Freshworks data shows after-hours IT support gap widens

Freshworks has published research showing that 47% of IT support tickets are now submitted outside standard business hours, highlighting a widening gap between flexible working patterns and the availability of IT support.

The findings are based on anonymised Freshservice customer data covering millions of IT service interactions between September 2025 and March 2026. They suggest that evening and weekend work has become routine for many employees, while service desks still operate largely around conventional office hours.

Weekend ticket volumes consistently run at about 35% of weekday daily levels. Responses to after-hours requests still usually arrive, but they tend to take at least an hour longer than those logged during the working day.

Freshworks described this pattern as a "ghost shift", with employees continuing to work outside the traditional 9-to-5 schedule. It said the mismatch leaves workers searching internal chat channels for help while IT teams struggle to respond when staff are off shift.

The data indicates that the longer waits are not explained by greater complexity. Most after-hours tickets involved routine issues such as password resets, multi-factor authentication unlocks and access requests.

Escalation rates remained broadly in line with daytime patterns. Between 6% and 8% of after-hours tickets were escalated, matching business-hours rates in every month covered by the dataset.

Service performance, however, fell behind once requests arrived outside normal hours. Service-level agreement attainment was between two and five percentage points lower after hours throughout the period, with the widest gap recorded in October.

Business pressure

The difference became more visible during peak commercial periods. Freshservice trends showed a roughly 20% increase in daily ticket volume in the final days of March, as more employees worked longer hours at the end of the quarter.

That pattern did not continue throughout the year. December moved in the opposite direction, which the research suggested was likely due to holiday-related changes in working patterns.

Freshworks linked the support gap to broader operational and security risks. Delays in handling login failures or security patching outside business hours can leave employees unable to work and systems exposed for longer.

The effects can extend beyond the IT department in businesses that rely heavily on continuous operations. At Carrefour Belgium, store activity depends on technology running without interruption across a large retail network.

"An IT glitch can lead to certain shelves being empty," said Stijn Stabel, Chief Technology Officer, Carrefour Belgium.

Support response

Some organisations are trying to address the problem through self-service tools and process changes rather than moving fully to round-the-clock staffing. One example cited in the research was Katz Media Group, which has expanded AI-based self-service to handle requests when IT teams are offline.

"We're not promoting it as, 'we're never going to be here for you again.' It's just another way to provide another channel to get you assistance faster. We're also not a 24/7 shop, so we're able to market it as giving you options after business hours," said Robert Lyons, Chief Technology Officer, Katz Media Group.

The findings come as many employers continue to support hybrid and flexible work arrangements that give staff more control over when and where they work. While those policies have widened access to work beyond the office, they have also stretched assumptions about when internal support functions need to be available.

For IT departments, the research suggests the challenge is less about unusual technical incidents than the timing of everyday requests. Employees working later are still encountering the same basic account and access problems they face during the day, but they are doing so when fewer support staff are available to help.

That shift has implications for service desk planning, staffing models and investment in automation. The data showed that after-hours demand is now too large to be treated as an exception, with nearly half of all tickets arriving after standard support coverage has ended.