Service Operations · Federal Contracting
43% of tickets now close without a person touching them.
Three departments, 500+ requests a month, and a help desk that only stored tickets. The replacement is a company-owned service desk where agents resolve routine requests end to end and hand everything else to the right person, ready to act on.
Closed without a person
43%- Requests today
- 22
- Closed without a person
- 9
- Median first response
- 90 sec
- Escalations with context
- 100%
- Organization
- Federal Government Contractor
- Headcount
- 1,200 Employees
- Departments
- Contracts, IT, HR
- Timeline
- 3-Week Audit · 12-Week Build
The Outcome
Measured against the audit baseline.
01 · Before
A help desk that stored tickets. People did all the work.
Every request landed in one shared queue and was assigned by hand, with no view of who was out, who was overloaded, or who usually handled that kind of issue. Nearly one in five tickets was reassigned before anyone started on it. Password resets, PTO questions, and NDA requests were answered from scratch every time, even when the answer was sitting in a closed ticket.
02 · The Audit
Measure first. Then decide what's worth building.
A three-week review of fourteen months of ticket history ranked each request type by volume, repeatability, and the risk of an incorrect answer.
Ticket Volume by Verdict
Password resets, access requests, PTO policy, equipment, standard NDAs. Agents resolve these end to end.
HR complaints, leave and accommodation requests, security incidents, and anything that commits the company contractually. Agents prepare the context. People decide.
Projected 40–45% of tickets closed without a person, roughly 60% lower cost per ticket, and the $50K-a-year help desk license retired. Approved.
03 · The System
A service desk the company owns, staffed with agents that do the work.
Employees just ask in Microsoft Teams. Every request is classified the moment it arrives: cleared request types go to that department's agent, and everything else goes straight to a person. Each agent was onboarded like a new team member, with a clear job description, the department's policies, fourteen months of resolved tickets to learn from, access to only the systems the job requires, and a written list of what it may do on its own.
- 01 / 05
Classify and Route
Every request is read the moment it arrives: what is being asked, which department owns it, how urgent it is, and whether it is a request type an agent has been cleared to handle. If it is, the department's agent takes it. If not, it goes straight to the right person. Either way, the employee hears back within seconds.
Need an NDA before a teaming call with a new partner
From Marcus T. · Business Development Type Standard NDA request · Contracts Decision Cleared request type, assigned to the Contracts agent0.8 sec - 02 / 05
Gather Context
Before acting, the agent looks at how similar requests were resolved and checks that answer against current policy. If it cannot find a confident answer that policy backs up, it stops and hands the ticket to a person instead of guessing.
Similar resolved tickets
#3310 Mutual NDA for a teaming partner97% #3187 NDA with a small business subcontractor92% #2954 One-way NDA for a vendor demo81% CT-022 NDA policy: mutual template for teamingCurrent - 03 / 05
Resolve
For request types it has been cleared to handle, the agent does the work itself in the connected system, then confirms with the employee. Its access is limited to what the task needs: it can draft and send a standard NDA, but it cannot edit the template or sign for the company.
Agent reply
Hi Marcus, I've drafted a mutual NDA for Northwind Federal from our standard teaming template and sent it to their contact for e-signature. You'll get a notification here as soon as it's signed.
Resolved in 3 min · logged to #4821 - 04 / 05
Hand Off With Context
Anything an agent cannot or should not finish goes to a person, ready to act on. Some work is agent-assisted but must end with a person: when an approved PO modification comes in, the agent verifies the approvals, drafts the mod against the original PO, and routes it to Contracts to review and execute. Every handoff carries a summary, the history, the relevant policy, and a suggested next step.
Approved PO modification ready to execute
Request PO 7731, mod 2: add 40 hours of field support Approvals Program manager and finance, both on fileVerified Prepared Mod drafted against the original PO terms Next Step Review and execute with signature authority Routed to Contracts · agents cannot sign or execute - 05 / 05
Learn From Every Ticket
Every correction a person makes, and every handoff they complete, goes back into what the agent knows. Department leads review a sample of agent work each week, and a new request type is cleared only once the agent handles it reliably.
Agent review with the Contracts lead
Reviewed 50 agent-closed tickets this week Corrected 2 answers updated and added to the agent's knowledge Cleared Teaming agreement renewals are now agent-eligible Every change logged · next review Monday
04 · Human Control
Clear limits on what agents can see and do.
Every agent works within two sets of limits: which systems and data it can access, and which actions it can take on its own. Department leads set both and can change them at any time.
Agent Systems Handle
- Classifying and routing every request
- Answers and actions for 40 cleared request types
- Drafting work for people to approve, like PO modifications
- A context packet for every handoff
People Own
- Signing or executing anything contractually binding
- HR complaints, leave and accommodation requests, security incidents
- Which request types agents may close, and which systems they can touch
- A weekly review of agent work and corrections
Access is set per agent and per system. Every agent action is logged and traceable.
05 · What Made It Work
Three decisions that mattered.
Fourteen months of closed tickets were the best record of what actually solves problems.
Each fix a department lead made became something the agent kept. That is how results improved month after month without a rebuild.
A well-prepared handoff saved almost as much time as a full resolution, because nobody had to start from scratch.
Tickets closed without a person have climbed from 36% at launch to 43%. Each month, department leads review agent work, corrections are folded back into what the agents know, and more request types are cleared.