How an Automated Ticketing System Saves Time & Money
We’ve all had that monotonous task or project that never seems to go away. Every day, week, or month it pops up and there’s no avoiding it. But what if you could automate all or at least part of that task? While it may not always be possible, in customer support a technology called ticket automation is playing a huge role in maintaining a successful support operation and is helping to revolutionize the industry. So how exactly can an automated ticketing system save time and money? Here are some examples of what this technology can do as part of the right help desk ticketing system below:
Automatically assign tickets – The days of the “gatekeeper” that directed customer support issues to the right people are over. Now, with customer support software and ticket automation, triggers can be created so if a ticket is submitted via email or a customer portal it goes to a specific agent or group. For example, a trigger where the subject line contains the word “how” (i.e. how do I add a user) could automatically route all emails to the training group.
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Remind customers to follow up – Your support team is busy and so are your customers. Create a trigger so that if you are waiting for a customer response you can deploy an automatic email after a set period of time to remind them. This lets the customer know you haven’t forgotten about them and, who knows, maybe they missed your last email by accident. Just make sure the message is friendly and encourages a response from your customer.
Close tickets automatically – Sometimes, even after sending out a reminder, a customer may not respond for a variety of reasons. Instead of just leaving the ticket open forever, it’s easy to create a trigger that automatically closes tickets after any set number of days. For example, a company may use ticket automation to automatically close all tickets that have not been modified in 20 business days. This helps to keep the ticket queues clean and provides an accurate assessment of your ticket volume. This accuracy can be important when the ticket volume rises and you need to staff appropriately based on this increase.
Get alerts for urgent tickets – Most tickets don’t require an immediate response, but urgent tickets and how you respond to them can sometimes make or break large business deals. Utilize ticket automation to send out internal correspondence, be it an email or text message, when the ticket severity level is set to “Urgent” or other trigger keywords are included in the message body. Some tickets can’t wait until business hours and it’s important that these tickets are addressed right away to keep customers happy. These alerts will help greatly in managing your support tickets both now and in the future.
Weekends and holidays – Simply put, not all businesses have the funds to offer 24/7 support for all types of tickets. Many companies use customer support software to create rules that if a non-urgent ticket is created on a certain day (i.e. Saturday, Sunday, Christmas Day) then the customer will receive an automated email immediately. This email usually thanks the customer for reaching out and states that they will get a response on a specific date in the future. These quick emails are important because it sets a reasonable timeframe and expectation for when the customer should expect their issue to be addressed.
In summary, these are just a few ways ticket automation saves time and money. Instead of having to employ extra people to monitor and sort tickets, support ticket software can perform these tasks without the element of human error. Moving forward, customer support software will continue to become a larger part of the customer experience because it not only saves businesses time and money, it also improves the support experience for your customers.
