These are the savings that make everything more expensive for IT

Ever heard of “shift left”? Sounds smart, right? It's also a buzzword that managers eagerly embrace in times of staff shortages and rising IT costs. The idea is simple: move simple tasks from the service desk to the user or customer. This relieves the IT department and saves a lot of money. In theory.

But the reality is different. Instead of real savings, ‘shift left’ often leads to frustration. And it doesn't stop there.

What's going on? With ‘shift left’, problems are passed on to employees who are not trained for them, or worse, to paying customers. The math seems attractive to the organization, but the hidden costs are considerable. Every minute an employee spends tinkering with IT issues is a minute in which they are not adding value to the company. And every customer who is sent to a self-service portal feels less seriously taken.

This brings us straight to the heart of the matter: shifting left in the IT service chain is often just treating the symptoms. It's a handy trick for relieving pressure in the short term, but in the long term it's disastrous for productivity and customer satisfaction.

Compare it to a car: adding a quart of oil yourself is fine. But... if you have to do that twice a day, you have a bigger problem. Then you have to go to the garage to have the cause fixed. Ignoring that underlying problem ultimately costs more—in money, time, and sustainability.

Something similar is happening in the world of IT. Access to the service desk is becoming increasingly difficult. And when you finally get hold of someone, you are quickly sent back to the self-service portal. New variants such as ‘shift left left’ and even ‘shift left left left’ make it even worse: problems end up further and further away from the expert and closer and closer to the end user. And everyone thinks that's perfectly normal.

The result? The first, second, and third lines may seem less busy, but the real pressure is shifting to the business and the customer. That's where the costs really add up, even if you don't see them directly in the IT budget. Productivity declines, irritation increases, and confidence in IT evaporates.

The principle of ‘shift left’ is not wrong in itself. But it must be applied with an eye for context, quality, and the end user. In this blog, I explain how organizations can derive value from this principle without passing the bill on to their employees or customers.

Prevent your employees from becoming IT specialists

The first steps of shift left often feel logical. Resetting your own password? That's faster and more convenient than waiting for the service desk to answer the phone. Ordering a new mouse via a portal? No problem—it saves time for everyone.

But it usually doesn't stop there. What starts as efficiency quickly turns into a shift in responsibilities. Because if the user can order a mouse, they can surely choose the right Office license themselves. Which version is needed? Oh well, just get the biggest bundle – better too much than too little. The result: unnecessary costs.

And if the PC breaks down? Then the user has to request a repair via the portal. It's just a pity that you need the broken PC to do that. So you call, but the helpdesk's phone lines are scaled back, so you're put on hold indefinitely.

This makes stacking tasks a burden. Employees spend more and more hours on IT issues that have nothing to do with their actual work. A salesperson who has to meet his targets suddenly finds himself puzzling over error messages. A consultant who should be with the customer is busy filling out a self-service form. Employees become IT staff.

And the real problems? They often reach the right expert too late. The longer the solution is delayed, the greater the impact on productivity, among other things.

So the question is simple: do you want your salespeople to sell, or do you want them to solve IT problems?

The sham solution of AI in the service desk

“If users have to do more and more work, we'll just put an AI agent in between.” That's how a company recently presented their solution to me. A digital assistant that sits between the user and the service desk and supposedly takes care of the dirty work.

The figures looked impressive—at first glance, that is:

Correctly classifying the incident: 88%
Correctly identifying the service or product: 82%
Understanding the user report: 84%
Providing the right solution: 74%

Sounds perfectly acceptable. Until you multiply those percentages together. Because, for example, ‘correctly classifying the incident’ is only the beginning. When you go through all the steps, you're left with less than a meager 45%. In other words, less than half of the issues are actually handled correctly. And those are often the easy cases, which hardly took any time for IT to resolve anyway.

Their conclusion: “That's good enough for production.”

My response? Translate that to an airline:

Safe takeoff: 88%
Avoiding bad weather: 82%
Finding the right airport: 84%
Safe landing: 74%

So you have a more than 55% chance of not arriving alive. Would you get on board? Me neither.

In more than half of the cases, the user still has to take extra steps to get a working solution. This seems to relieve the IT department, but in reality, you are shifting the burden to the end user—and that burden is many times greater than the gain. The result: more frustration, less productivity, and costs that leak invisibly outside the IT budget.

The core of the problem is simple: the current generation of AI agents runs on Large Language Models (LLMs). These are brilliant at generating and interpreting text, but they are not built to analyze and structurally solve complex IT problems. Expecting them to do so is fooling yourself.

The real savings are not in shift left but in tackling the root cause

Shift left and AI agents were devised to ease the pressure on IT. But too often, they are stopgap measures that pass the buck to employees and customers. The result: false savings, hidden costs, and a growing gap between IT and the business.

So what does work?

Analyze the real pain points
Not every incident should be pushed to the left. First, look at the source. Why are so many people resetting their passwords? Why do the same applications keep crashing? By addressing structural causes, you can solve ten times more problems than with a new portal.
Keep it user-friendly
Self-service is fine—as long as it is limited to simple, repetitive tasks that actually save time. Anything beyond that leads to frustration and lost productivity.
Apply expertise where it makes a difference
Genuine, well-trained specialists solve problems faster and better. An experienced service desk employee prevents a salesperson from losing half a day to a crashed laptop. That's where the real savings lie: in recovering productive hours for the business.
Use AI where it fits
AI can provide excellent support: for better triage, smarter knowledge bases, and automatic analyses. But don't expect an LLM to solve your IT problems on its own. Use AI as a tool for experts—not as a replacement.
Also measure the hidden costs
Don't just count the hours worked by the IT department, but also those worked by the business. Only then will you see where the real costs lie and where optimization pays off.

The key is simple: don't shift the burden, solve the cause. IT should make business faster, safer, and more productive—not the opposite.

Want to know what shift left really costs your organization—and where the value is hidden?

Let's take a look together, from both the business and IT perspectives. Make a no-obligation appointment and gain insight into the true balance between costs, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

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