Customer service is all about not just meeting, but exceeding customer expectations. In order to be successful, a business must delight its customers at every interaction and then some. Ensuring this is consistently achieved is made much easier with the help of the right software – introducing the ticketing system which comes with help desks and service desks.
Help desk solutions are available to make the work of customer service agents smoother and less stressful. Processes are streamlined, making customer service protocols more efficient and cost-effective. Each company will have different priorities when it comes to the ticketing system they opt for. However, there are some universal best practices that, when followed, can result in outstanding customer service.
Learn how your business can utilize ticketing software to improve the lives of both its customers and service agents. After all, happy employees are better empowered to deliver positive experiences to customers. It’s these satisfying interactions that build customer loyalty and keep them coming back.
Find out what a ticketing system is, and some ticketing system tips that will result in outstanding customer service right here!
Let’s start by looking at what a ticketing system is
Every customer service team should be using help desk software to make the workload easier, more efficient and much more streamlined. A ticketing system is a collection of tools and applications that businesses use to enable teams to deliver excellent customer service. Amongst the various tools that help desk software often features is the ticketing system.
What is a ticketing system, and what does it do?
Ticket systems enable the recording of communication and interactions between customers and service agents. Additionally, ticket systems can be used internally for agents and other employees to work collaboratively to achieve a goal or share information. Every interaction, as well as information relating to customers, is stored in one centralized hub of data.
One important thing to remember when investing in a ticketing system is that the software is there to empower service agents, and not replace them. According to research, 86% of consumers still prefer human contact to robots or AI. Help desk tools like ticketing systems enable support agents to handle and resolve queries faster, and with greater accuracy.
If you are wondering what a ticket system can do, here are some problems this helpful software can solve and advantages it can bring:
- Automate repetitive processes – Clever automation features mean mundane tasks can be taken care of by technology, leaving more time for service agents to deliver service with that special personal touch.
- Minimize delays – Tracking and customizable SLAs reduce the risk of delayed responses, ensuring no customer is kept waiting for help.
- Reduce ticket backlog – Robust software lightens the workload of agents, resulting in fewer tickets piling up throughout the day.
- Gather customer & agent data – Reporting and analytics can be quickly generated, helping your business glean insights into its customers, as well as its support staff.
- Promote collaboration – Internal communications and integrated apps mean seamless teamwork across various departments.
Useful Tools within Ticketing Software
Before we share our ticketing system tips, it might be helpful to know exactly how these systems can do what they do.
We’ve listed the key tools within the best ticketing systems, outlining how they provide the attractive advantages listed above.
- Canned Responses – Canned responses are a means of providing all relevant and necessary information in a very short space of time.
- Customizable Ticket Templates – Customizable templates allow agents to draft tickets in a way that fits the unique scenarios that your business deals with.
- Tagging – Tags help to organize tickets, and ensure they are sent to the appropriate tiers.
- Knowledge Hubs – Easy access information helps agents to assist customers in real-time without hesitation or the need for guidance from supervisors. The customer can also take a self-service approach by accessing this information themselves.
- Reports – Data taken from ticketing software and compiled to create reports. This could relate to customer information, or agent performance.
- Tracking & Automation – SLAs can be customized and tracked, with automation tools ensuring no promises made to customers are broken.
- Incident Management – A ticketing incident tool enables IT teams to organize, categorize, and manage major incidents, such as service interruptions or website downtime.
Ticketing System Tips For Businesses
The way your business uses ticketing software may differ to another business. No matter what your ticket system priorities are, here are our top ticketing system tips!
Set SLAs
A Service Level Agreements (SLA) is an agreement that defines the standards of customer support. It can essentially be viewed as the customer service guarantee. Businesses can set their SLAs, and can base them on the quality of agent responses, the availability of help, and the timeliness of responses.
Outlining SLAs helps to keep customer service standards up. By setting these targets, reminders and helpful automation tools can be called upon to keep agents on track. Making your SLAs publicly visible online creates accountability, which is a fantastic motivator.
SLAs also let customers know what to expect. For example, customers may be assured they will be responded to within five minutes on live chat platforms.
When SLAs are consistently met, customer dissatisfaction remains low and loyalty high.
Outline Support Tiers
Using ticketing software to organize customer support tasks into tiers will be one of the best things you can do for your support agents.
A lot of time can be spent reading through customer queries and tickets to figure out what they relate to and their level of complexity. Without the help of speedy software, tickets can get assigned to the wrong agents, creating confusion and potentially stressful situations.
Tier 0 is the self-service level of support, which can be facilitated by publicly accessible knowledge bases and tutorials. Zendesk found that a significant percentage of consumers were able to solve problems themselves using knowledge base platforms.
Tier 1 tickets, which require less experience and knowledge, can be assigned to newer support agents. From here, tiers can be separated in order of experience or technical expertise required to resolve tickets. Upper tier tickets are likely to be issues that are more complicated and do not have a fixed timeframe for resolution.
Perfect Self-Service
Whilst we’re on the subject of tiers, now is a good time to look closely at self-service. When asked by Zendesk, 60% of consumers stated that quick problem-solving is the mark of outstanding customer service.
Knowledge bases are the perfect ticketing system tool to promote fast resolutions, whilst educating customers for future reference. External knowledge bases tend to contain information about products and services offered by your business. Queries relating to things like billing, shipping, registration, returns, and so much more can be answered using self-service knowledge bases.
Customizable ticketing software can be altered to perfectly fit your business. For example, each available product could be listed, with any relevant information customers might need attached to them. A search bar is also the ideal tool for enabling customers to quickly grab information that exactly matches their query.
By making FAQs and tutorials available to the public, your customer service team is likely to receive far fewer tickets than if these recourses were not available.
Utilize Tagging
Another top ticketing system tip is to make the most of the tagging features available to you. Tags are just like labels that have been attached to tickets, identifying what they are about, and giving a snapshot of their contents. This makes the organizing and assigning of tickets a much simpler process.
Automation lets tags be attached to tickets without the need for a service agent to examine them first. This can be determined by rules and defined keywords that have been inputted into the help desk system’s tagging settings. For example, “billing” tags or “pre-sales” tags can be automatically added, based on the wording of an inbound ticket.
Agents can also add their own tags to tickets. This can help with the prioritization of workflow. For instance, “urgent” or “high priority” tags can be attached to help order an agent’s tasks for the day.
Create Canned Responses & Templates
One of the steps in setting up a ticket system that should not be overlooked is the creation of canned responses and ticket templates. These pre-written messages can increase agent productivity, whilst significantly reducing response time.
Businesses can create predefined responses to commonly asked questions, that can be pulled up by agents using keyboard shortcuts. When it comes to email and live messaging, canned responses can resolve issues at a much faster rate.
Another benefit of using templated and canned responses is the guarantee that all necessary information will be included in responses. If any policies have recently been updated, for instance, these can be reflected in the canned responses, ensuring each agent is providing up-to-date information across the board.
Monitor Ticket Status
Using all the features of ticketing software lets you get a deeper understanding of your business’ customer support processes. Data can be gathered that can inform you of any areas that need adjusting or improving. Equally, it can let you know what’s working well, so you can maintain consistently high levels of service.
Agents should always remember to “open” or “close” tickets, so that the status of each query is easily monitored. This way, no tickets can fall through the cracks or go unanswered. This monitoring can identify whether new tickets are being assigned and dealt with within the timeframe given in your SLA.
Reminders can be set to prompt agents of urgent action. If an agent has a pending ticket, and is awaiting further information from a customer, they can be reminded to contact them again after a certain amount of time has passed.
Train Agents Sufficiently
Investing in a brand-new ticketing system might seem like the solve-all your business has been looking for. But, without the proper training of agents, your new software won’t be used to its fullest potential.
Dedicating time to training during the onboarding process of this software will enable your agents to do their job properly. You can include a number of engaging activities to help teams explore the new system and familiarize themselves with new processes.
For example, agents could be asked to resolve simulated tickets. They can also create their own tickets, so that they better understand the customer’s experience and their perspective. Progressing from this, agents can be paired up or work in small teams to respond to simple live tickets, easing themselves gently into the new software.
Track Agent Performance
The final of our ticketing system tips for outstanding customer service is to track agent performance. Once you’ve fully onboarded the new software, you should start gathering data about individual and team performance.
Analytics and reporting tools will let you view metrics, such as ticket volume or first contact, and determine whether KPIs are being met. Without tracking these metrics, it will be difficult to tell whether the new ticketing system is helping or hindering your business’ customer service efforts.
In addition to assessing the ROI and effectiveness of the ticketing system, tracking agent performance is great for morale. Agents or teams who perform well over the course of a week or month should be rewarded for their dedication and skill. Valued and happy support agents are sure to provide dazzling customer service and represent your company best.
Looking for an effective help and service desk solution for your business?
With these new-found tips and nuggets of advice, is it time to consider the new help desk and ticketing system that is best for your business?
Your support teams can deliver outstanding customers service that will generate a sparkling reputation for your company. All they need is the support of a comprehensive and powerful help desk solution to achieve their goals. Agents and customers alike can be empowered through easy to use no-code help desk software, that can integrate beautifully with your existing applications.
Collaborative work can be streamlined, SLA targets met, and overall customer satisfaction increased with seamless drag-and-drop help desk tools. There’s no need for expensive developers or in-depth programming expertise. We’ll even walk you through how it all works, so you and your support agents can hit the ground running.
See how Wavity can help today!