Agent
AI Security
Security

How to Cut IT Costs with AI-Powered Troubleshooting

Ashwani Paliwal
July 17, 2025

In today’s high-velocity digital environment, IT operations teams are under pressure to resolve issues faster while reducing operational costs. AI agents are proving to be a game-changer in this area — offering round-the-clock support, real-time diagnostics, and intelligent resolutions. However, to truly unlock their potential, businesses must apply best practices to ensure effectiveness, accuracy, and ROI.

Here are the most impactful strategies for leveraging AI agents to troubleshoot smarter, faster, and cheaper.

Why Use AI Agents for Troubleshooting?

Before diving into best practices, let’s understand the value proposition of AI agents in troubleshooting:

  • 24/7 availability without additional cost
  • Reduced MTTR (Mean Time to Repair) through faster diagnosis
  • Scalable support without scaling your human workforce
  • Consistent problem resolution without human error or fatigue
  • Cost savings on L1 and L2 support tickets

Best Practices for AI-Powered Troubleshooting

1. Integrate AI Agents into Your ITSM Workflow

Make AI agents part of your IT Service Management (ITSM) lifecycle. Integration with platforms like ServiceNow, Jira, or Freshservice allows seamless handoff, ticket updates, and automation of routine tasks.

Tip: Use AI to triage tickets, assign severity, and offer first-level fixes before involving a human technician.

2. Train AI Agents on Your Organization’s Specific Knowledge Base

Generic AI is useful, but contextual AI is powerful. Feed your AI agent with:

  • Internal documentation
  • Historical tickets and solutions
  • System configurations
  • Known error patterns

This custom training enables AI to respond like an internal expert, not just a chatbot.

3. Automate Root Cause Analysis (RCA)

Instead of just offering fixes, train AI agents to identify root causes using historical data, logs, and behavior patterns. Pair this with AI-powered observability tools like Dynatrace or Splunk to reduce dependency on manual correlation.

A single RCA workflow done by AI can save hours of engineer time and prevent recurring issues.

4. Use AI to Detect and Resolve Issues Proactively

Modern AI agents can detect anomalies before they become outages — thanks to predictive analytics and behavior modeling. Combine this with automation tools to self-heal, such as:

  • Restarting services
  • Rolling back faulty deployments
  • Patching outdated configurations

Preventing problems is often more cost-effective than resolving them.

5. Enable Natural Language Interaction for Faster Troubleshooting

Let users describe their issues in plain language. NLP-powered AI agents can parse these requests, map them to known problems, and trigger solutions — reducing human involvement.

This democratizes IT support and improves the end-user experience.

6. Monitor and Optimize AI Agent Performance

Just like a new team member, your AI needs performance reviews. Track metrics like:

  • First Contact Resolution (FCR)
  • Escalation rate
  • Resolution accuracy
  • Ticket deflection rate

Use this data to retrain, reconfigure, and improve the AI over time.

7. Build a Hybrid Human+AI Support Model

AI agents are best at solving repetitive and predictable problems. For complex issues, ensure a smooth escalation path to human engineers. The AI should:

  • Provide context to the human agent
  • Share diagnostics and steps already taken
  • Avoid redundant effort

This reduces technician workload while maintaining service quality.

8. Focus on Security and Access Controls

Troubleshooting often involves system access. Make sure your AI agents:

  • Operate under least privilege
  • Log all actions for auditing
  • Don’t expose sensitive data in user conversations

Cost savings shouldn’t come at the expense of compliance or data security.

9. Create Feedback Loops for Continuous Learning

Encourage users and support engineers to rate AI-generated solutions. Use feedback to retrain models, update knowledge bases, and refine decision trees.

Continuous improvement helps AI stay relevant and useful over time.

10. Align AI Agent Goals with Cost Reduction KPIs

Ensure your AI strategy aligns with measurable business outcomes such as:

  • Lower ticket volume
  • Reduced downtime
  • Faster resolution times
  • Reduced support headcount growth

Having the right KPIs in place keeps the initiative ROI-focused.

Conclusion

AI-powered troubleshooting is no longer a futuristic vision — it’s a current reality for cost-conscious IT leaders. But automation for the sake of automation won’t cut it. Success lies in how well you design, train, integrate, and evolve your AI agent to meet your business’s unique support demands.

By following the best practices outlined above, organizations can not only cut costs but also deliver faster, more accurate, and more scalable support — redefining what IT operations can achieve.

SecOps Solution is a Full-stack Patch and Vulnerability Management Platform that helps organizations identify, prioritize, and remediate security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in seconds.

To learn more, get in touch.

Related Blogs