What is a ticketing system? (+3 ways companies use them)

For support agents, organising and triaging customer requests from various channels is already a challenge. The fact that 73% of consumers plan to continue using new support channels only makes ticket management more complex. The best way to beat the odds and consistently provide your customers with quick and effective responses? Ticketing systems. Ticketing systems document and track customer issues and interactions, making it easier for customer service teams to manage their support cases. These systems give agents the customer details they need to provide personalised service, help support staff coordinate their efforts, and automate repetitive tasks—all of which empower companies to reduce resolution and wait times.

What is a ticketing system?

A ticketing system is a help desk software program used to process, manage, and track customer issues from submission to resolution. Ticketing systems automatically organise and prioritise support requests in a central dashboard. Users can tag, categorise, and assign tickets as they come in. These systems also indicate ticket status so you can keep tabs on active requests. Ticketing software serves as a hub for responses, streamlining communication between agents and customers. Say a buyer reaches out to your business via Instagram. An agent can respond to their message directly from the ticketing system without having to switch to the social media app. Or, imagine a customer issue must be escalated. Using a ticket escalation process, an agent can transfer a support ticket to the right person and send a notification to the customer from the ticketing system. Shared inboxes in ticketing systems also promote collaboration. Agents can break down silos by exchanging customer information with one another. Customer support managers can use ticketing systems to analyse team performance metrics such as resolution time, response time, and first-reply time. Ticketing systems can even track the frequency of customer issues, so you can determine which problems need addressing.

How a ticketing system works

A ticketing system creates a ticket or a record of every support interaction. Say a customer wants to reset their account password but doesn’t receive an email with the reset instructions. They contact your business on one of your support channels. When the customer reaches out, the ticketing system creates a ticket that contains relevant information about the customer, such as their:

The ticket is then assigned to a customer support agent who helps the customer resolve their issue. The ticketing management system logs all communication between the customer and the agent into a single thread. Agents can also add internal notes about the customer or the issue for future reference. For example, agents might leave a reminder to send the customer a follow-up email to ensure the issue was fully resolved. Once the customer’s service request has been addressed, either the customer or the agent can close the ticket. (Tickets can be reopened if the issue needs further attention.) Even after a ticket is closed, agents can still search through past tickets in the system to find solutions to similar problems when necessary.

3 examples of how companies use ticketing systems

It’s easy to think a ticketing system is just a way to organise customer requests, but the software can do so much more. Check out how three major companies are using ticketing systems in innovative ways, so you can apply the same ticketing system best practices to your business.

1. Instacart: Analyzes customer data trends

   
   The grocery shopping platform Siemens, a manufacturing and technology company, strives to provide their large client base with personalised experiences. But personalised support is hard when you rely on emails and spreadsheets to track customer data. Support agents had to spend a lot of time and effort to get the information they needed. Once Siemens’ support team switched to Zendesk’s ticketing system, they could log complaints and quickly pull data to personalise their responses. Because they didn’t need to work with inefficient spreadsheets anymore, they had more time to offer personal customer service and manage their ticket backlog. “Zendesk helped us quickly get control once the volumes spiked—both in terms of understanding what was happening so we could take steps to proactively reduce the volumes and also in the handling of the queries—to reduce the backlog again,” says Steven Franklin, global head of customer service at Siemens. With the help of Zendesk’s ticketing system, Siemens’ support team kept first-reply time steady at six to seven hours, despite a 30% increase in ticket volume. They also reduced the resolution time from 24 hours to about eight hours, leading to higher customer satisfaction.

2. Grubhub: Simplifies complex workflows

   
   Agents at Grubhub always have their hands full keeping tabs on diners, drivers, and restaurants. With three different user groups to serve, Grubhub’s support team uses Zendesk’s ticketing system to route issues to agents who are best equipped to fix the problem. The ticketing system also simplified agents’ complicated workflows when diner requests surged during the pandemic. Whenever customers requested a change to their order, Grubhub agents had to update the restaurant as well as delivery drivers. But once they started using Zendesk’s ticketing system, agents could easily adjust orders for everyone without switching tabs. Zendesk’s ticketing system has helped Grubhub’s support team increase their CSAT score to 90%.

Use Zendesk to manage your support tickets

A ticketing system can make all the difference between providing an exceptional customer experience or watching customers walk out the door. Choose a flexible tool like Zendesk to organise, prioritise, and track support tickets. Zendesk connects your support team with customers across all communication channels. Our ticketing solution enables customer support managers to view team performance at a glance (thanks to a centralised dashboard), and it provides agents with the customer details they need to navigate interactions. The best part? You don’t have to switch between tools, as Zendesk integrates with a wide range of software solutions.