Ticket Management Best Practices:How Do You Prioritize Support Tickets?

For managed service providers (MSPs) and a variety of other organizations, staying on top of support services is critical to retaining customers and ensuring continued satisfaction. The tasks of the service team generally begin with requests from end-users. The request generates a support ticket, the details of which pass through the IT workflow until someone solves the problem. A well-designed ticket management system and implementation of help desk service best practices are essential for the smooth execution of support tickets.

Most organizations have to deal with the constant influx of requests for IT services, so maintaining a well-managed ticket management system is critical to keeping support services up and running. The ticket management system centralizes communication for end-users and streamlines the work of desk staff. A good ticket management system can promote problem-solving smoothly and improve customer satisfaction.

Fortunately, if you are looking to improve your support services, there are many practices that are easy to implement. This article explores ways to manage your help desk tickets and provides proven ways to improve service desk performance.

How do you prioritize support tickets?

As you know, a support ticket is a service request sent by an end-user and received by a ticket management system. Responding quickly and accurately to all tickets is important, but this can be challenging if you are inundated with requests for IT support. Do you receive tickets on a first-come, first-served basis or choose according to the urgency of your request? What if it takes longer than expected to find a solution?

Here are eight best practices to keep in mind when managing your support ticket queue.

Determine ticket priorities. Below are two ways to prioritize your tickets.

First To Arrive And First Out. The first-in, first-out method processes support requests in the order they are received. The chronological method helps optimize workflow and avoid a backlog.

Prioritize Entries According To Urgency. Most ticket management systems can receive an email and generate the required contact information, details of the problem, and how the problem affects customers. With this information, the team can choose which ticket to tackle first based on the type of problem the customer is facing.

Sort All Support Tickets According To Urgency. This step is especially important for prioritizing tickets based on urgency, but it is an important identifier regardless. This categorization allows support staff to identify the most pressing issues and take time. This type of time management can make a difference if you have a large influx of tickets that requires quick change.

Classify Clients. Ideally, all clients should be treated equally and all problems resolved quickly. However, if you have a small team that handles a large number of requests, you should consider prioritizing your customers with higher payment levels. And quickly track your requests. If desired, create VIP categories within the system first-in, first-out to ensure key accounts receive top-notch service.

Track And Monitor Ticket Status. To speed up your workflow, make sure that each ticket is assigned a status. For example, you can use labels like Open, In Progress, Pending, Closed, etc. Ticket management software helps you track the status of each ticket and easily see new updates on a central dashboard. In this way, you can track the progress of each ticket and prevent requests from being lost or ignored.

Monitor And Automate Workflows. You can automate your workflow by setting alerts on important clients or especially urgent tickets. You can also configure alerts for inactive and expired tickets. By minimizing the potential for human error, you can ensure that key customers receive immediate support and their pending requests are long gone. If a person receives an alert for an unsolvable problem, other teams that have experienced solving this particular type of problem use keyword tags like "system locked" to automate the reassignment process. Warn members. Such labels speed up the workflow and prevent difficult tickets from falling through the gap.

Keep Clients Informed. Automate the first response to the customer and include the estimated resolution time. When the problem is officially resolved, or if it takes longer than usual to reach a solution, please send an appropriate notification. Even without a scheduled schedule, customers appreciate continuous communication and the reassurance that they are evaluating the problem.

Draft Template Message If Possible. Creating a separate response for each customer is time-consuming and impractical. You can use the template message to alert the customer who received the request, provide estimated wait time, confirm that they are solving the problem, or notify them that the problem has been resolved. Customers don't expect a personalized response, but you can easily generalize canned communication by designing a template that recognizes each customer's particular problem.

Encourage Self-Service. Common problems often occur many times. Repeatedly answering the same question wastes time and effort, and waiting for an answer to a recurring problem can be frustrating for customers. In many cases, clients prefer to help themselves when possible. Create a database of peer support portals or IT knowledge to help customers tackle problems that are easy to solve. Join a team and ask them to write and post answers to frequently asked questions, saving you time and effort in the long run.