According to a recent survey by SupportSoft, two-thirds of IT managers are dissatisfied with help desk technology investments. Only one-third of respondents report that they are completely satisfied with the recent investments they've made in technologies designed to improve user support.

One major complaint, according to the study, is the inability to access up-to-date diagnostic information, which nearly all respondents agreed was critical to being able to solve user support issues. Two thirds of respondents believe that having up-to-date information will make diagnosis and problem resolution both faster and easier.

A second major problem identified by the survey was the amount of time it takes for support personnel to gather the information needed to open a ticket, and the manual data entry required for documentation. One third of the survey's respondents indicated that it takes an average of eleven minutes to gather the relevant diagnostic information when opening a support ticket, and two thirds of respondents said that it takes at least six minutes to collect all of the relevant information to open a support ticket. Nearly all respondents to the survey indicated that Level 2 and higher support personnel must re-enter ticket information on escalated support requests.