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Ticket Management Best Practices: How to Effectively Manage Your Tickets
An effective ticket management system is critical to fixing issues quickly and efficiently.
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Every professional knows that technology can malfunction at any time and in unexpected ways. When things go wrong, end users — whether employees or customers — need a way to report the issue to a company’s IT or customer service department.
This is where a ticket management system comes in handy. Instead of losing track of back-and-forth email threads, phone call transcripts or chat logs, teams can use specialized software to manage issues that pop up — either internally or externally. Here’s what you need to know about how ticket management systems work, how they can be used and some best practices to optimize your ticket flow.
What is ticket management?
Ticket management is how a team manages requests to address issues, such as technical difficulties or customer service inquiries. An efficient ticket management process is essential for companies that handle a steady flow of fixes, changes and development requests; these inquiries often come from different types of users with varying priorities.
Dedicated ticket management software is most frequently used by tech teams that develop new software features or fix bugs. It may also be used by customer service teams that need to report and track customer problems. Ticketing can be used by internal or outsourced customer service teams to provide personalized, fast support.
How does a ticket management system work?
A ticket management system allows end users — customers or employees — to report any issues they’re experiencing with a company’s service. Or, they can request new features to be developed. Managing such a system requires creating and updating individual tickets that contain all relevant information about the problem or request so they can be fixed.
Here’s a step-by-step overview of how ticketing works:
- The end user creates a ticket. Using an online form, the person submitting the ticket provides details about the issue or request. They may be able to assign tags or priority levels to their ticket so the receiving team has more context.
- The ticket is assigned to a team member. Once received, an internal point person at the company may designate a specific team member to handle the issue. The designation could be based on their current workload and expertise. Or, team members may be able to claim new tickets as they come in.
- The team member works on the issue or request and adds documentation. The staffer working on the issue or request typically leaves notes in the system or changes the ticket status. This way, everyone with dashboard access can be kept up to date on the resolution progress. The information accessible may depend on whether the ticket is viewed by an employee or customer.
- The team member closes the ticket when the issue is resolved. Upon successfully resolving the issue or completing a feature request, the ticket is closed and the person who submitted it is notified. A ticket can be reopened if there are follow-up questions or additional requests; this will bump it back into the workflow for the same team member who previously worked on it.
What are some ticket management best practices?
To effectively manage your tickets, we recommend following these best practices.
Categorize, prioritize and update tickets properly.
One of the best things about a ticket management system is its ability to organize and streamline your team’s workflow for addressing problems and requests. This practice makes your business more efficient. If you don’t categorize and prioritize your tickets as they come in, you lose out on that main benefit.
Once tickets are in progress, make sure everyone follows a consistent process for updating the status and documentation of their work. This will ensure quality service and that everyone stays in the loop.
Communicate frequently with your team about workflows.
The best way to keep ticket management workflows optimized is to constantly work on improving them, said Geoffrey Goldberg, director of operations at The Lifetime Value Company. This entails soliciting feedback and actively communicating process changes.
“Think about all the different facets of work and the people who would be utilizing it, and trim or add anything to the workflow if needed,” he said.
Automate as much of the process as you can.
Automatic notifications for things like ticket assignments, comments and ticket closures take the burden of manual communication off your team’s shoulders. They also assure the user who created the issue or request that their ticket is being worked on. Besides notifications, you may be able to automate other parts of the process, such as triggering certain actions or generating AI-powered progress summaries.
Customize the process to work for your team.
When setting up and using your ticket management system, make the process work for your team rather than the other way around. Don’t be afraid to keep adjusting workflows and processes to better serve employees and customers.
“Every task is going to be different,” Goldberg said. “The goal should be to make the lives easier of the people performing these tasks and others who want to stay in the know. We always try to balance having enough process so that there isn’t chaos, but not too much process so that it stifles innovation and creativity.”
Why use a ticket management system?
Ticket management systems help businesses provide better support to employees and customers. They do so thanks to efficient workflows and transparent insights into the status of a specific issue or request. One of the biggest benefits for internal users, especially managers, is the ability to see all open issues at a glance. Gone are the days of having each team member manually track their progress on a shared spreadsheet or manage open issues in their individual inboxes. Now, the entire team can look at the software dashboard to see exactly how many open issues there are, who’s working on each one and the status.
Another upside of ticket management systems is you can use them across multiple areas of your business, not just IT and customer service, to keep projects organized and running smoothly. For example, The Lifetime Value Company introduced the Agile methodology for project management and invested in Atlassian’s Jira ticket management system for every department. All staff members — developers, content creators and customer service representatives — were able to learn and use a common tool to streamline their workflows.
“We knew that in order to support the success of Agile and the workflows and processes used to operate within that philosophy, we needed a robust and easily customizable tool to manage it at all,” Stefani Ribaudo, chief people officer of The Lifetime Value Company, told business.com. “We evaluated many tools on the market, and we continue to regularly evaluate what’s out there and feel that Jira serves us the best in this area.”
What are the benefits of a ticket management system?
Ticket management systems can provide multiple benefits to any department in your company, including the advantages below.
Open issues and requests are centrally located.
With a ticket management system, there is no need to worry about lost email threads or disorganized contact form submissions. All the details your team needs to address a problem or request — including any past attempts to resolve the issue — are at your fingertips. They’re organized in a database by priority, status, tag or assigned team member.
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The system improves communication across departments.
When everyone on your team has access to a central ticketing system, anyone who creates a ticket can track its progress; they can see exactly where it is in the queue. This transparency and self-service approach means fewer miscommunications and follow-up emails for status updates.
Your team can move through issues faster.
A shared email inbox is typically only seen by a handful of people. However, all employees with access to your ticket management system can quickly spot outstanding issues that haven’t yet been claimed or addressed. The more eyes there are on your ticket dashboard, the more likely someone will be able to start working on a request right away.
Team members can play to their strengths.
With a ticket management system, you can assign specific issues to team members with the right expertise to resolve them. You can also set up automated workflows that categorize requests and send them to queues handled by subject matter experts.
You can spot patterns in requests.
As more tickets start coming in, you may notice the same issues cropping up repeatedly. This can help you develop a customer knowledge management system or self-help database. Such a tool allows you to address those frequent issues faster, create long-term solutions and reduce the likelihood of a user with these problems creating a new ticket.
You can use it for various areas of your business.
Ticket systems are often based on Agile methodology. So, you can customize and adapt them to other areas of your business, such as internal content marketing requests and HR initiatives. Any department that assigns projects and tasks to a group of team members can use ticket management software to track operations.
What should you look for in a ticket management system?
If you’re in the market for a ticket management system, make sure the platform you’re considering offers the following features.
- A user-friendly dashboard: The program’s user interface should be intuitive and easy to navigate. You should be able to find and access the ticket you need quickly.
- A good system for categorizing and prioritizing tickets: A ticket system is only as good as its ability to organize information in a way that makes sense to you and your team. How much can you customize the tags, priority levels and statuses of your tickets? Can you filter and organize tickets based on those labels?
- Tracking and reporting features: Analytics can help you understand the efficiency and effectiveness of your ticketing management. The software should be able to tell you which team members are handling the most tickets, how long it typically takes to resolve them and your ticket resolution rate.
- Automation tools: Strong automation features allow you to create filters, rules and conditional actions to streamline your team’s ticket management workflow.
Kimberlee Leonard and Skye Schooley contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.
