ITSM statistics highlight how organizations structure their practices, which processes get the most attention, and how users actually experience IT services.
Looking at the numbers from multiple sources gives you a clearer idea of what teams are prioritizing when it comes to IT Service Management, where things are working well, and where there's room to rethink how support is delivered.
In this article, we’ll walk through some of the most useful ITSM stats available —from trends in automation and self-service adoption to how much time users actually lose when incidents occur.
Let's get started!
ITSM market size and forecast
- Forecasts suggest the global ITSM market will reach $22.1 billion by 2028 at a CAGR of 15.9%.- MarketsandMarkets
- The Cloud Information Technology Service Management Market size is estimated at USD 4.99 billion in 2025, and is expected to reach USD 5.60 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 2.33%. - Mordor Intelligence
- Data suggests that many businesses are moving to cloud-based solutions looking for ease of management, with business continuity (60%) and scalability (59%) ranking as the second and third most important factors driving this transition. - Site24x7
User expectations and satisfaction insights
- The average waiting time in customer service queues decreased from 5 minutes 16 seconds in 2022 to 3 minutes 40 seconds in 2023. - Live Chat research.
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There's a 90% satisfaction rate for queue times under 2 minutes. Meanwhile, satisfaction drops to 40% for queue times exceeding 10 minutes - Census.com
- 90% of customers expect an “immediate” response when they have a customer service question, and 60% of customers define “immediate” as 10 minutes or less. - Hubspot
- Most users rate their experience with IT services positively thanks to helpful support (60%) and friendly IT personnel (54%). In contrast, negative scores are more often linked to issues with equipment (40%) and remote work tools (21%). Only 5% mentioned IT security as a reason for a poor experience. - Happysignals
- In 2023, end-users rated outsourced service desks 1% happier on average than internal ones—marking the first time outsourced desks pulled ahead in incident resolution experience. Still, internal teams came out ahead on productivity, with users feeling up to 25% more productive compared to the benchmark. - HappySignals
IT support workload and performance stats
- 90% of service agents think working in corporate IT will become more difficult over the next three years. Nearly half believe this applies to all IT roles. Also, 74% say working in IT has negatively affected their well-being, up from 61% in 2024. - ITSM tools
- When asked about the biggest challenges service agents face, 52% of agents reported that the main challenge was “dealing with upset customers.” “Prioritization of customer questions” was the second most reported challenge - Hubspot
- About 75% of respondents indicate that their organizations address tickets outside of regular business hours, whether via a 24-hour support center (29%) or through other methods – including on-call staff, chatbots, or outsourcing to a provider. - HDI
- Fewer than half of support agents indicate that new hires can achieve job proficiency within the first two months of onboarding, and only about 40% of respondents mentioned that employees receive more than 10 days of ongoing training per year. - HDI
Self-service and Virtual Agents
- 81% of customers will attempt to resolve issues independently before contacting customer support. - Harvard Business Review
- 91% of users say they would use a knowledge base if it meets their needs. - Zendesk
- Organizations report up to 70% reductions in calls, chat, and/or email inquiries after implementing a Virtual Customer Assistant. - Gartner
Ticket Management
- The cost per ticket for IT help desks in North America may vary significantly, ranging from as low as $6 to $40 or more. - HDI
- Companies using AI-powered tools observe a 75% reduction in ticket resolution times, leading to lower operational costs per ticket - Rezolve.ai
- Although high-impact tickets make up only 13% of incidents, they account for most of the lost time (80%). These are the ones that take two days or more to resolve, and they’re dragging up the average lost time for everyone. - HappySignals
ITSM maturity and adoption levels
Even though this data comes from 2022, the AXELOS BenchMarking Report remains one of the most detailed and useful studies on the state of ITSM adoption. We’re referencing it here because, despite the publication date, it still offers a solid snapshot of how organizations perceive their ITSM capabilities — and where they run into trouble.
What did the survey reveal?
- 48% of organizations rated their ITSM capabilities as “great” or “good.”
- About 27% said they were “getting there,” while 22% admitted they had “still much to improve upon.”
That creates a near 50:50 divide between those who feel they’re doing well and those who see room for significant improvement.
So what’s holding some organizations back? The report asked respondents to identify a single primary challenge in improving ITSM. The responses varied widely, but one theme stood out: a lack of senior management buy-in remains the most common roadblock. On the other hand, very few cited inadequate tools as their main issue — only 4%. That suggests most organizations have access to Service Management tools, even if not all of them are using one that truly fits their needs.
46% of organizations thought their ITSM tools to be “great,” while 24% wanted to replace theirs. This finding supports the ITSM tool churn the industry has seen over the last two decades. Surprisingly, 11% of respondents stated that their organization still doesn’t have an ITSM tool.
Outcomes of implementing ITSM processes
This perspective of the survey data offers excellent insights for organizations. First, the adoption levels of ITSM capability are as expected, with IT service desk capabilities being the highest.
The relative level of ITSM capability success is likely lower than people would expect. For example,
- 61% of organizations with Service Request Management capabilities (85% of all organizations) perceive that they need to improve them.
- 80% of the organizations with Knowledge Management capabilities thought they needed improving.
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Enterprise Service Management (or back-office digital transformation) has long been an ITSM trend. The survey found that 70% of organizations had either already started with ESM or planned to do so. In contrast, only 22% of organizations had no plans for it.
The survey data also identified demographics-based differences in ITSM process success. For example:
- The largest organizations (with 5000+ employees) were most likely to have Incident Management capabilities in place, but the smallest organizations (with 1–49 employees) were slightly more likely to have them “working well.”
- The largest organizations (with 5000+ employees) were most likely to have Change Enablement capabilities in place and for them to be “working well.” They were also most likely to have their Problem Management capabilities “working well.”
- The larger the organization, the more likely they were to use Asset Management capabilities.
Final thoughts
The key takeaway from these ITSM statistics is that far more organizations think they need to improve their ITSM capabilities than think they are working well.
All the hard work that organizations invest in adopting ITSM capabilities to improve IT service delivery and support sometimes reflects well on reports, and sometimes it doesn't. But the admission of needed improvements is good. That's where all of the organizations can see opportunities to improve their corporate ITSM capabilities.
So, take the data shared in this blog and use it to inform your ITSM decision-making and improvement. It’s good to know that your organization is not the only one struggling in some of these areas, and it’s also good to see that it’s possible to succeed with it.
