What Should an Internal Ticket Management System Do?

Wouldn't it be nice to have better all-around team productivity from your web help desk? A help desk that is up to speed can do all sorts of valuable things, like deliver lightning-fast support responses to all your internal customers, save time for all team members by offering a vast knowledge base, and much more. But getting an excellent web help desk up and running isn't as easy as wishing it to be. The task calls for specific skills, determination, and a mission-oriented attitude on the part of those who set up the help desk.

One of the core functions, among many, that the help desk performs is related to internal ticket management. Before setting out to create a desk with top-notch ticketing capability, make sure that your own, or your team's, skill levels are where they should be. That's because you're really doing several tasks at once. When the job is done, you should be able to check off, in the affirmative, each of the following capabilities of your new system.

General capabilities

If you've set up your internal ticketing system correctly, you can look forward to a company that is highly organized and able to stay abreast of a large volume of internal service requests. With the right software in place, and a team that knows how to use it, you'll be able to turn each support request into a ticket in a matter of seconds. Your new ticket management system lets you both assign and carefully track every ticket, and make sure each one gets to the right team member based on their skills and ability to resolve specific issues.

Between the initial request and final resolution of all issues, managers can easily deal with the entire life cycle of all tickets.

Full-Scale internal support

Full support means all-around capability to deal with any employee's need for assistance at any time. If you want your ticketing to reach its potential, include not only internal customer survey forms and live chat capability, but also a comprehensive resource for self-help (usually in the form of an easily searchable knowledge base). Some corporations add how-to tutorial videos, detailed self-help content, research papers, customer case studies, and hundreds of relevant FAQs to their knowledge bases. As a result, they see a decrease in the need for support tickets by as much as 85 percent.

If you want your ticketing to reach its potential, include not only internal customer survey forms and live chat capability, but also a comprehensive resource for self-help.

Automation means higher productivity

Many AI-based ITM apps automatically assign tasks based on recent history, opens in a new windowteam member capabilities, and other known factors. You want a system that wastes no time sending requests for service to particular individuals who can deal with the issues. Likewise, you also need to track every task based on who is working on it, how long they've had it, and when it closes. Automation, whether AI or otherwise, goes a long way toward making your desk responsive, transparent, and responsible.

You  need to track every task based on who is working on it, how long they've had it, and when it closes.

Measure team performance the right way

You need the ability to know how quickly an average query takes from initial input to full resolution. Many applications and programs offer this kind of data in a spreadsheet format, but others require you to configure your own arrangement. Either way, it's crucial to know how your tickets trend, or how they typically move from stage one to stage two, and so on.

One dashboard capture and resolution

The larger your organization, the greater the need for a one-dashboard ITM solution. Managers need to see everything in one place, especially when multiple departments call on a central resource for ticket management. What's the benefit? Those who are in charge of assigning tickets to particular people or departments can do so in a one-stop shop dashboard so you can track everything. It's the single most effective way to make certain that no single request or important issue ever gets ignored or lost.

Dashboards also make it easy for responders to use dozens of canned answers for repetitive queries, which saves everyone time.

Six essential features

When all the dust settles and you're running the final tests on your new help desk setup, chances are you'll want to use a checklist to find out if you've hit all the key targets. While there are hundreds of different things a capable ITM system can do, make sure the following are on your list:

• Automated resolution: Automated responses have a negative reputation among some users, but the truth is that a large number of routine queries get resolved this way. Standard responses and a deep knowledge base turn your entire ITM setup into a fast moving, targeted feature that deals with simple, repetitious questions in a matter of seconds.
• Ticket prioritization: All tickets are not the same. That's why it's so important that your system is able to prioritize. Some software products and in-house applications use a three-tier ranking arrangement, while others, especially in large corporations, use a 1 through 10 scale to rank every incoming request for help.
• Tracking: It's imperative that no ticket is ever lost. As well, managers need to know the names and team identities of every person working on a specific issue. Perfect tracking means nothing ever falls through the cracks.
• An excellent knowledge base: When they're set up right, knowledge-based data banks can resolve as much as 80 percent of potential queries from company team members. Additionally, those who use the data base regularly add to their own base of information, learn how to find specific, topical information, and come to view the base as a first stop whenever they have a query.
• Immediate chat: Internal customers need 24/7 chat access to either a highly capable AI bot or to a human technician. In certain situations, key employees need immediate help, and waiting even a few minutes to get it can cost the company dearly.
• Training courses: A large bank of training courses can help keep your agents informed about the latest developments and additions to the system. It's imperative that new courses are added at regular intervals so people never stop learning.

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