Ticketing system explained: Everything you need to know [2024]

When companies begin, they usually use email for customer support. However, as they grow, it's crucial to move beyond email as the main support method. If your agents are struggling with a flood of unanswered emails, it's time to switch to a modern ticketing system for improved efficiency.

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What is a ticketing system?

A ticketing system is a software tool that helps businesses manage and address customer inquiries, issues, and requests. It's like a digital way of keeping everything organized.

When a customer reaches out to a company with a question or problem, a "ticket" is created. Now, this ticket contains all the details about the issue and helps the company track and resolve it efficiently.

In simple terms, a ticketing system is a smart way for businesses to stay on top of customer needs and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

How does a ticketing system work?

A ticketing system works by creating a record, or ticket, for each customer inquiry or issue. Here's a simple breakdown of how it operates:

Customer contact management for streamlining interactions

When a customer reaches out with a question or problem, a ticket is generated. This ticket includes details like the customer's issue, contact information, and the date of contact.

Categorization of customer issues for better insights

The system categorizes the ticket based on the type of request or problem. This helps in sorting and prioritizing issues.

Ticket Assignment and Workflow Optimization

The ticket is assigned to the appropriate person or team responsible for handling that specific type of request. This ensures the right people are working on the right things.

Ensuring Efficient Issue Resolution and Monitoring

The system tracks the status of each ticket from the moment it's created until the issue is resolved. This helps in monitoring progress and meeting response time goals.

Enhanced Communication Facilitation in Customer Support

Throughout the process, the system facilitates communication between the customer and the support team. It ensures everyone involved has the necessary information.

Resolution Recordkeeping for documenting customer issues

Once the issue is addressed, the ticket is marked as resolved. This provides a clear record of what was done and when.

Benefits of a ticketing system

Beyond just organizing customer inquiries, a ticketing system brings a myriad of benefits that enhance efficiency, communication, and overall customer satisfaction.

1. Efficient issue handling via a systematic approach

An organized resolution process is guaranteed with a ticketing system, ensuring every customer issue is acknowledged and systematically addressed to prevent oversight. Additionally, streamlined prioritization features, including categorization, help manage a high volume of issues, ensuring that no concern goes unnoticed.

2. Clear communication across every stage of issue resolution

Transparency is maintained throughout the resolution process, as the system enables clear communication between customers and support teams at each stage. Access to crucial information is facilitated, ensuring effective communication by providing both customers and support teams with the necessary details and minimizing misunderstandings.

3. Effective collaboration for seamless problem-solving

Facilitating coordinated problem-solving, the system allows the assignment of tickets to specific individuals or teams, promoting seamless collaboration in resolving customer issues. Optimization of collaboration is achieved through expertise-based assignment, directing tickets to individuals with the relevant skills to efficiently address specific problems.

4. Performance monitoring for in-depth analysis

Businesses can leverage insights for improvement by monitoring the status of each ticket. This practice enables them to gain valuable insights into performance, identify trends, and drive data-driven improvements. Moreover, monitoring ticket status supports informed decision-making, allowing businesses to systematically enhance their support operations.

5. Elevating business success through timely resolution

Timely resolution is essential for heightened customer satisfaction, and an organized issue-resolution process contributes to achieving this. A customer-centric approach is facilitated by the ticketing system, ensuring that customer issues are promptly addressed. This fosters increased satisfaction and loyalty among customers.

6. Resource optimization for handling specific types of issues

Strategic assignment is a key aspect, as tickets are allocated based on skills, optimizing resource utilization and ensuring the efficient handling of specific issue types. This approach leads to efficient resource use by directing tickets to individuals or teams with the expertise needed for effective issue resolution.

7. Continuous learning via a comprehensive historical record

Learning from interactions is made possible through the creation of a historical record for each ticket, facilitating future problem-solving and analysis. The historical record from tickets serves as a valuable resource for tracking recurring issues, analyzing trends, and refining overall support strategies.

8. Automation possibilities for streamlining routine tasks

Streamlining routine tasks is achievable through ticketing systems with automation features, reducing manual workloads and enabling teams to concentrate on more complex tasks. This enhanced efficiency is realized as automation streamlines tasks such as ticket assignments or status updates, saving time and improving overall team productivity.

9. Scalability to handle increased volumes of customer inquiries

The adaptability to growth is a notable strength of ticketing systems, as they can easily scale to handle the increased volume of customer inquiries and support demands that come with business expansion. Accommodating growth is facilitated through scalability, ensuring that ticketing systems can adapt to rising volumes of customer interactions without compromising efficiency.

10. Guiding business strategy through data-driven decision-making

Strategic insights derived from ticketing system data empower businesses to make informed decisions, fostering continuous improvement in their customer support processes. By leveraging data from tickets, businesses can strategically shape ongoing improvements, leading to a more effective and responsive support system.

3 examples of how companies use ticketing systems

A ticketing system is more than just an organizational tool for customer requests. Find out these innovative applications by major companies and apply these best practices to enhance your business operations.

1. Spotnana: To enhance customer engagement and team collaboration

Spotnana, a leading name in the travel industry, aimed to modernize corporate travel. Their Travel-as-a-Service Platform simplified processes, cut costs, and boosted efficiency.

Challenge: However, as Spotnana grew from a modest team of five to 200 employees during the pandemic, they faced challenges. The rapid expansion highlighted the importance of managing growth logistics and preserving a resilient company culture. Spotnana understood the crucial role of effective communication, a strong corporate culture, and customer-centricity to overcome these challenges and maintain their growth.

Solution: Shikhar, a co-founder at Spotnana, was aware of DevRev and its capability to tackle customer support issues. When the customer success team needed a modern ticketing system, Shikhar and Cynthia Beldner, Head of Customer Support and Success, quickly recognized the value of DevRev's design and its all-encompassing, unified solution.

DevRev provided Spotnana with an integrated solution to streamline operations and achieve its goals. The standout features of DevRev that captured their attention included:

1. Unified customer and product experience: DevRev allowed Spotnana to merge product and customer experiences into a single platform, consolidating their toolset into an efficient solution.
2. AI-driven customer support: By leveraging AI for common customer queries, Spotnana significantly reduced manual efforts in addressing repetitive questions. This not only enhanced customer service but also freed up valuable time for the customer success team.
3. Design excellence: Spotnana, placing high value on design in both internal and external communications, appreciated DevRev's intuitive and visually appealing user interface. The 'Trails' feature, in particular, facilitated seamless management of their product hierarchy and roadmap.

Result: DevRev's implementation at Spotnana resulted in several notable improvements:

1. Enhanced customer support: With AI at the forefront, customer inquiries are now resolved efficiently, offering quick, consistent, and accurate responses. Customers also benefit from a transparent view of ticket resolution progress and upcoming features tailored to address their specific concerns.
2. Unified data view: Spotnana can now consolidate data from both product and customer experiences in one place, empowering them to make more informed, data-driven decisions.
3. Streamlined internal communication and product management: DevRev's features replaced the need for multiple platforms, creating a unified workflow for Spotnana. By consolidating various functionalities within DevRev, it reduced dependency on multiple-point solutions.
4. Improved cultural communication: The single-platform approach facilitated centralized communication and document sharing, enhancing the culture around communication and team alignment. Additionally, by using AI to handle basic administrative tasks, the team's bandwidth was freed up to focus on more challenging initiatives.

2. Uniphone: To build and foster a proactive support culture

Uniphore has a significant global presence, serving 1500 customers in major industries like telecom, banking, healthcare, retail, and more. Their Enterprise AI platform is a leader, engaging billions of customers and employees every week in 20 countries.

Challenge: Abhiram (Director of Technical Support) and Vinod (Chief Customer Officer) were clear that customer support at Uniphore goes beyond detailed ticket metrics. They aimed to create a customer-centric culture by connecting support and product teams closely. This involved making support essential in offering insights for product improvements based on customer interactions. A crucial part of this shift was reassessing the tools used by support teams daily.

Solution: Unlike other product demos, DevRev delved deep into understanding how the company operates.

The Airdrop feature in DevRev was essential for Uniphore's smooth transition. It allowed effortless migration of data from their previous customer support tool. Vinod emphasized the need for tools that are easy to deploy and configure internally without requiring a system integrator.

The decision to move to DevRev resulted in a quick and smooth migration. Using Airdrop, Uniphore migrated data within just 6 hours.

• 16,000 tickets
• 72,000 comments
• 17,000 attachments

Result: DevRev helped Uniphore build a single environment for support.

A unified environment for support teams

DevRev custom-built an integration with Rocketplane and implemented Pager Duty alerts and incident management workflows, consolidating the support team's operations within a single environment.

Proactive issue identification

Uniphore's primary goal was to identify and address issues before customers reached out. The team invested in monitoring tools, and DevRev ensured that alerts seamlessly translated into issues or tickets within the platform.

Streamlined processes with Jira integration

The bidirectional sync with Jira enabled efficient issue management. Support could initiate an issue in DevRev, automatically updating Jira downstream, leading to enhanced efficiency, predictability, and consistency.

Empowered support engineers

Integrations with telemetry and development tools allowed support engineers to dive deep into customer issues, providing valuable insights and solutions.

Transformed support into strategic allies

The transparency of support data across the organization turned support teams into crucial allies for engineering and product management. They became the key link between customers and the company, offering insights into the real-world performance of the product.

3. Descope: Drives PLG motion using a single consolidated inbox

Descope, established in April 2022, is an identity management platform designed to assist developers in creating secure and seamless authentication and user journeys for various applications. Founded by a team of cybersecurity experts, the company is headquartered in Los Altos, CA.

Challenge: The recent surge in data breaches and cyber-attacks has highlighted the critical need for robust authentication. Descope is dedicated to enhancing security for all users by delivering top-notch service to their customers at scale. The team recognized the importance of building a product-led company. They want to engage with customers directly, avoid separate portals, and value quick, accurate live support. Additionally, they emphasize the importance of reliably automating customer journeys.

Solution: DevRev's API-first platform helped Descope achieve seamless self-service and automate customer success. It connected with third-party products, enabling robust automation and digital assistance. We can see the future of customer success leaning towards automation and scalability, and DevRev has positioned Descope ahead.

DevRev also streamlined Descope's self-service process by managing support requests in a single inbox. This simplifies customer engagement, providing quick answers and easy product feedback. DevRev's connectivity ensures Descope stays connected with users, even when they're not actively using the product.

Result: DevRev has played a crucial role in empowering Descope to create a self-service product and deliver exceptional support to its users. DevRev facilitated Descope with various integrations.

API-first platform for PLG and self-service automation

DevRev's API-first platform played a pivotal role in enabling Product-Led Growth (PLG) and seamless self-service for Descope. This feature automated their customer success efforts, providing a dynamic and responsive experience for users.

Unified support management across channels

The platform's capability to connect everything simplified Descope's support operations. It allowed the team to efficiently manage support requests from various channels through a single, comprehensive interface, enhancing responsiveness.

Instrumental role in product-led growth

DevRev's extensible platform has been instrumental in driving Descope's product-led growth. Its flexibility and adaptability have supported Descope's evolution as a product-centric company.

Streamlined self-service for users

Descope's self-service process was streamlined, enabling users to open tickets and receive support without complex provisioning mechanisms. This enhancement facilitated Descope in delivering excellent service at scale while maintaining secure and frictionless user authentication.

Immediate and seamless user support

DevRev's capabilities empowered Descope to design a truly self-service product. Users can now access immediate and seamless support, contributing to Descope's commitment to providing top-notch service.

Harnessing the power of ticketing for success

It becomes evident that these tools are not mere administrative necessities but powerful catalysts for organizational success. From solving issues effectively to improving communication and providing valuable insights, these systems are the foundation of a well-run operation. In the world of customer service, investing in ticketing systems is not just about being efficient—it's a smart move that propels your business toward success. Embrace the power of ticketing and see your organization thrive.