Are IT Help Desk Teams Shrinking?

• Are IT Help Desk teams shrinking as much as we are being told?
• Are AI and other deflection tools decreasing IT Help Desk team sizes?
• Is the hype around massive decreases in IT Help Desk teams coming true?

CIOs, VPs of IT, IT Help Desk Directors, IT Help Desk Managers, IT Help Desk Agents and Specialists, IT Operations, Product Managers, Business Analysts

IT Help Desk Teams are changing, but not by much and not very fast. IT organizations are using device management, deflection, and AI to keep their employee equipment healthy and to get their employee customers back to work fast. While preventative measures and deflection are making an impact, our research shows that IT Help Desk team sizes are not decreasing by much. In fact, our research shows that IT Help Desks are using their human agents to tackle the harder problems and can now offer additional services to their organizations. In addition, nearly all of them are taking a “wait and see” approach to AI before making significant headcount changes.

About a year ago, I was in an internal meeting to discuss AI and how it will change the structure of our IT Help Desk customers.  There were many posts in our LinkedIn feeds and stories in the news about how AI Agents will replace the humans and the hype was that it would be happening fast.  This became our hot topic to include in nearly every customer interaction.  We wanted to know firsthand what they were thinking and doing.  

What we learned from those conversations and from our own data shows, quite simply, that the change is and will continue to happen at a much slower pace than predicted.  In addition, the near-term focus is using AI to empower agents rather than replace them.  We uncovered three themes related specifically to headcount changes in our customer base.  

1. Do More with the Same Resources
   Our customers have had tremendous pressure put on their budgets for years.  Their teams have been stretched thin.  Their ability to accomplish SLAs has been hard.  And they have had limited bandwidth to do much outside of their core responsibilities.  However, with the significant improvements in deflection, both traditional and AI- generated, they now have some breathing room.  Our customers are using this newfound capacity to (a) fill in the gaps where no service was provided before, such as engineering servers; (b) offer new services such as white glove to executives; and (c) build out more self-service content (i.e., KB articles) and tools (i.e., AI Agents).  

2. Use AI to Empower and not to Replace
   ‍ScreenMeet has an AI Summary tool available to our customers today and we are previewing our new AI Agent with some of them right now (this will be available by the end of the year).  Our customers are using this technology to help their IT Technicians but not replace them.  For example, the AI Summary tool automatically prepares and posts a note after a Remote Support session in the customers’ preferred format.  This is freeing up agent time to tackle more tickets, smoothing transitions from L1 to L2, and creating first drafts of KB articles.  And the AI Agent is being seen as a tool to level set the L1 agent skill sets.  It’s going to empower the same technicians to do more, to do it faster, and to minimize transition to L2s.

3. Hold Steady Until AI Becomes More Mature
   ‍This last point is based on two very important aspects of AI.  The first is simply the capabilities of the products in the market.  While many companies are using AI assistants to do research and to write summaries, they stop there.  True Agentic Remote Support is still being developed (including our own) and will take some time to be mature enough for use.  The second is security.   We read stories daily about AI security issues, which are a real concern.  Companies are waiting for products to become mature and for the assessment tools they need to validate that security.    

Back to our question: “Are IT Help Desk teams shrinking as much as we are being told”?  The conclusion is that the shape, tools, and services of IT Help Desks are changing at a modest pace, but they are not shrinking fast.  We’ll revisit this topic as Agentic Remote Support evolves over the next six to twelve months.  

We analyzed ScreenMeet usage data from 8/1/2024 – 7/31/2026.  Our sample set included IT Help Desk customers that have been using ScreenMeet for more than two full years.  Here are some interesting findings.

Customer Examples

Here are three real examples from our customers.  

• Helping More Employees with Same Help Desk Size
  
  • Global organization with 30,000 employees
  • This company has increased their overall employee headcount by nearly 15% over each of the last few years.  They have implemented a variety of deflection tools including an AI Agent for simple and common questions.  With these investments, they have been able to keep their IT Help Desk headcount flat.  Their overall operational efficiencies have had a measurable increase.  

• Offering More Services to Organization
  
  • 100,000-Employee global technology corporation
  • This IT Help Desk team has also implemented a vast array of deflection tools which has greatly reduced the number of tickets getting to human agents.  They have chosen to use the extra capacity to provide additional services to the organization.  This includes special white glove teams and taking over responsibility for engineering development servers.

• Holding Steady While Evaluating AI Solutions
  
  • Financial Services Organization with 75,000 employees throughout North America 
  • This Internal Help Desk team is taking a thoughtful, measured approach to AI.  The number of employees and devices they support has remained flat over the past 24 months as has the size of the IT Help Desk agents.  They have several parallel initiatives to research AI solutions available and how they may assist with front end deflection, aid human technicians, and automate administrative tasks.  Their goal is to improve the overall outcomes while ensuring a highly secure environment. 

About ScreenMeet

ScreenMeet is redefining remote support with AI-powered technology that helps IT help desk and customer service teams resolve issues faster and more efficiently. Combining secure, cloud-based remote support with agentic AI, ScreenMeet helps support professionals understand problems, diagnose issues, take action, and document outcomes—all within the platforms they already use.  

ScreenMeet enables organizations to reduce resolution time, increase technician productivity, automate repetitive support work, and deliver better experiences for employees and customers.

Kelly Williams is the Senior Vice President of Customer Success at ScreenMeet, where she leads a team dedicated to helping IT help desk and customer service organizations improve support experiences with technology. Through close partnerships with customers around the world, Kelly brings practical insight into the strategic priorities, operational challenges, and evolving needs of the support industry.

LinkedIn:  Kelly Williams on LinkedIn 

Email:  KWilliams@ScreenMeet.com

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