How To Prioritize Help Desk Tickets?

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prioritize help desk tickets

For every IT help desk, making the customer experience better is the Brownie point and handling the tickets stands at the frontline of doing it.

In a survey conducted, almost two-thirds said they would wait two minutes or less and 13% said that “no wait time is acceptable” when it comes to waiting for their tickets to be resolved.

Breaking it down further, 29% that waiting more than two minutes is too long.

And 14-15% won’t even call for customer service because they think it will take too long for a representative to answer, this is a big no-no for enhancing the customer experience.

So, the only way to meet the (let’s say) inhuman expectations around slicing down the wait time to a full and complete zero is by prioritizing help desk tickets.

IT help desk outsourcing companies can always be your bulwark against losing your grip entirely on wisely prioritizing tickets.

Yet, you must consider the following seven steps (which can also be considered tricks) to nail it in order to touch the Brownie point instead of having to meet the boiling point!

1. Spot the Repeat Issues to Save Your Time

For the sake of future problem-solving, it may be beneficial to collect information from each opened ticket. As your knowledge base grows, make sure that everyone in the department is aware of where to look for solutions to earlier problems – make good use of repetition!

Processing those annoying recurrent issues will be simple if this information is centrally located and you are in constant communication with your staff.

Not only can gathering data assist you in resolving these problems quickly, but it will also aid in root cause analysis and, ultimately, the prevention of some problems.

It will save a ton of time to have this data automated and available at your fingertips at all times. Usage of NLP and Machine Learning/AI to match the ticket’s question to your saved answer is an advanced innovation to rely on.

This isn’t an improved science but offering suggested answers for the Agent to select from rather than auto-answering is quicker which may not be as satisfactory for the requester.

This gives the person answering the ticket the ability to decide whether the response needs to be updated or personalized before being sent.

2. First-in, First-out, or Prefer A Claw Crane

You can decide whether you want to implement the first-in, first-out system or truly select the tickets based on the technicality or urgency depending on the size of the squad and the number of tickets raised.

A first-in, first-out system will typically be entirely based on chronology. Prioritize them based on ticket urgency, though, if you have a small team and a significant backlog of open tickets.

Employing a modest support staff is crucial because it makes managing tickets simple and reduces the backlog, we always prioritize our tickets based on first-in, first-out.

3. All is Fair in Love and Tickets Handling

Every company should treat all consumers fairly.

However, when it comes to giving priority, solving the issues of paid customers before moving on to free customers is typically the case with support tickets.

Businesses frequently have a third customer category above these two: VIP clients.

Depending on which client category has the most tickets, the choice changes here. Support teams are still able to take the issue’s urgency into account under this priority technique. Accordingly, preference can be changed.

4. Use the Levels of Urgency as a Sieving Machine

Knowing the urgency of the problem before allocating support tickets is one of the greatest methods to employ ticket prioritization.

Support teams can develop a standard sheet that contains all relevant ticket information, such as contact details, a description of the problems, and the extent to which the problems are affecting the customers.

All of the tickets’ grades might be included using these values.

Support agents can prioritize which tickets they need to complete depending on this rating. This prioritization technique is very helpful if you receive a lot of tickets, especially if you have a first response time of at least 12 hours.

5. Escalate Issues as Fast as a Lightning

Support agents frequently get reports with problems that require tech support but cannot be resolved by them. In this situation, your reassign method ought to be quicker and more effectively streamlined.

If you reassign or escalate these tickets manually, there will inevitably be gaps and possible unanswered tickets.

The best solution for this problem is to use a tag-based automated reassigning process. A CRM with service automation integration makes this simple to accomplish.

All you have to do is email all the tickets with keyword tags like “system crashed,” “technical issues,” or similar directly to the tech team. This method shortens the reply cycle while simultaneously saving time.

6. Sending First Response is Your First Option

Even if you don’t have enough bandwidth to respond to all of your priority tickets at once, make sure you at least provide your consumers with the first response.

Sending the initial response as soon as possible will reassure customers that their problem is being considered, and it may give you more time to respond to their questions.

Automating the initial answer for priority requests is a simple solution. You may customize and personalize your scripted support ticket responses if your service automation and CRM are coupled.

This will enable you to send emails that don’t appear pre-written and will also help you to optimally appease your consumers.

7. Level the Grounds of the Custom Fields

The ticketing system’s form includes basic fields such as contact information. These forms, however, can be customized so that additional custom fields can be added to the ticket.

These additional customer fields should capture additional important and relevant information such as the issue, the extent to which it affects the customer, whether the issue reoccurs, and so on.

Whether you use all of these best practices or a combination of them, the most important thing to remember is how critical it is that your support representatives provide prompt service.

It is critical to ensure that all of your customers are treated equally, and this should be done in the best way possible.

The best way to deal with this is to put all approaches and strategies to the test and see which ones work best for your company.

With all that said,

If you are a person who is determined to improve the customer experience, then should not turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to our simple yet crucial tips to prioritize tickets that will save your life.

The above seven points are like mantras (you should keep chanting) that will help you succeed by prioritizing what is to be prioritized.

Our suggestions above do not stop with just telling you what but they also have the hidden answers for all your how’s and whys around prioritizing tickets carefully.

Go through each work without skipping a beat, the right words will definitely help you catch your breath if you are drowning.

Done reading our article? Use the wisdom gained for your customers’ sake!



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