A customer ticket is a request or complaint logged by a customer in a company’s customer service system. It allows the customer to explain an issue they are having so that the company can look into it and provide support. Customer tickets are an essential part of customer relationship management (CRM) as they help ensure issues get properly documented, assigned to the right support agents, and tracked through to resolution.
What is the Purpose of a Customer Ticket?
There are several key purposes of customer tickets in a business:
- To log customer issues/complaints and document them for record keeping
- To notify support teams about problems needing resolution
- To assign issues to specific agents or teams responsible for that type of issue
- To track the status of issues from initial report to final resolution
- To gather data on the most common types of issues customers experience
- To measure support team performance through metrics like ticket resolution time
- To identify areas for improvement in products/services by analyzing ticket trends
In summary, customer tickets help companies support their customers in a structured way while also gathering useful data that can guide decisions around improving offerings and support operations.
What Information is Included in a Customer Ticket?
Customer tickets typically contain the following details:
- Contact information – The customer’s name, email address, phone number and account username/ID if they have one. This allows support agents to look up their account and get in touch to resolve the issue.
- Issue description – A detailed explanation of the problem the customer is facing. This includes specific details like error messages they may be seeing, what they were doing when the issue occurred, and how the issue is impacting them.
- Date/time – Automatically populated timestamp for when the ticket was created. This allows tracking of how long it takes to resolve issues.
- Priority level – How urgent the customer feels the issue is based on the impact on their usage. Common priority levels include low, medium, high, and critical.
- Product/service category – The specific product or part of the service related to their issue. This allows routing the request to agents with expertise in that area.
- Attachments – Any screenshots, error logs, or other files the customer can include that provide helpful diagnostic information.
- Ticket status – Tracks where the ticket is in the resolution process such as new, open, pending, resolved, closed, etc.
All these ticket details help ensure the customer’s issue is clearly communicated and can be efficiently worked on by the appropriate support teams.
How Do Customers Create Support Tickets?
Companies provide different channels for customers to create support tickets including:
- Email – Customers can email a support address detailing their issue.
- Web forms – The company website will have a support section with online forms to submit a ticket.
- Self-service portals – Larger companies have customer portals where users can log in and create tickets.
- Social media – Customers can sometimes tweet or post on social media to get attention on an issue.
- Phone/live chat – Calling support or using live chat to have an agent enter a ticket on the customer’s behalf.
- In-product – Some apps have options to flag issues which automatically generate tickets.
The most common methods are web forms and customer portals. These allow customers to directly input all the necessary details right into the ticketing system. Email still sees some usage as it is easy for customers, but requires support staff to manually enter details into the ticketing system when they receive an email request.
How are Customer Tickets Processed?
Once a customer ticket is entered into the system, here is a typical process for handling it:
- The ticket is assigned to a queue based on the type of issue or product. For example, billing issues go to the billing queue and mobile app issues to the mobile app queue.
- An agent reviews the new ticket when it reaches the front of their queue. They assess the issue and try to resolve it if it is simple.
- For more complex issues, the agent may need to escalate to more senior staff or do additional research before attempting resolution.
- Once a fix or answer is determined, the agent will communicate back to the customer via the channel the ticket came from.
- The customer must confirm their issue is fully resolved before the ticket can be closed.
- If not resolved, the ticket continues moving through the queue with new troubleshooting until the customer verifies resolution.
- Closed tickets are used to gather data on common issues, agent workload, and team performance.
This process ensures each ticket goes through the proper workflow and validation before being considered fully resolved and closed. Some steps may be automated, but agents need to manage the overall process.
What are Some Common Customer Service Ticket Metrics?
Customer service organizations use a variety of ticket metrics to identify opportunities to improve. Common metrics include:
- Ticket volume – The number of support tickets submitted per day/week/month. Can identify periods of high load.
- First response time – How long from ticket creation to an agent’s first reply. Measures initial responsiveness.
- Resolution time – The time taken to fully solve and close a ticket. Goal is as fast as possible.
- Reopen rate – Percentage of tickets that must be reopened due to unresolved issues. Aim for lower reopen rates.
- Agent backlog – Number of tickets waiting in the agent’s personal queue. High backlogs lead to delays.
- Customer satisfaction – Surveys after ticket closure to measure the quality of support.
Analyzing these metrics enables companies to pinpoint inefficiencies in the support process. The data can guide decisions on adjusting staffing, updating products/documentation, or identifying recurring customer problems requiring better solutions.
What Are Some Features of Customer Ticketing Systems?
Customer support ticketing systems have a variety of capabilities to facilitate managing high volumes of inbound support requests including:
- Consolidated customer request inbox shared by the team
- Automated ticket routing and assignment rules
- Multiple priority levels to identify urgent issues
- SLA tracking with timers and notifications as deadlines approach
- Ticket status management from open to pending to closed
- Knowledge base integration to find existing help articles
- Canned response templates for common questions
- Reporting on real-time and historical ticket metrics
- Email piping to convert emails into tickets
- Integration with other systems like phone, live chat, billing, etc.
These features optimize the speed and efficiency of processing high ticket volumes to ensure customers get timely resolutions. More advanced systems even leverage automation and artificial intelligence to handle some routine tickets automatically.
What are Some Popular Customer Ticketing Systems?
Some of the top platforms companies rely on for customer ticketing include:
- Zendesk – The leading dedicated customer service ticketing system. Has a wide range of capabilities and integrations.
- Freshdesk – A fast-growing, affordable Zendesk alternative with robust features.
- Salesforce Service Cloud – Allows ticketing within the broader Salesforce CRM environment.
- HubSpot – Provides ticketing as part of its inbound marketing/sales platform.
- Help Scout – A user-friendly system tailored to small business needs.
- Intercom – Focuses on chat-based support in addition to ticketing.
- Kayako – An intuitive platform with built-in knowledge base and help center.
These tools exemplify the major categories of customer service ticketing solutions on the market. Most offer varying tiers and features to support the needs of different size teams and organizations.
Key Benefits of Using a Customer Ticketing System
Implementing a purpose-built customer ticketing system offers many benefits including:
- Structured, orderly system for incoming requests
- Tickets get proper documentation and tracking
- Issues routed faster to qualified agents
- Workflows optimize ticket resolution time
- Metrics identify pain points and improvement opportunities
- Scales easily as support volume grows
- Integrates with other systems and channels
- Enhances customer satisfaction through fast resolution
The right ticketing system pays for itself through enhanced team productivity, better customer experiences, and data-driven insights for the support organization.
Conclusion
Customer ticketing is a critical component of customer relationship management. Ticketing systems allow companies to intake customer issues, document them thoroughly, ensure they get addressed quickly by the appropriate teams, and track them through to resolution. This organized workflow, detailed record keeping, and built-in reporting provide substantial benefits for support teams and the customers they serve. While simple to implement, customer ticketing delivers outsized impacts on customer satisfaction as long as best practices around intelligent assignment, prompt responses and continual optimization are followed. For any company that depends on providing exemplary customer support, a purpose-built customer ticketing system is an essential tool.
