Want Satisfied Customers? Get a Helpdesk Ticketing System

Also called support tickets, a help desk ticketing system is an automated process that records interactions between your support staff and your customers. When a customer needs support, they fill out a service request form on your website, which creates a ticket indicating they need help. Your support staff reviews open tickets and replies in a back-and-forth conversation to help solve the customer’s concern. When a concern is resolved, the ticket is closed.

Having a help desk ticketing software for customers to submit tickets will benefit your business in a few important ways:

If you’re still using plain email to provide customer support, it’s time for an upgrade. Support tickets through an automated ticket management system are organizationally superior to email support for several reasons:

Tickets are available to all support staff. Unlike email conversations, all your support representatives can access all tickets with a shared inbox or a service portal, so if one agent gets stuck, they can easily assign the task to someone more qualified to help with real-time ticket routing.

Tickets keep customer information well organized. Tickets keep information organized in a way that prevents customers from having to repeat information. Good ticketing systems will keep the important information “floating” at the top of the ticket so the agent can see it at a glance.

Tickets can be scheduled. Unlike email, tickets can have a deadline for your agents to reply within a specific timeframe, like 48 hours. Most customers expect fast replies from support agents, so this feature will go a long way in keeping customers happy

Organizing support requests is nearly impossible through email. If you want to ensure customer requests don’t slip through the cracks, you need a helpdesk system.

Support tickets will help you improve your customer service experience in several ways.

A helpdesk ticketing system helps you take care of all customers. Sometimes, support emails can fall through the cracks. However, a ticketing system doesn’t allow support requests to be forgotten.

All outstanding tickets remain in the queue until resolved. After an agent updates a ticket, it’s tagged as “pending” so that it won’t come back into their main queue until the customer replies again. However, the agent can always find those tickets to check in with the customer if they haven’t replied in a while.

Customers feel taken care of with tickets. When a customer submits a ticket request, they receive a reply stating their ticket has been created and a representative will reply as soon as possible. Although this interaction is automated, it makes people feel taken care of even before their request has been handled.

You can streamline all support channels. Using automated replies, you can refer people on Facebook and other social media channels directly to your helpdesk. This way, your support team won’t need to check multiple platforms to keep up with requests. Social media isn’t the best platform to keep track of and manage requests anyhow.

When you improve your customer service, you’ll start to see better online reviews that may even mention how great your company is at resolving issues. This will help people feel more confident in doing business with you.

Perhaps the most underestimated benefit of helpdesk tickets is how they can help you improve your business.

Tickets can help you identify bugs and errors. Each time a customer submits a ticket for help, they’re giving you valuable information. Tickets can help you identify things like bugs, unnecessary or inconvenient features, and marketing errors.

Customer issues aren’t always your fault, but even getting tickets concerning user error or customer oversight can help you immensely. For example, say multiple customers continually request support for the same issue, and it’s just a matter of those customers misunderstanding something about your product. Multiple tickets will tell you it’s a common issue, and you can send that information to your product managers.

Your product managers can address the issue, which might include suggesting changes in the way your product is marketed, or creating a better user manual.

Support tickets can help you build your knowledge base. Creating an excellent knowledge base requires knowing what information to include. You could start by adding common information, but your knowledge base will be more helpful when it addresses specific questions held by your actual customers. You can get ideas from your most common tickets.

The best feedback about your business will always come from your customers. However, not all customers will share their thoughts, so be sure to value those who take the time to express their concerns.