Managing tickets are a vital part of many businesses.Allowing customers to initiate conversation, it provides structure to managing an influx of requests while highlighting opportunities for operational efficiency. However, simply adopting a ticket management solution and expecting processes to become more organized, simply isn’t effective. On the contrary, determining a structure for your processes and laying down expectations before you bring on a solution, is vital for successful implementation. In this blog to assist you in the initial stages of ticket management, we’re sharing our tried and true steps to manage tickets with ease.
The Essential Steps To Managing and Addressing Tickets With Ease
Set Expectations
Expectations on ticket management should be provided right out of the gate. They keep your team aligned and hold individuals accountable for their tasks.
While expectations can be set in terms of an overarching objective, you also want to make sure they’re measurable. This includes informing employees of the expected time to address a request, teams responsible, percentage of reopened tickets, number of fulfilled requests a day, and so on.
Using the Loop Experience Platform, you can set goals, collect data along the way and create customized dashboards to keep you up to date. The great part about customized dashboards is that they’re always top of mind; as soon as you log in, you can immediately see key metrics to influence scheduling and empower teams at meetings.
Determine Workflow
A workflow ensures that there is a seamless process to address specific inquiries. It eliminates confusion across teams and ensures that those who are meant to see and address requests, do.
The first step is mapping out your workflow. This means detailing all the required processes that would occur any time a ticket request comes through. Some key questions to consider are;
- How does a ticket come through?
- Who gets the initial ticket?
- Who is responsible for assigning tickets?
- What is a priority?
- When should a ticket be escalated?
- Is a feedback survey sent after the ticket is closed?
- Who is responsible for that information?
Once you have this insight, you can start forming a workflow that makes it easier to manage and work through tickets. A digital solution like Loop can also assist in automating repetitive tasks like sending automated messages or assigning teams to conversations.
Delegate Teams
The most efficient way of dealing with a ticket request that comes through is ensuring there is always someone on hand with the right knowledge to address it.
For example, in a clinic, if a patient writes in with a request for an extra pillow, it’d be more helpful if floor staff are notified rather than the front desk. Therefore it’s vital that during the process of mapping out your workflow, you delegate teams to complete specific requests and share motivations internally.
Using a digital solution like Loop, you can automate this and set keywords that trigger specific teams. From there you can assign yourself or specific employees to address the request. Anything that includes an escalation keyword or low satisfaction rating, is automatically forwarded to management for recovery.
Communicate Across Departments
Cross-department communication is essential for successful ticket management. It allows you to understand the progress of each request, gain critical context, and hold each other accountable.
If your team is falling behind on specific tasks, communicating helps inform other teams that work in parallel – so they’re not waiting or wondering why things are taking so long. If you’re frequently communicating a common barrier, this can also help down the line when requesting more resources and time.
Loop, as an example, provides visibility across the organization in real-time. Statuses on ticket requests can be updated by employees to “Not started”, “In Progress”, and “Complete”. Employees can adjust their tasks accordingly and management can track the time between the status changes to know exactly how long it takes to complete a task. If you have any further questions, you can also utilize the internal notes feature. Tag colleagues and have conversations in the thread without the customer having visibility.
Review The Data
Improve your workflow and ensure you’re always completing requests efficiently. While you’ve set out your ticketing parameters and started assigning tasks, it’s time to monitor and report on progress. This isn’t just for your operational benefit but can be used at team meetings to justify modifications or in stakeholder assemblies.
A key feature of the Loop Experience Platforms’ data capabilities is its ability to get granular. Finding the “why” is vital to improving operations over time. In the ticketing settings, you can set and uncover “Root Cause” such as cleanliness, poor service, low quality, etc. and the “Resolution” such as gift card, conversation, free meal, discount on return, etc. This helps management visualize why experience is lacking and how to prevent it in the future.
Further, using Loop, users can export all of their ticket data to a .csv over a specified date range. Dates referenced in the file will follow the time zone selected upon export. If you have a multi-management team, clicking the export button will allow selected users to receive an email containing a link to download their .csv file.
Quick Tips To Effectively Respond To Tickets
Respond Promptly
Responding to and addressing customer requests in a timely manner is essential to driving satisfaction.
If you don’t have the capacity to acknowledge each request within the first 30 minutes of receiving it, we suggest making use of automated messages. As soon as a customer submits a ticket, they should be provided with insight into an estimated wait time. This set’s an expectation right out of the gate and reduces possible friction later down the line.
Ensure You Have Context
When a request comes through, you’ll first want to get started on fulfilling the request and/or responding. While it is important to be timely (as mentioned above) it’s also essential that you’re capturing all the information provided. Make sure you thoroughly read each message, where it’s coming from, and from who. Maybe this individual re-submitted the same request by accident, maybe this is an opportunity for an upsell, whatever the case, having context and collecting all the information from the message can ensure you’re delivering an unparalleled experience.
Use Personalization
No one wants to be a number. When addressing ticket requests, include the customer’s name, what they purchased and any other details you can think of that the customer would appreciate. The more specific you get, the more human (and less transactional) you make the conversation – creating greater satisfaction with ticket resolution.
Managing requests is a key part of business functionality. Whether you’re a hotelier, restauranteur, clinic, or facilities manager, request tickets provide key insights to help you improve your operations.
While seeking ticket management software is a great first step in managing the experience, remember that to be successful, setting expectations and creating a structured workflow is key.
