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Before we even look into ways to improve help desk ticketing or ticket management, let’s understand what exactly help desk ticketing is –

Ticketing is the way that a help desk records the actions that are taking place on each incident they are working with. The process has been developed over many years and most companies work in a very similar way.

The user calls with their issue, a ticket is created; the ticket is completed/resolved or passed onto a team that has the technical expertise or access to solve the issue. Without a ticketing system, the whole process would fall apart and there would be no accountability.

With a good ticketing system in place and accurate tickets being updated with the correct information, the process runs in a smoother way and our customer’s issues are fixed more efficiently.

Not only is ticket the way that Help desk agents solve issues more quickly, Ticketing is usually the way that the help desk gets paid. The accounts department will hand all the tickets over to the customer and the customer will review and audit them, making sure the help desk isn’t trying to cheat.

If tickets have unidentifiable information on them or they don’t make any sense, the customer might have the right to not pay up, depending on the pre-arranged agreements.

Ticketing also allows us to look at how many issues of a certain type we are getting and how we are dealing with them. We can get a sense of how well we are handling one particular issue and where we might need to improve.

Ticketing is important for many reasons, so here is how we can all improve the quality of our ticketing:

Below are the 5 Best Ways To Improve Help Desk Ticketing

• Ensure that every agent updates the ticket with EVERYTHING

The help desk saying goes;

if it’s not in the ticket, it didn’t happen.

We need to ensure that everything we do for the customer is updated in the ticket. Every single piece of troubleshooting performed is described so that the next team to look at the problem will know what has been done and what they need to do in order to fix the issue.

If an agent assigns a ticket and forgets to mention that he performed a simple troubleshooting procedure, the next team might send it back stating that it needs to be done before they can assist. This means delays for the customers and a less pleasant experience.

Updating the ticket with everything that is done doesn’t mean the agent needs to write long paragraphs about what the weather was like, or what they had for lunch that day, but clear concise information about work that has been completed on the issue at hand.

• Attach images and files as necessary

It is far easier for the next team to look at a quick screenshot of the error message or issue at hand rather than imagining it from the description. Sometimes tickets go through with odd descriptions of little red dots, then bigger dots, and a green circle with blue and yellow bits in it.

It would be far easier for the next team to see a screenshot rather than your perception of the error or fault. It is not difficult to spend a few extra moments obtaining a screenshot when tickets might be passed back and forth between teams if you do not.

• Standardization

Some people like to be unique in the way they work and that’s all well and good, but creativity is not what is needed when it comes to ticketing. We need to make sure that everyone is reading from the same page and that each team will understand what the issue is when they look at a ticket.

Agents should all use the same process of collecting the user’s details, contact details, issue description, and troubleshooting that has taken place. Create universal setups that agents should use on every call.

• Email Templates

All help desks will get issues that they deal with more than others. Some help desks have failed orders every day and some have password resets to deal with all the time.

Look at the top 5 issues the help desk is tasked to deal with and create templates for the agents to use when they deal with the issue. If the agent fills in the template, there is less chance of getting something wrong and the ticketing will be far quicker.

• Training, training, and more training

Some ticketing software allows for a test portal that allows agents to create test tickets without the risk of annoying other teams by confusing them.

Have agents that are struggling with wild or inaccurate tickets to practice their ticketing procedures and hone their skills when the team is not so busy. Get the agents that are doing well to share their best tips and tricks with the guys who aren’t, thereby collaborating to make the team stronger.

Read: 7 Ways To Improve First Call Resolution (FCR)