What is ticketing process?

The ticketing process refers to the steps involved in creating, managing, and resolving tickets or service requests within an organization. Tickets allow users to report issues, make requests, and track progress towards resolution. An effective ticketing process is crucial for providing excellent IT service management and customer support.

What is a Ticket?

A ticket is a record containing details of an issue, request, or problem that needs resolution. Tickets are commonly created in ticketing systems or helpdesk software to facilitate and track service delivery.

Tickets typically contain information like:

• Ticket ID number for tracking
• Name of person reporting the issue
• Date/time ticket was created
• Type of issue or request
• Category or component affected
• Priority level of ticket
• Detailed description of the problem
• Steps to reproduce the problem
• Attachments like screenshots or error logs
• Status of the ticket (open, pending, resolved, closed, etc.)

Recording issues in tickets allows organizations to quantify problems, prioritize work, assign accountability, and measure service level performance.

Why is Ticketing Important?

Here are some of the key benefits of using a ticketing process:

• Centralized tracking: Having a ticketing system provides one place to record, manage, and report on issues and requests. This is more efficient than using email, spreadsheets, or paper systems.
• Improved communication: Ticketing systems facilitate collaboration by allowing conversations and file sharing between users and support agents working to resolve issues.
• Enhanced visibility: Dashboards and ticket reports give management visibility into the type and volume of issues. This helps identify problems and resource needs.
• Increased accountability: Because each ticket has an assigned owner, it’s clear who is responsible for working on the issue or request.
• Standardized processes: Ticket workflows enforce consistent stages that each ticket must progress through, such as Open, In Progress, Waiting on Customer, and Closed.
• Audit trail: The history of status changes, notes, and communications is automatically tracked with each ticket, creating a helpful audit trail.
• SLA management: SLAs for responding and resolving tickets help ensure a high level of customer service. Ticket metrics help identify SLA compliance.
• Reporting: Ticketing systems have robust reporting capabilities to help quantify activity volumes, backlogs, agent workload, and service levels.

The Ticketing Process

While the exact stages may vary, a complete ticketing process generally includes the following steps:

1. Creating Tickets

The first step is creating a new ticket to log an issue or request. Tickets can be created through:

• Web form on a self-service customer portal
• Email to a support email address
• Phone call to a support line
• Agent directly entering in ticketing system

The goal is to make it easy for users to submit tickets while capturing all the required details upfront.

2. Classification and Prioritization

Once a ticket is entered, it goes through an intake and triage process. This involves:

• Assigning the ticket a category, service type, and subcomponents
• Determining impact and priority level (low, medium, high, critical)
• Identifying the team responsible for the ticket based on skills and knowledge
• Setting the SLA based on priority

Proper classification ensures the ticket is routed to the right agents and handled with the appropriate urgency.

3. Assignment and Communication

After triage, the ticket is ready to be worked. Actions include:

• Assigning the ticket to an agent or team
• Contacting the user who reported the issue to gather further details as needed
• Communicating next steps and expected resolution time
• Asking the user for any additional information required to resolve the issue

Good communication helps set expectations upfront and resolve tickets more promptly.

4. Diagnosis and Resolution

The assigned agent then investigates, troubleshoots, and resolves the issue. Steps include:

• Analyzing and reproducing the problem if possible
• Leveraging documentation, knowledge bases, and technical resources
• Determining the root cause and fix needed
• Testing proposed fixes or workarounds
• Implementing the solution or performing the requested task
• Closing out or blocking the ticket if unable to resolve immediately

The agent updates the ticket throughout this process, adding notes, attaching files, and changing the status.

5. Ticket Closure

Once the issue is resolved or request fulfilled, the final steps are:

• Having the user confirm the problem is fixed or request is completed
• Adding any final notes or comments to the ticket
• Changing the ticket status to Resolved or Closed
• Communicating ticket resolution to the user

Proper closure helps ensure user satisfaction. Reopening tickets should be simple if users need further support.

6. User Satisfaction and Review

Follow-up actions may include:

• Having the user complete a satisfaction survey
• Monitoring reopens and additional requests
• Analyzing ticket metrics like resolution time and agent workload
• Identifying opportunities to improve knowledge base content
• Reviewing trends across tickets to identify systemic issues

This helps ensure continual improvement of support services, staffing, and business processes.

Ticketing System Features

Ticketing systems provide a variety of features to facilitate and enhance the process above. Common capabilities include:

• Web-based interface – Provides easy online access for submitting and managing tickets.
• Email handling – Allows creating tickets from inbound emails.
• SLA management – Defines SLAs per ticket priority and alerts on upcoming SLA breaches.
• Time tracking – Automatically records time agents spend working on tickets.
• Task automation – Triggers automatic actions like sending emails when ticket status changes.
• Ticket forms – Custom forms to capture specific information for different ticket types.
• Queues – Designated queues that agents can monitor and work from.
• Calendar view – Displays ticket due dates and SLA milestones on a calendar.
• Canned responses – Pre-written responses that agents can reuse for common questions.
• Ticket linking – Relates duplicate or related tickets together.
• Reports and dashboards – Built-in and customizable reports on ticket volumes, times, performance and more.
• Integration capabilities – API and other tools to integrate with third party systems.
• Customizable workflow – Tailors ticket stages, routing rules, and notifications.
• Access control – Manages access to ticket queues and functions based on roles.

Choosing a solution with robust features ensures your team has the tools needed to deliver excellent service.

Best Practices for Ticketing Process

Some key best practices for optimizing a ticketing process include:

• Provide multiple easy ticket submission channels – Consider options like email, web portal, phone, chat, and social media.
• Streamline ticket intake with forms, categories, and required fields.
• Use a simple priority matrix based on impact and urgency to set SLAs and manage workloads.
• Build a knowledge base of troubleshooting guides and FAQs agents can leverage.
• Automate repetitive tasks like sending confirmation emails and collecting feedback.
• Use rules and workflows to route tickets to the right agents.
• Enable collaboration by allowing agents to discuss tickets.
• Monitor performance with reports and track metrics like agent utilization and SLA attainment.
• Solicit user feedback when closing tickets to identify improvement opportunities.
• Analyze ticket trends to identify common issues and gaps.
• Provide self-service options so users can find answers without creating tickets.
• Promote knowledge sharing by documenting resolutions within tickets.

Following best practices helps ensure tickets are handled promptly, accurately, and consistently across the organization.

Ticketing System Software

Popular ticketing system software and service desk tools include:

Choosing the right platform depends on your budget, use case, integrations, and scalability needs. On-premise vs SaaS models are also considerations. Be sure to evaluate ease of use, automation capabilities, and customizability when selecting ticketing software.

Ticketing Process Challenges

Some common challenges faced with ticketing processes include:

• Incomplete or inaccurate ticket details from users
• Lack of categorization leading to improper routing
• Too many Priority 1/Critical tickets diluting importance
• Difficulty reproducing user reported issues
• Multiple touchpoints between user and agents
• Information silos across teams and tools
• Tickets being forgotten or falling through the cracks
• Duplication of tickets for the same issue
• Unclear problem ownership and handoffs
• Users reopening tickets prematurely
• Lack of ticket monitoring and metrics
• Agents having insufficient context, training, or resources

Addressing these challenges requires improving processes, systems, documentation, communication, and collaboration across teams.

Conclusion

An effective ticketing process is critical for tracking issues, delivering excellent customer service, and improving IT operations. Core components include intake and classification, assignment, communication, resolution, and closure steps. Using a feature-rich ticketing system, following best practices, and overcoming common challenges helps organizations optimize the process. With a customer-focused ticketing approach, teams can work efficiently and collaboratively to fulfill service requests and resolve support issues.