What is ticketing? What is a ticketing tool?

Did you go into this article looking for information about what ticketing is or what a ticketing tool is? If so, we will try to help. In addition, you can find out about a ticketing tool that can be of great help if you are looking for one for your company. Because we are that good!

What is ticketing and what is its importance in the organization of business incidents?

Today we are living in an increasingly dynamic environment that involves multiple digital channels, from which the experiences of internal and external customers are what define the perception and satisfaction about a company or a brand. All those customers expect a follow-up to their case or incident in a timely, accurate and consistent manner from any channel (a call, an email or chat, for example) and in a timely manner. Along the lines of this, to provide attention and support, your organization can rely on ticketing or ticketing tools, which are computer programs that are used for incident management and are based on “tickets” for support or customer/user service. Read on to learn more about these concepts.

What is ticketing and how does it work?

A ticket is a record about an incident, a service request, or even a warning or event generated by computer networks. The ticket contains information about the status, classification and ticket group to which it belongs, so it provides IT support teams with general information about the service request. In a ticketing tool you may manage the ticket queue, documenting each of the interactions between the person who generated that ticket and the IT specialist(s) involved in its resolution.

Ticket, indicating priority, to whom it is assigned, to which email it is sent and its description.

To understand it better, imagine that you are in charge of customer service for a company devoted to the sale of plastic bones for puppies over the Internet.
As you sell millions of plastic bones to a multitude of customers, (because your bones are great and have different flavors, from beef to barbecue ribs), you often receive contacts from customers who have had an incident and communicate with you through any of the means of contact provided by your website.
This morning you received a call from a customer who ordered 50 units for their bulldog and they arrived very deteriorated and dirty. And besides, the taste is not the one ordered
Imagine now that you had a ticketing tool like Pandora ITSM. Once the call is received, you could open a “ticket” in the system in order to manage incident (this would be the ticket creation). In the ticket you could include all the information you consider necessary. For example, you could enter the date the order was placed and the customer statement. Or you could attach the photographs that the customer sent you by email and in which you may see the state in which the bones are found.
Depending on the configuration you made of the ticketing system, you could also choose which person or group of people (this would be ticket assignment) you would like the system to communicate the opening of the ticket, so that they could intervene in it. Thus, as soon as you open it, a notice of the opening of the ticket will be sent to these people by email. The notice could reach the person in charge of managing the logistics, to make the necessary inquiries in order to know what happened so that the bone shipping arrived in such poor condition.
The people authorized to intervene in the ticket could provide information of interest or reflect the actions being carried out to solve the situation (this would be the ticket resolution). The same ticket could include information regarding how the customer request was attended and what measures were taken so that this type of problem does not take place (these would be for example ticket closure).
With this example, you may see that there is a flow of processes in ticketing: ticket creation (from a call, an email, an alert from CRM), the assignment of who will solve the ticket (in the help desk or customer service), ticket resolution (how it was solved, if it should have been escalated, new findings for this and future resolutions) and the closure (measures to prevent similar incidents, learning, feedback).

Flow in a ticketing tool

Thus, the ticket becomes the “centre” through which the incident is managed. From the moment it is opened, as throughout the whole management process, as at the time of the closure of the incident, all the information may be centralized in the ticket for simpler, more organized and effective problem management.
And not only that. The ticket may be saved in order to check, later and if necessary, how the incident was managed, which may be of great interest if incidents of the same kind or with the same client are repeated. And, in addition, with a system such as Pandora ITSM, you could associate incidents with the items that are part of the inventory that the software itself also includes as one of its features.

Practical examples with Pandora ITSM

Case 1: Customer service

Pandora ITSM allows you to implement the customer request and incident management in an integrated flow that involves those who must act, providing the necessary information aimed at providing customer service in a timely manner. Every time a customer makes a request through the platform, a new ticket is opened with their data, date and subject of the incident. The ticket is catalogued and those that deserve special attention are prioritized. Following the example of bones, Pandora FMS has the tools to automate the workflow based on tickets with criteria rules, such as the case of a damaged product in which it would be convenient for the customer service staff (priority) to have the evidence of the status of the product. In this case, upon reception of this confirmation of damaged product, the ticketing system may automatically generate a product replacement order, which internally investigates what caused the damage (such as defective packaging, careless handling in the warehouse) and the error in the flavor, generating an automatic email to the warehouse or logistics manager to take actions aimed at preventing similar errors in the future. Of course, for customer service, it is essential to carry out a planned integration from ticket creation to ticket closure to ensure an orderly and efficient workflow in the company.

Case 2: Internal communication

Pandora ITSM features multi-level scaling rules to provide quick response and resolution for your customers. From the same platform, you may automate multiple ticket operations based on status change, the department to which the ticket was assigned and its priority, among other ticket properties. Information is integrated and those involved in the ticket have the same version of the truth about the incident. There is detail of the time spent, dead breaks, people involved and customer satisfaction when solving tickets.
Also, with Pandora ITSM you may get reports from the general data to ticket history, SLA history and general metrics. This information is extremely valuable to make the best decisions about ticket management and even undertake continuous improvements to ensure user and customer satisfaction. Translating this into the example of the bones, the customer service department, logistics and dispatch staff may see from the same platform (centralization and integrated processes) the same incident, know which automatic notifications were triggered and to whom (warehouse and logistics) it was assigned, as well as understand what led to the decision of a resolution to dispatch the customer a replacement of the damaged product, and even make improvements. Imagine that now the ticket comes from a mall (you also supply them), which asks if in your line of plastic bone flavors you could include that of roast chicken, because it is a flavor that many of its customers ask about. The ticket would have all the details of interest, including the estimated volume of the order. The notice of the opening of the ticket could reach the person in charge of deciding about bone flavors, and they could evaluate the convenience or not of adding the new flavor.
As you may see, in ticketing it is essential to have integrations, automatic notifications and centralized information from the same platform, as with Pandora ITSM, since it leads not only to a consistent response to the customer, but also to the improvement of internal processes and decision making that will result in the desired experience: timely, correct and efficient.

Example of helpdesk reports

It is also important to consider that, in the case of repetitive tasks, Pandora ITSM allows you to address tickets in bulk, such as a IT support level 0, self-service. This gives your team space to manage tickets that require specific attention, based on defined and customized rules in ticket management.
To further complement these examples, we invite you to read our blog post Keys to integrate the IT support center and better manage the after-sales service.

Key benefits of ticketing with Pandora ITSM

Pandora ITSM is a powerful and flexible Helpdesk solution for support and customer service teams, which is aligned with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library processes (ITIL).
The key benefits of ticketing with Pandora ITSM may be summarized as follows:

• Information centralization for greater efficiency. Pandora ITSM allows integration with Project Management, CRM, Inventory and Time Management solutions, controlling all tickets from the same platform, with shared and consistent information for all, leading to efficient customer response.
• Improved collaboration across teams and departments. Teamwork is made easier to provide the best support experience for customers, as the ticketing solution can set rules for ticket management and ticket allocation is automated and based on workflows. Also, the platform allows you to collect, organize, search and share information and data on tickets and even links them in a knowledge base to enrich it. That way, teams and areas or departments are synchronized, along with the same display and knowledge for everyone.
• Incident traceability and audit with history records. You may see general statistics and trends by teams and by people to achieve effective management of your team’s execution and performance. Detailed reports may be generated by ticket, by groups and ticket types, as well as technical support and agent reports. In addition, incident reports may be generated for customers. This is of great value, for example, in Help Desk SLA management. By allowing you to monitor the performance of your staff while solving customer concerns about agreed compliance.
• Flexibility to adapt to companies of different sizes and sectors. The ticketing solution is flexible for small businesses and strong for large companies, with geographically extended operations and complex operations. There are on-premise and cloud (SaaS) options.

You may also set rules and policies for handling tickets based on security levels and permissions by roles, profiles and groups. Remember that security is key. Another important aspect is the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into IT processes: with Pandora ITSM you may take advantage of AI as a natural and integrated support for human operators. Consider that AI has become a digital partner. This places great value on Pandora ITSM platform, as AI enriches expertise as it continually feeds on solved cases and the support knowledge base.

Some recommendations on ticketing

For ticketing to be successful, we recommend these five best practices:

• The basis of ticketing is agent training, considering the most common incidents, most frequently asked questions, resolution techniques, etc.
• Ticket automation and prioritization, seeking to lighten the load on your IT team and at the same time assign more delicate incidents. You will need to trace the tickets and who should they be assigned to.
• Prevent your team from being overwhelmed by tickets by constantly monitoring ticket loads to see if they need to be reassigned.
• Clearly define the tags of your tickets so that the process flow has the detailed information that will be necessary to understand the incident.
• Centralized ticket monitoring is the key to consistency and collaboration for your team in charge of ticket resolution. It is important for each ticket to be clear about its status and that follow-up is being carried out in the agreed manner and time – especially if there is an SLA.

Ticket Monitoring

Conclusion

Ticketing tools are allies to create those better experiences for internal and external customers who want timely and efficient attention, but that is also consistent regardless of which communication channel the request came from, especially in this digital era. Also with ticketing you may automate and develop self-management mechanisms for repetitive tasks, alleviating the burden of incidents for your team, being able to allocate their efforts on more critical tickets or those that deserve a particular process. In addition, consider that a powerful ticketing tool is one that you may integrate with other tools and applications such as Helpdesk, CRM, call/contact center, and even Artificial Intelligence, and that also allows you to carry out audits and report on compliance and service levels to your external customers.

Learn more about Pandora ITSM ticketing tool by going to the following address. Or you may also send us any questions you may have about Pandora FMS. You may do so in a very simple way, thanks to this contact form.

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