An efficient customer service ticketing system can be a lifesaver for companies that handle multiple customer queries each day. Select the best ticketing system, and you will be able to solve suggestions, questions, and complaints as quickly as possible.
Since the ticketing system business is booming, there are many of them available in the market nowadays, which can confuse businesses when choosing the best software. For this reason, it is vital to understand what is a customer service ticketing system, its features, and why you need it.
Read through the post to discover more information.
What is a ticketing system, and how does it work?
A customer service ticketing system is a support desk software solution used to collect, process, track, and manage customer complaints, queries, or compliments from submission to resolution.
The software automatically prioritizes and organizes customer issues in a central dashboard. Operators can tag, assign, and categorize tickets to users as they come in. what’s more, the system also indicates the status of your tickets, allowing you to track your requests and plan yourself.
The customer service ticketing system serves as a centralized platform for response to streamline communications between customers and agents. For instance, a customer interacts with your business via Facebook. Agents and authorized people can respond directly through the system without logging in to the social media app.
Most of the help desk software is cloud-based platforms. And this allows them to work well, especially for virtual IT operations, since it reduces complexity and costs.
Shared folders within ticketing platforms allow collaborations among employees to promote delivery and productivity. Customer service attendants can reduce workflow by sharing customer information among themselves and easing the individual burden.
Customer cares supervisors can also analyze team performance indicators, such as resolution time, first-reply time, and response time, through a ticketing system. The software can as well track the frequency of customer concerns and categorize them based on priority.
So, how does a customer service ticketing system work? Read below!
A ticketing system software creates a service ticket, proof, or a record of any support interaction between the customers and service agents. For example, say a client enquires about a particular product from your business; they’ll contact you through your business contact platforms.
While on the contact page, the ticketing system will use the provided information to prepare a personalized ticket based on their concerns.
The information may include address, work title, organization, and your past interactions with the business. This ticket is then forwarded to the relevant agent for resolution. The ticketing management solutions will log all communication between support agents and customers in a single thread for ease of identification and reference.
Customer service attendants can also add notes about the client and other important issues that can help with future engagements. For example, attendants can leave a reminder to forward an email confirming if the problem is fully resolved.
Once customers’ issues are addressed, either the agent or customers can close the ticket. However, tickets can be reopened if the issues need future references or amendments. Even after the tickets are closed, agents are allowed to reopen them for reference if a similar problem arises from prospective customers.
Key features of a good ticketing system
It is not advisable to include a support ticketing system without knowing how to maximize its features. To maximize a customer service ticketing system, you need to consider some of the technological aspects.
Check out some of the key features of a good ticketing system in the following section:
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Collaborative capabilities
Virtual calls, screen recordings, social networking, and chats across different business departments ensure customer issues are solved in a quick and organized manner. Therefore, the ticketing system software should be built in a way that allows ease of collaboration with other parts of the business.
This is important, especially when the issues require escalation. Customers are usually observant of how fast their matters are addressed. And having a ticketing platform that ensures effective collaborations with other departments is a sign that your organization is working in a unified manner to improve excellent customer service.
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Omni channel support
The customer service process should present convenience all the time. Helping customers through various channels is a great way to improve relationships with customers. Having a customer service ticketing system should be the primary link connecting customers to other business areas.
For this reason, allowing clients to contact your business or air their concerns through multiple channels such as emails, live chat solutions, social media, or SMS should be a strong consideration for a highly operational ticketing system.
Author credit: By Guillaume Paumier (user:guillom) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4977505
Lacking a systematic approach to escalating more complex issues of your customers drops the efficiency and reliability of your customer service practices and efforts to improve them.
A single customer contact channel makes your customer service efforts less effective and tedious and leads to congestion on your desk. On the contrary, having multiple channels allow you to notice which medium is preferred by customers is work on it.
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Strong analysis and reporting
It is of high importance to have a comprehensive report indicating all factors affecting how the help desk ticketing system works. After all, it’s been proven that it is effective in tracking messages and communication platforms and organizing all types of issues sent by customers.
Analyses and reports act as valuable references on how to improve service delivery and maximize the human resource power you have for effective service provisions. The efficiency of a customer service ticketing system can be identified by analyzing the following metrics;
- Customer reports and feedback.
- Ticket response reports.
- Ticket filtering options.
- Communication methods used.
- Handling time by customer support attendants.
- Escalation, if present.
Understanding how various factors impact your support delivery helps businesses identify their blind spots and how they can deal with them.
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Smart messaging rerouting
Sometimes, customer inquiries or requests might need more complex problem-solving abilities, that the attendants are unable to provide a direct, detailed, or precise solution on the spot.
Since ticketing systems act as a centralized and organized way of addressing customer issues, ensuring that every ticket is forwarded to the right department or staff reduces the time clients have to wait for their concerns to be resolved.
There are unique tickets for every customer and concern, which ensures that involved parties in any issues are professionals who understand the problem and provides solutions as needed.
For example, if a customer has an issue that requires technical skills, that ticket is forwarded to an IT professional within the business or any person with the qualifications to solve the issue.
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Self-service-enabled ticketing systems
Not businesses or companies are able to provide 24/7 customer service availability. Some of the reasons for this are the lack of adequate manpower or the nature of their services. However, this does not mean it is impossible to boost and modify customer service.
A functional ticketing system should incorporate a self-service capability where customers can navigate around resolution steps even if support agents are not available full-time.
A feature like this can be availed in the form of an FAQ list, forums, communities, dedicated articles about particular problems, or a carefully crafted knowledge base.
A self-service feature for customer service solutions not only promotes a competent customer support system but also encourages convenience and customer empowerment.
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Supports quick search
Because customer service is increasingly adopting digital ways of delivering support, printing service information on paper and organizing them in folders is an outdated and impractical way of storing references for clients.
Having a quick and powerful search engine that allows attendants to search and get answers for customers saves more time for both the agents and clients.
It is also important to have information about the business arranged chronologically to enable support assistants to quickly find solutions by going directly to the related category of customer issues.
Conclusions
The process of choosing a functional and relevant customer service ticketing system can be daunting. Understanding what it is, things it can do for your business, and features to look out for is a key step towards identifying if your business needs it and how to select the right one to deploy.
There is “no best ticketing system” because each one is made unique to fit a specific set of businesses and the type of service they deliver. However, standard features to look out for include collaborative abilities, Omni channel support, robust analysis and reporting, intelligent messaging routing, self-service capabilities, and quick search displays.
Hopefully, now you know what is a help desk ticketing system, the features of good ticketing systems, and how you can choose the best one based on your needs.
