and support: DevOps thrives on shared responsibility. By integrating Freshservice with version control systems, incident response tools, and monitoring dashboards, teams get one place to manage upstream changes and downstream impact.

What this looks like in real life

A support team is overwhelmed by change requests—new tools, policy shifts, and repeat tickets from uninformed employees. By adopting sprint-based planning, automating CAB approvals, and acting on real ticket feedback, the team cuts noise, improves rollout speed, and stays ahead of support issues before they pile up.

Blending these principles into your ITSM approach isn’t about adding complexity. It’s about making service delivery as iterative and collaborative as the rest of your business.

Successfully implementing ITSM processes

Deploying ITSM processes is a digital transformation in itself. Like any change, it requires careful planning, execution, continuous evaluation, and process improvements. Simply deploying service management technology does not guarantee seamless service delivery.

Implementing ITSM best practices is also a cultural shift. It requires buy-in and involvement from all leadership levels and from IT agents themselves.

Over time, you’ll uncover increasing opportunities to:

• Automate workflows

• Integrate AI capabilities

• Implement Agile methodologies

• Encourage employee development and engagement

• Improve customer service communication (and thus boost user satisfaction)

• Use ITSM best practices and metrics to improve processes

• Enhance data security and privacy

• Optimize your IT infrastructure

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

What does success look like?

Implementation, as well as the end result, vary across organizations. However, successful organizations share some common advantages, including:

Faster, more consistent service delivery

The IT department at OfficeMax faced challenges due to a lack of transparency across IT teams, an inefficient ITSM system, and unhappy users. They wanted an ITIL-aligned service management system with self-service options, a robust knowledge base for agents, and consistent delivery across locations. After deploying Freshservice, the IT team improved SLA adherence for IT service delivery by 97.1% and increased first call resolution rates 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 lose trust in IT’s ability to resolve issues quickly and effectively, they often turn to shadow IT— creating unnecessary security risks and expenses. This was the case at Barkley Advertising Agency, which previously used a complex, enterprise-grade ITSM system. By switching to a right-sized solution from Freshservice, Barkley improved its IT department’s reputation, regained the trust of end-users, and increased 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 could respond 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 platform enables faster implementation. For example, the National Rugby League onboarded its IT team in just an hour, with a transition so smooth that end-users didn’t even realize it happened. 

Similarly, RingCentral rapidly shifted 1,000+ office employees to remote work within days during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“To justify and roll out a proper implementation typically 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 our eyes to deploying new ITSM processes in a new fashion. Our legacy service management system no longer constrains us. Previously, everything was manual. Freshservice automation gives us peace of mind.”

Common challenges in ITSM implementation

Even with clear goals, ITSM implementation can hit a few roadblocks. Here are some of the most common challenges organizations encounter:

• Lack of organizational buy-in: Without support from leadership and cross-functional teams, new ITSM processes often lose momentum before they begin.

• Tool overload or poor integration: Switching multiple platforms without proper connections leads to siloed data and inefficient service delivery.

• Rigid, outdated workflows: Static, one-size-fits-all models struggle to meet evolving business needs and employee expectations.

• Cultural resistance to change: Teams often hesitate to adopt new systems, especially if past initiatives lacked clarity or support.

• Unclear ownership and accountability: Without clear process owners, ITSM processes stall, and performance gaps go unnoticed and unresolved.

However, each challenge has a practical fix. Here’s how to move forward:

• Align your goals with business outcomes and engage key stakeholders from the start. Use tools like Freshservice to demonstrate early wins.

• Choose platforms that support seamless integration. Freshservice unifies asset management, incident tracking, and automation into a single hub.

• Adopt Agile-inspired ITSM best practices that prioritize adaptability and continuous improvement over rigid protocols.

• Prioritize onboarding, open communication, and celebration of early successes. Engage your agents as active contributors and not just passive end-users.

• Leverage SLAs, dashboards, and workflow visibility (available in Freshservice) to assign ownership and track progress at every stage.

How Freshservice supports modern ITSM best practices

Modern ITSM processes can only go so far without the right platform to support them. From streamlining workflows to scaling operations with minimal friction, the ideal solution should make adoption easier and not more complicated. That’s where Freshservice ITSM steps in.

Freshservice’s unified IT management platform is a flexible, AI-powered solution that helps organizations integrate ITSM best practices into daily operations, without overburdening already stretched teams. 

Here's how it helps:

• Workflow automator that thinks ahead: The platform takes routine tasks off your team’s plate—such as ticket categorization, priority scoring, and response drafting. It also analyzes trends in incident data, enabling IT teams to proactively prevent issues before they escalate.

• Smart workflows and approvals: Whether you’re onboarding a new employee or routing a change request, Freshservice lets you build low-code automation that keeps things running smoothly. It also supports Agile practices by enabling sprint-based service updates and rapid process changes—no development team required.

• Unified asset and service management: Freshservice’s IT Asset Management (ITAM) links your asset database with incident, change, and request management tools. This reduces toggling between tools and provides more visibility across the entire service lifecycle—a core ITSM best practice.

• Rapid setup, with room to grow: Every organization operates differently. Freshservice adapts to your needs, offering configurable fields, modules, and layouts—so you can adapt the platform to your workflows and not the other way around. It also deploys quickly, making it easier to stay agile as priorities shift.

• Collaboration without chaos: By integrating with tools such as Slack, Teams, and Google Workspace, Freshservice ensures that agents and employees can communicate in the platforms they already use. This reduces friction and supports one of the most overlooked ITSM best practices: making the experience intuitive for everyone involved.

By supporting these capabilities, Freshservice helps IT teams adopt and sustain modern ITSM best practices, minimizing firefighting and maximizing forward motion.