As businesses grow and expand their customer base, managing customer queries, complaints, and requests can become overwhelming. Without a systematic approach, customer support teams may struggle to keep up with the high volume of customer inquiries, leading to delayed response times, disgruntled customers, and decreased customer satisfaction. But fear not! There is a solution that can turn this stressful situation around – ticketing systems!
If your goal is to scale your business, then you can expect your customer base to grow alongside it. This means more queries and customer issues to take care of. Help desk software is the perfect solution for keeping up with increasing customer demand and expectations, whilst maintaining your business’ unique identity. In addition to features like knowledge bases and CRM systems, ticketing systems enable customer service teams to streamline their workflow and accomplish rising targets with ease.
In essence, ticketing system helpdesks are the lifesavers that help businesses manage their customer support operations efficiently. By creating a centralized hub for customer inquiries, teams can quickly organize and respond to customer issues in a structured and timely manner, leading to happier customers and a better overall customer experience.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the benefits of ticketing systems in more detail, as well as provide you with a comprehensive understanding of how they work. So buckle up and get ready to discover how ticketing systems can make all the difference in keeping your customers happy and your business thriving!
What Is a Ticketing System?
Help desk software offers a useful collection of business tools that enable the provision of outstanding customer service. Made up of various applications and systems, help desk software can include information hubs, registration mechanisms, and ticketing system management.
What exactly is a ticketing system?
Ticket systems are a method of recording communication and interactions, both internally and externally, between customers and service agents. They can also be used for communications between agents, or other internal departments. All communication data is stored in the centralized information hub that is the ticketing system. With important customer information neatly organized and easily accessible, it is simpler for companies to ensure no customer queries go unanswered or unresolved.
A robust and effective help desk ticketing system offers a multitude of features and capabilities that make the work of service agents more manageable. The idea behind help desk solutions should be to assist service teams, and not simply replace them. Research revealed that 79% of consumers prefer live chat to telephone calls. Although customers may prefer the instantaneous yet less direct approach to customer service, they still appreciate the human touch. In fact, 86% of consumers prefer human contact to bots.
With this in mind, the many helpful tools within a ticketing system can free up time as machines manage data so that people can speak to people.
Customer service, no matter the size of a company, involves plenty of repetitive and menial tasks. The best ticketing systems enable teams to integrate automation into their workflow. Things like responding to simple queries, or assigning tickets to tiers, can be automated without the need for specialized technical expertise.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are more consistently met with the help of a ticketing system. Customized metrics and timelines can be inputted to ensure customer service meets the standard promised to customers. By collating different forms of communication (email, text, phone call, social media, live chat, or other) into one omnichannel dashboard, your service agents can ensure they never miss a customer query again.
How does a ticketing system work?
Ticketing systems typically follow a structured workflow that helps businesses manage their customer inquiries efficiently. Here are the general steps of how ticketing systems work:
Ticket creation: When a customer submits a request or inquiry, the ticketing system creates a new ticket, which includes details such as the customer’s name, email address, and description of the issue.
Ticket assignment: The ticket is then assigned to a specific team member or department based on predefined rules, such as skill set or workload.
Ticket tracking: The ticket is tracked through its lifecycle, from creation to resolution. This allows team members to see the ticket’s current status, any updates, and any notes or comments related to the ticket.
Ticket escalation: If a ticket requires additional attention or cannot be resolved by the assigned team member, it can be escalated to a higher-level team member or department for resolution.
Resolution and closure: Once the issue is resolved, the ticket is closed, and the customer is notified of the resolution. The ticket is then archived for future reference.
Throughout this process, ticketing systems provide businesses with a range of features and tools to improve their customer support operations. These can include automated ticket routing, email notifications, prioritization and categorization of tickets, reporting and analytics, and customer communication tools such as chatbots and self-service portals.
Overall, ticketing systems help businesses manage their customer inquiries in a structured and organized manner, leading to improved efficiency, better customer satisfaction, and enhanced team collaboration. By automating and optimizing customer support operations with a ticketing system, businesses can provide exceptional customer service and stand out in a competitive market.
Why Your Business Should Be Using a Ticketing System
The business world is full of plates to spin, balls to juggle, hoops to jump through, and so much more. Whilst it can feel hectic sometimes, you don’t want your business to fall into chaos. All aspects and departments of a business should work in harmony with one another. That includes the vital customer service team.
If you’re unsure whether your business really needs a ticketing system, here are just some of the problems they can solve, and advantages they provide:
- Automation
- Reduced delays
- Data gathering
- Internal notes
- Canned responses
Starting out, simply having agents answer telephone calls and reply to emails may have seemed like enough. If customers were satisfied with this level of service, why change anything? The answer; it isn’t scalable. When you go from 500 customers to 500,000, will it be feasible for your agents to manually reply to every single email query that lands in their inboxes? Ticketing systems, and automated tools, make scalability less scary, and significantly more manageable. This is just one of many reasons why companies use ticketing software.
Help desk ticketing software does much more than just automating basic processes. There’s nothing worse for service agents than being handed a complex issue without being given all the available information. These less than ideal situations can lead to customers growing frustrated, since they may be asked to provide information they already have. As a result, issues take longer to be resolved. Customers value speed, with nearly half (46%) expecting companies to respond to queries within 4 hours.
Utilizing internal notes can ensure delays are avoided, as all the necessary information is readily available for the service agent taking on a case. High quality service can be quickly delivered to the customer, and frustration side-stepped.
Companies should invest in help desk software and ticketing systems if they want to gain more insights into their service teams. Information and key metrics, such as number of new tickets, ticket response time, first resolution, and many more, can be easily measured via ticketing software. Businesses can learn how successful their service procedures are, and know whether to adjust practices to improve overall service and customer satisfaction.
Features of Effective Ticketing Systems
As we’ve taken a look at some of the reasons why companies invest in ticketing systems, let’s take a deeper dive into the many features these systems can offer. Understanding exactly what is on offer can help inform your decision when choosing the right ticketing software for your business.
Automation has already been covered, and internal notes have briefly been touched upon. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the features you can expect from all the top ticketing software out there.
- Canned Responses – Within a ticketing system, you can generate pre-written or canned responses. Working off of keyword and predetermined rules, your software can suggest responses, or they can be quickly looked up by agents. Canned responses make sure all relevant and necessary information is given to customers, whilst saving precious time.
- Customizable Ticket Templates – For situations that may be more nuanced, meaning a canned response isn’t appropriate, customizable ticket templates can streamline an agent’s workflow. Templates help guide the drafting of tickets, maintaining a professional appearance in a hasty manner.
- Tagging – Tags help to ensure predetermined rules are accurate and effective, whilst helping to categorize and organize tickets.
- Knowledge Hubs & Tutorials – The first tier of customer service is self-help, which customers value highly. When they do need assistance accessing information, they can be directed to knowledge hubs and tutorials to solve their query. Agents can quickly retrieve information, keeping both employee and customer satisfaction high.
- Reports – In order to understand the performance of your customer service agents or teams, reports can be compiled from data taken from ticketing software. You can also gather information relating to your customers via ticketing systems, which can aid sales and marketing teams in understanding your business’ audience.
- Tracking & Automation – SLA tracking can be carried out within a ticketing system, ensuring promises to customers are always kept. SLAs can be customized, allowing teams to work towards specific targets and milestones, e.g. ticket resolution time.
- Internal Notes – As previously highlighted, internal notes provide agents with all the information they need to best help customers. Agents can share information accurately with one another, making processes like ticket escalation much smoother.
Benefits of Ticketing Systems
There are numerous benefits to using a ticketing system for businesses of all sizes. Here are some of the most significant advantages:
Efficient customer support: With a ticketing system in place, businesses can streamline their customer support operations by automating the process of creating, tracking, and resolving customer inquiries. This ensures that customer issues are handled quickly and efficiently, leading to increased customer satisfaction.
Improved team collaboration: Ticketing systems allow multiple team members to work on the same ticket simultaneously, improving collaboration and reducing duplication of effort. This can help teams resolve issues more quickly and effectively, as well as avoid miscommunication and errors.
Better tracking and reporting: Ticketing systems provide businesses with valuable data and analytics that can help them identify trends, track performance, and improve their support operations. By tracking metrics such as response times, resolution times, and customer satisfaction rates, businesses can make data-driven decisions to optimize their support processes.
Enhanced customer experience: By providing customers with a centralized platform for submitting inquiries and tracking their progress, ticketing systems improve the overall customer experience. Customers appreciate the transparency and responsiveness of a well-managed ticketing system, leading to increased loyalty and repeat business.
Cost-effective: Automating customer support operations with a ticketing system can help businesses save time and resources, leading to cost savings. By reducing the need for manual processes and improving team efficiency, businesses can achieve better results with fewer resources.
Overall, ticketing systems provide businesses with a centralized platform for managing customer support operations efficiently, leading to increased customer satisfaction, improved team collaboration, better tracking and reporting, and cost savings. By implementing a ticketing system, businesses can take their customer support operations to the next level and stand out in a competitive market.
Different Ways Companies Use Ticketing Systems
The various features of a ticketing system can be implemented and used in a number of ways. Your business is unique, and so too are its goals. To provide some inspiration on just how ticketing systems can be used to achieve your business’ goals, we’ve delved into how other companies use ticketing software.
Promote Collaboration
Growing a business requires you to think carefully about how different departments work with one another. Viewing each department in isolation would be a mistake, and cause your business to miss out on some major opportunities. Would it surprise you to learn that a ticketing system can help with this?
Help desk solutions and ticketing software can promote collaboration within a company. If an agent is handling a customer phone call, the worst thing they could do is desperately struggle to search for the right department or appropriate person to pass the customer to. Having a ticketing solution lets service agents collaborate with other areas of the company by accessing a list of departments or people they’re likely going to need to work with.
Integrate Communication Channels
Scaling up a business doesn’t always mean hiring new employees. It’s more cost-effective to make better use of the employees you already have.
Before, you may have had a service team dedicated to answering queries from Twitter, another team for text messages, and another for emails. Keeping communication channels separate can lead to duplicate tickets, as well as wasted time and effort.
Instead, many companies choose to integrate their various communications into one central hub. That way, queries are quickly tagged and assigned, and each customer’s communication history visible for all agents to see. Companies can even use ticketing systems to migrate existing applications used for communication, upgrading the project management of service teams.
Improve Customer Service Agents’ Workflow
All great ticketing systems come with an easy to navigate dashboard. These can be customized by companies to focus on key metrics and aspect of customer service. It’s easy to create the ideal dashboard for your business. You can even take your home-grown apps and integrate them into the dashboard with zero coding knowledge or developing expertise.
Things like color coding, graphics, and visuals can be incorporated into dashboards. Agents will be able to make quick inferences, as well as track SLAs without delay, all whilst focussing on the customer they are speaking to.
Choosing the Right Ticketing System for Your Business
Now that you understand what a ticketing system is, and the ways in which companies use them, it’s time to choose one for your own business.
There are many considerations to be made when deciding which software is right for you. Some key factors to think about are:
- Affordability – The budget that is available for customer service resources will dictate the ticketing software you select. Fortunately, there are plenty of great free trials or introductory packages available, as well as flexible pricing options.
- Ease of Use – It’s pointless picking a software that will complicate processes and confuse your service agents. Choose a system that won’t require too much time for onboarding and training.
- Customer service features – Of all the ticketing system features listed previously, not every single one is going to be a priority for your business. Determine which are your dealbreakers, and let that guide your decision.
- Third-party integration – You don’t have to ditch all your existing customer service systems in favor of a new ticketing system. Integrating third-party apps allows service agents to stick with familiar tools that they are confident using.
Now that you can answer the question, “what is a ticketing system?”, it’s time to ask yourself what you’re waiting for.
Looking for an effective help and service desk solution for your business? See how Wavity can help today!