Almost a third of help desk tickets at enterprise firms are “work stoppers”, according to new findings from Fixify, with software and applications issues causing the most headaches for IT teams.

The help desk automation platform’s 2026 IT Help Desk Benchmark Report found that 22% of all help desk tickets are productivity killers, rising to 32.5% for firms with 1,000+ employees, meaning staff are unable to do their job until the issue is resolved.

The data shows that tickets associated with software and applications account for more than a third of total volume (38.2%), far ahead of issues with onboarding and offboarding (16.6%), IAM (15.9%), hardware (8.4%), and security (3.7%).

Drilling down, the study found that app assignment, where an employee requests access to an application, accounts for more than a quarter of all tickets (28.1%), which Fixify said reflects the complexity of modern SaaS ecosystems, where access changes not just with every new hire, but every project shift or vendor addition.

That’s especially true for larger firms, with more than half (57%) of help desk tickets at companies with 500–1,000 employees relating to software and applications. Enterprise organisations, however, see a broader spread of issues, with proportionally more onboarding, hardware and IAM‑related requests than smaller firms.

But while software and apps are causing the most trouble, they’re not causing the most frustration. The study found that tickets involving technical failures such as network troubleshooting (39%), hardware troubleshooting (38%), and login troubleshooting (21.1%), are leaving users at their wits’ end.

Interestingly, the data shows that demand is predictable, however, with Tuesday being the busiest day of the week, carrying 24% of all ticket volume, and July the busiest month, running 28% above average.

Fixify said that, with these findings in mind, IT teams could maximise their resources to meet end users where they’re needed most, for example, by weighing staff coverage according to these weekly patterns, or leaving major infrastructure rebuilding to quieter months.

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The report also shows the value of automation, as help desks with heavy AI cover, where 75-100% of work is automated, resolve tickets in a median of 4.4 hours. Without automation, where human agents handle the vast majority of work, the median is 71 hours, roughly three calendar days – a 16x difference.

“Everyone asks whether AI will make IT faster. The answer is yes — but not where people think,” said Matt Peters, co-founder and CEO of Fixify. 

“First response times are identical with or without automation. The 16x gap is entirely in resolution. AI doesn’t pick up the phone faster. It closes the loop faster.”