Handling thousands of customer queries can be hard and time-consuming for the support team of a growing company. Using a help desk management tool helps a lot to manage customers’ queries.
We should optimize the workflow of our ticketing management software to enhance the performance of our support teams. In this blog, I will take you through ways to improve your customer support ticketing system workflow routines to reduce customer service staff work.
What is a ticketing system workflow?
A ticketing system workflow is the process performed by support agents to resolve ticket issues.
A proper workflow in ticketing management system will result in increased productivity and allow agents to work together smoother. Moreover, it helps in reducing staff workload and enhancing customer service.
Benefits of optimizing ticketing system workflow
An enhanced ticketing system workflow will:
- Save time in organizing and assigning tickets.
- Reduce the ticket resolution time since tickets are assigned to a specific person, and there’s no chance they’ll be passed over.
- Improve customer opinion of the quality of service you provide.
- Boost the performance of your customer support.
Tips to optimize your ticketing tool’s workflow
Let’s look at some tips for improving your help desk’s workflow after you have it set up.
1. Integrate service level agreements (SLAs)
You should incorporate time tracking and service level agreements (SLAs) into the workflow of your customer service ticketing tool.
With specific goals and service standards, an SLA encourages agents to maintain accountability.
An SLA:
- Sets the turnaround time to fix customer issues.
- Describes the roles of agents.
- Proscribes the statuses of tickets.
- And provides greater visibility of standards.
In all, SLAs provide a smoother workflow for the support team and aid in resolving customer issues on time.
2. Implement automated ticket assignment
Allowing support agents to manually pick the tickets on which they want to work or putting that responsibility on managers reduces the stability of your workflow. Therefore, using automated ticket assignment can help a support team not to let issues slip between the cracks.
Auto assignment rules route incoming tickets to a specific team or group in the organization based on a set of ticket properties like keywords. It then uses round-robin logic to distribute tickets evenly among the agents in the proper group.
Also, automatically assigning tickets to agents saves managers or leads a lot of time. Besides, they can also manually assign tickets directly to agents if needed and add themselves or others to the watchers’ list to keep an eye on a ticket’s status.
In an automated ticket assignment system, set event triggers perform actions on a ticket when it satisfies certain conditions. The system automatically:
- Creates a ticket.
- Assigns it to an agent.
- Triggers an acknowledgment email that is sent to the requester.
Receiving acknowledgment satisfies the customers, and the auto-send saves the agent time.
Benefits of automated ticket assignment to your workflow:
Automatic ticket allocation provides multiple benefits for your ticketing system software.
- Since a ticketing tool keeps track of the availability of agents, it can avoid assigning tickets to an unavailable agent.
- It improves response time.
- It prevents agents from cherry-picking tickets.
- Emails for acknowledgment and feedback are automatically sent, reducing customers’ wait time and agents’ work.
Refer to this article for more information about ticket automation.
3. Frame a ticket escalation structure
Generally, customer service requires teamwork to resolve customer issues effectively. Sometimes, you need other agents to step in when assigned agents are unavailable or unable to handle a problem.
For a well-balanced ticketing system workflow, you must have a solid ticket escalation management framework in place.
Ticket escalations occur for two reasons: due to a lack of knowledge or skills or due to tickets requiring a manager’s attention or approval.
While these escalations may be required sometimes, the goal is to handle as many tickets as possible without escalation.
To make your escalation procedure better for tickets:
- Train your workforce to fill knowledge gaps and improve their skills.
- Review your escalated tickets regularly to find out what those knowledge gaps are.
- Encourage regular contact and knowledge sharing among the various tiers of your customer service personnel so that fewer tickets need to be escalated.
4. Prepare and update your internal knowledge base
Sometimes your support members may forget the solution to fix a customer issue or receive an issue for the first time. So, all your technical people being able to answer every issue from memory is impossible.
A well-maintained knowledge base helps support team members quickly resolve customer queries. A study by Salesforce revealed that 66% of customer service teams and 82% of clients turn to knowledge bases to address their concerns and inquiries.
By creating an internal knowledge base, your team will always have access to answers, resulting in an improved workflow process.
Tips:
- Provide easy access for your agents to the knowledge base.
- Make it easy to search for and obtain relevant articles or guides.
- Get regular feedback from your agents on what to add to or change in the knowledge base.
5. Organize your ticketing process
To achieve a streamlined workflow for the ticketing tool, you should organize it. Each member of the team should participate.
Using the following customer support ticketing system workflow features will keep your support process running smoothly:
Set ticket priorities
To resolve tickets based on priority, agents should set every ticket status to low, normal, high, or critical. This ensures the most important tasks receive prompt attention. If too many are assigned to one agent, they can be manually redistributed.
Add labels and tags
You can group similar tickets and separate the important ones using labels. When a group of similar requests reaches a certain volume, its priority rises. You can also use tags to categorize customers and mark high-priority tickets. In addition, you can use them in your SLA.
Ticket linking
The customer’s reply may have multiple queries to which various teams must respond. So, agents can split a ticket, creating a new ticket from the reply.
This way, every aspect of a customer’s issue is fixed. Agents can select a relationship between tickets, like parent-child, etc., to keep them organized.
Add attachments and notes
In a ticketing tool, you can attach files such as Excel sheets, Word documents, and images while responding to a ticket.
In addition, you can include internal notes that only other agents will see. They can be reminders to other agents or some points to note on handling a specific issue. This way, all relevant information stays in one place.
Use canned responses
Canned responses are prewritten pieces of text used to reply to questions regularly asked by customers. So, having canned responses to copy from can save your agents time.
To learn more, read our blog on the importance of canned responses for customer service.
Conclusion
In summary, set realistic SLAs and automate manual operations to optimize the workflow of your ticketing tool. Besides, establish an internal knowledge base and use customer service help desk management software features to stay organized.
Finally, streamline your help desk management software operations and ensure your employees have everything they need to provide the best customer service.
Try using BoldDesk, which provides all the benefits described in this blog for your customer support. Contact us to set up a live demo to learn how BoldDesk functions can be optimized to suit your business needs. Sign up for a 15-day free trial today.
