Every business owner who deals with clients knows how important customer service is. Not everyone knows, though, that this service can be made much easier while also boosting employee productivity. The solution is a ticketing system.
What is a ticketing system?
What exactly does a ticketing system do, and what is it? Let’s start by explaining the term itself. A ticketing system, or ticket system, is a system for handling requests, whose function is to track service requests and various kinds of incidents. Its defining feature is that it acts as a single point of contact between a service provider and a customer. The name reflects how it works: when a new inquiry comes in, the system creates a “ticket,” a virtual document. All the necessary customer data and their previous requests are attached to it, including:
- the full history of communication with the customer
- questions asked so far
- referrals to other departments or colleagues
- the start date
- the end date, along with how long the thread took to resolve.
A ticketing system can be purchased together with the hosting needed to run your website. Zammad is a ticketing system that lets you effectively assign tasks to employees and handle every open thread. You can easily integrate it with third-party programs and services, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google.
The benefits of implementing a ticketing system
A ticketing system offers many benefits for companies that care about their customers and want to build lasting relationships with them. Rolling out a ticketing system comes with advantages such as:
- centralized requests – putting all threads in one place makes work considerably easier for every employee handling customers. Clients can submit their issues by phone, email, live chat, or social media, so the ability to consolidate them all in one place is one of the biggest advantages of a ticketing system
- automation – incoming requests are automatically categorized by importance and urgency. This saves support teams time and helps ensure requests are handled appropriately
- communication – the system logs previous conversations, which supports communication between the customer and the employee. Recording all interactions makes it possible to track messages users submitted earlier
- increased productivity – rolling out a ticketing system significantly boosts a company’s productivity, both in terms of evaluating employee output and assessing their skills
Ticketing system features
Rolling out a ticketing system gives you access to a range of features designed to improve employee productivity and speed up their response to customer expectations. The most important features include:
- autosave – the system automatically saves recent actions and work in progress
- multitasking – the ability to move between several tickets at once, without having to switch between browsers
- templates – ready-made text for answering the same kinds of requests, without having to write full responses from scratch
- flagging – highlighting specific data so it’s easy to return to
- time tracking – logging the time spent resolving a specific thread
- splitting or merging tasks – threads can be merged or split depending on their complexity and importance
- cross-task linking – combining different tasks into a whole while defining how they relate to each other
- tagging – categorizing threads by adding tags to them
- grouping – profiles set up to make work easier for specific subteams
Ticketing system features for businesses
A ticketing system is a tool that makes life much easier for companies, saving both time and money. Each one comes with a mix of advanced and basic features that come in handy when dealing with customers. Good software of this kind, built for businesses, is a set of functionality essential for running professional customer relations. This set includes:
- a multichannel intake system – in practice, this means access to all information about the customer, their contact details, and any earlier steps taken to resolve their issue.
- automation – routing requests to the right agent
- live chat – reducing the number of missed requests outside business hours
- a self-service portal – letting customers find answers to frequently asked questions on their own
- a knowledge base – a comprehensive knowledge base can reduce the number of incoming requests
- mobile support – the ability to work from a computer as well as a tablet or smartphone
- data analysis and reporting – measuring employee performance, including response time, the number of open tickets, and the type of request.
Professional customer service should be a priority, helping both to maintain existing relationships and to build new ones with prospective clients. Fast responses to inquiries mean happy customers who keep coming back. If you want to serve your customers as well as possible, it’s worth implementing a ticketing system in your business — one that not only speeds up responses but also significantly boosts the productivity of your support staff.