How Asset Services Group moved IT support into Microsoft Teams with Claude
Asset Services Group, the business process outsourcing group behind communications provider Message Direct, replaced email-based IT support with a Claude-powered assistant in Microsoft Teams. Staff describe what they need in plain language; the assistant does the classifying, routing and follow-up.
The story in short
Asset Services Group ran IT support through email and shared mailboxes. Requests were easy to lose, there was no consistent way to categorise or prioritise them, and every employee was expected to know which IT form, category and priority to use.
Working with Svennis, the group deployed a Microsoft Teams assistant powered by Claude that acts as the front door to its Zoho Desk service desk. An employee describes what they need in plain language, the assistant routes it to the correct form in seconds, and staff check the status of their own tickets in chat, without opening a separate portal.
of requests routed to the correct form on the first try
efficiency gain in logging and routing a request, versus the old email process
departments use the assistant as their way into IT
Leveraging AI with IT Service Management and specifically, triage is an obvious solution for driving operational efficiency.
The challenge
Before the new service desk, IT requests arrived through email and shared mailboxes. That created three recurring problems:
When a request sat in one person's inbox and that person was away, the rest of the team lost sight of it.
The same kind of request was described in many different ways, so it was hard to categorise, prioritise and report on.
Expecting every employee to pick the right form, category and priority added friction and slowed everything down.
The group wanted a front door to IT that lived where staff already worked, in Microsoft Teams, and that did the classifying for them.
The solution
Svennis designed and built the assistant as the intelligent front door to the group's Zoho Desk service desk, and took it all the way to a live deployment.
An employee simply describes what they need, for example "we are onboarding a new client next week" or "my laptop screen is broken." The assistant interprets the request, decides which service form applies, and returns it as a one-click button in the chat. When the request is genuinely unclear it asks a single question; when it is clear, it acts immediately.
After a request is raised, the assistant pulls up the employee's tickets, shows each one's status, priority and target response time on a confirmation card, and posts follow-up messages straight onto the ticket, all without the employee opening Zoho Desk.
Why Claude
Svennis chose Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, for three qualities that mattered for a live service desk:
Claude reliably turns messy, real-world wording into the correct request type, and knows when to act versus when to ask. In live use, 99.7% of requests reach the correct form on the first try.
Claude drives the whole Zoho Desk integration in a controlled sequence: find the ticket, confirm the right one, post updates.
Claude follows its brief faithfully. It stays a router, replies in English whatever language it is written to in, and never invents a ticket or a status, which is essential for trust in day-to-day use.
How it works
A Microsoft Teams assistant, so there is no new app for staff to install or learn.
Claude, through Anthropic's platform, deciding how to handle each request.
Ten request types routed automatically, including client onboarding and offboarding, joiner / mover / leaver, software and hardware, password reset, database amendment, script change, a catch-all "other", incident reporting, and attaching files to an existing ticket.
The assistant looks up a user's tickets, shows status, priority and target response time, and writes updates straight back to the service desk.
It understands requests in any language and always replies in English.
The impact
99.7% of requests reach the correct form without anyone re-categorising them.
A 40% efficiency gain in raising and routing a request, versus the previous email process.
The assistant is in use across all departments of the roughly 100-person group as the standard way into IT.
Staff can see and confirm their own tickets in chat, so requests no longer go dark when a colleague is away.
About Asset Services Group
Asset Services Group is a UK business process outsourcing group. It operates Message Direct, an outsourced business-communications and call-handling service that answers calls and manages customer contact on behalf of its clients.
About Svennis
Svennis Cloud Solutions designs and delivers AI-assisted business systems built on Claude, and is currently going through onboarding to the Claude Partner Network, Anthropic's partner programme.
For Asset Services Group, Svennis delivered the full IT service management build on Zoho Desk and the Claude-powered Microsoft Teams assistant that fronts it, from design through to live deployment and support.
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