Supercell enhances IT support efficiency through AI-driven automation

The challenge: Streamlining Slack-based IT support

Supercell, the global leader behind iconic mobile games such as Clash of Clans and Brawl Stars, is renowned for its culture of innovation, collaboration, and agility. With a lean operational structure, Supercell's teams rely heavily on Slack to manage internal requests and resolve technical issues swiftly. Within this environment, the small IT support team, consisting of five members, faced a significant challenge: Efficiently managing a high volume of incoming support tickets.

While the approval process for access requests had already been automated, and Supercell had a Slack bot that users could use to request services from the IT team, the problem lied in triaging different support requests. More than half of all incoming IT support requests involved granting access to internal software tools and resources. Handling support requests was time-consuming and detracted from the team's ability to address more complex and strategic IT issues. Manually triaging Slack messages to identify, categorize, and process these requests consumed valuable time, impacted response rates, and created frustration among IT staff and internal users.

Supercell wanted to explore sophisticated yet practical solutions to automate the categorization and processing of these frequent requests, aiming to reduce manual labor and improve overall operational efficiency.

The solution: AI-enhanced Jira Automation integrated with Slack

Supercell already had a relationship with Eficode focused on implementing Jira Service Management. Eficode was trusted to investigate these operational challenges. During the initial project, Eficode worked with Supercell’s IT Support Lead to further enhance efficiency through a combination of Large Language Models (LLMs) and intelligent automation.

The first significant enhancement was integrating OpenAI’s large language models into Jira workflows, enabling the automatic generation of intelligent summaries for incoming support requests. These concise, accurate summaries allowed the IT team to quickly comprehend the nature and urgency of tickets without needing to review each Slack message manually.

Building on this success, Eficode developed a solution that leveraged AI to automatically detect software access requests and integrate with Slack to communicate with the user. By analyzing message content, the AI could quickly identify access-related tickets, automatically prompting users to fill out a structured form via a self-service Jira portal. This integration drastically reduced manual intervention from IT support staff, significantly accelerating request processing and resolution.

“Integrating AI with Jira and Slack offered immediate relief to a busy team. Eficode applied their agile approach to experiment rapidly, iterate effectively, and deliver impactful solutions.”

 

Craig Desomer, IT Support Lead, Supercell

Over time, Eficode and Supercell observed changes in OpenAI's language models, impacting detection accuracy. Eficode quickly implemented a solution using intuitive emoji-based interactions within Slack. Users could easily indicate the nature of their request using predefined emojis, triggering automated workflows within Jira. This simple yet effective workaround maintained operational efficiency and demonstrated the versatility of the approach.

Recognizing the need for precision and reliability, Eficode kept exploring alternative language models that could offer even higher accuracy and efficiency in request detection and categorization. Anthopic’s Claude LLM is proving to be highly accurate in categorizing requests and enriching the Jira tickets with important information from, for example, Jira Assets.

Results: Immediate operational impact and long-term potential

By automating the identification and handling of access requests, Supercell’s IT support team significantly reduced manual workloads. According to internal analytics, over 50% of all support tickets were access requests, and out of those, about 40% that were previously processed manually, are now managed through automated workflows, dramatically freeing IT resources.

The implementation of AI-driven automation not only improved operational efficiency and enhanced the overall employee experience within Supercell, but also enabled the IT team to push access requests to service owners, adding a secure layer of due diligence.. Users experienced faster resolutions to their support requests, reducing downtime and frustration. Additionally, IT support staff could allocate more time and attention to strategic projects and complex technical issues, directly contributing to improved productivity and morale.

Beyond immediate productivity gains, the project established a solid foundation for future innovation within Supercell’s IT processes. The successful integration of AI and automation demonstrated to the broader organization the tangible value of leveraging advanced technologies to optimize operational workflows.

“Eficode’s practical, adaptable solutions made AI an immediate asset for our team. Their ability to pivot quickly and effectively address our operational challenges made this partnership incredibly valuable.”

 

Craig Desomer, IT Support Lead, Supercell

Future: Endless use cases for AI-powered automation

Looking ahead, Eficode and Supercell have identified several use cases to leverage AI capabilities further:

• Advanced triage automation: Implement AI-driven ticket categorization based on priority and user sentiment, enabling proactive management of urgent and critical issues.
• Targeted automation: Develop intelligent workflows that distinguish different types of access requests (e.g., GitHub v.s. Dropbox), prompting tailored responses or automation accordingly.
• Conversational ticketing: Create seamless conversational ticketing experiences in Slack, reducing unnecessary noise and increasing efficiency.
• Trend and anomaly detection: Proactively identify operational trends, anomalies, and compliance or security risks with AI, facilitating quicker responses to potential issues.
• Incident management: Integrate AI with Jira to automatically enrich tickets with detailed asset information during incidents, aiding rapid root-cause analysis and resolution.

This partnership between Supercell and Eficode exemplifies how cutting-edge AI technologies can be successfully integrated into operational environments. Practical AI applications can be developed, implemented, and scaled quickly to drive significant business value and operational efficiency.