The biggest thing any help desk needs is accountability. Tickets should not be fire and forget, ever. I take pride in my work, and I think it's a black mark on the entire IT department when a ticket has to be kicked around 3 times before getting to the right team. I get a ticket with poor information, then call the user. After getting full information, I have to transfer the ticket to the appropriate group, causing user frustration.
I think scripting, and mandatory fields in help desk tickets are a great step. I want the tier 1 guys to learn valid troubleshooting techniques and understand how things work, so they can validate the information they provide to higher tiers. By the time a ticket hits my desk, I hope that all the basics have been tried out, but it's not often the case.
At the end of the day, IT exists to serve the users and the business. The more effective and responsive IT is, the more successful the business can be.