Aussie IT Teams Are The Tortoise To The Hare – Here’s How To Be Both

The story of the tortoise and the hare is a classic for a reason. While the hare’s speed is impressive, it’s the tortoise’s steady, persistent effort that ultimately wins the race. This ancient fable holds a powerful lesson for modern IT teams, especially here in Australia.

The Freshservice Benchmark Report 2025, which analysed over 187 million tickets globally, found that Australian teams take an average of 22.8 hours to fully resolve an issue, compared to 11-16 hours in faster-moving markets.

But here’s the crucial twist: what we lack in initial speed, we more than make up for in quality and thoroughness. Australian IT teams consistently deliver some of the highest results on service-level agreement (SLA) compliance (a 96.9 per cent rate) and first-contact resolution (76.5 per cent). This is a clear indication that for many Australian organisations, the goal isn’t just to close a ticket quickly, it’s to close it correctly the first time.

Why The ‘Tortoise’ Approach?

Based on my conversations with customers, several factors contribute to this unique Australian approach.

The first is legacy technology. For over 30 years, Australian companies have been held back in adopting modern automated workflows when compared to their global counterparts. The complexity of the tech stacks used by large Australian organisations, particularly in service-heavy industries like financial and human services, creates more complex issues for a human agent to solve.

The second factor is both structural and cultural in nature. The high cost of labour in Australia means that organisations don’t typically run 24/7 helpdesks, like you might find in other countries. This naturally leads to longer resolution times, as tickets may need to wait for a new business day to fully resolve the issue. It also influences a culture of thoroughness and risk aversion. The high cost of mistakes means teams are incentivised to get it right the first time, rather than rushing to a quick and potentially incomplete fix.

The final factor is a high bar for quality. Australian companies tend to invest heavily in the training and retention of their employees. Unlike some overseas call centres with high turnover rates, Australian IT is a less transient job, which fosters a deeper knowledge base and a stronger focus on delivering high-quality, lasting solutions.

The Ai Opportunity

The good news is that Australian IT teams are in a prime position to harness the power of Ai and automation to bridge the speed gap without sacrificing their existing strengths. We have the quality – we just need to improve the speed.

The real opportunity lies in embedding generative Ai and automation directly into IT and Enterprise Service Management platforms. For Australian organisations, this is more an evolution than a revolution, as most already have ITSM or ESM foundations in place. But to capture the benefits without blowing out budgets, the platform needs Ai built into its core, not bolted onto a legacy system designed before the cloud existed, let alone Ai.

So where can Ai make an immediate impact? I see three key areas.

The first is in increasing deflection. Sophisticated Ai-powered self-service portals and knowledge bases can answer common questions and resolve simple issues without any human intervention, freeing up human agents to tackle more complex, high-value problems.

The second is in getting accurate, faster responses. When a ticket does get to a human agent, Ai can provide instant, context-aware responses and suggest the next best action, dramatically speeding up resolution times while ensuring the high-quality answers Australian companies are already delivering are retained.

And finally, it can help build a dynamic knowledge base. Ai can continuously update and create new articles for the knowledge base based on common tickets, ensuring that future queries can be resolved even faster.

Putting Ai Into Action – On The Gold Coast

Imagine a manager, responsible more for leading the team than responding to tickets, suddenly having to jump in and handle a flood of customer tickets during a crisis. That’s exactly what happened at Village Roadshow during severe floods and power cuts on the Gold Coast.

Their IT team, already seeing a 25 per cent improvement in resolution time from automation, found a new level of resilience with Ai. Instead of being overwhelmed, these managers were able to quickly respond to customers with the support of integrated Ai tools while maintaining the high corporate standards their teams were known for. It was a powerful example of how Ai isn’t just about making things faster – it’s a critical tool for building a more resilient and supportive team, especially when the unexpected happens.

The Path Forward

In a world obsessed with instant results, Australia’s IT leaders are quietly proving that precision beats pace.

The next 2–3 years will see a significant shift in the speed-to-quality equation for Australian IT teams. As they embrace Ai and automation, they will begin to close the speed gap with their global counterparts, without compromising on the high standards of quality they have already established.

The goal is no longer about just being the fastest, but about being both fast and accurate. Generative Ai tools can now deliver this competitive advantage today.

Andrew Phillips is VP ANZ at Freshworks.

Last Updated on October 20, 2025 by Andrew Phillips