What Is Ticket Management?
Ticket management in IT is the process of tracking, managing and resolving user requests and IT incidents. It is usually part of a company’s help desk and technical support system wherein internal employees, as well as external customers, in the case of Managed Service Providers (MSPs), can reach out to the company’s support team and submit requests for any IT issues they might be facing. Ticket management is typically carried out with the help of a help desk software solution.
Why Is Ticket Management Important?
The market for help desk software solutions is expected to reach USD 11 billion by 2023. An efficient ticket management system is imperative for streamlining, organizing and prioritizing your help desk requests as dictated by the criticality of the impacted IT service and level of difficulty of the query, instead of simply being dealt with in the order that they are received. As such, a well-designed ticket management system helps you maintain end-user and customer satisfaction. This is critical for MSPs to prevent customer churn.
How Does an IT Ticketing System Work?
A basic ticket management system that implements manual ticketing follows a typical workflow:
- The process begins with the help desk agent creating a ticket for a query or concern that was raised by a user.
- The ticket is then assigned to a support rep.
- The rep can work on the ticket and share the updates with the user.
- The rep is notified of any responses from the user.
- Once the query is resolved, the ticket is closed. The ticket may be reopened in case the user has any follow-up requests or concerns.
In the case of manual ticket resolution, an integration between the Service Desk and RMM solution allows technicians to easily remote into an endpoint from the ticket window to troubleshoot the issue. Workflow integration with the IT documentation solution also allows technicians to quickly pull up relevant asset information and resolve the issue faster.
On the other hand, there are some ticket management solutions that provide automated ticket creation and remediation. For instance, Kaseya VSA (RMM) and Kaseya BMS/Vorex (PSA/Service Desk) allow tickets to be automatically created by Kaseya VSA in response to an alert on an endpoint or network device. Automated workflows in Kaseya BMS/Vorex allow tickets to be automatically resolved by executing Kaseya VSA agent procedures.
Automation helps streamline your ticket management process, boost technician productivity, minimize manual errors, keep your end users and customers happy, and free up time for your technicians to focus on revenue-generating activities.
What Makes a Good Ticketing System?
As discussed above, an efficient and reliable ticketing system allows organizations to streamline their service management/help desk operations. But what constitutes a good ticketing system? We’ve rounded up a list of key features to look for before investing in a ticket management system.
Automation — The solution should offer automated ticketing with streamlined workflows and advanced search/filtering functionalities.
Organized Tracking — The solution should help you actively track:
- Ticket History: A record of previous tickets, issues and service history.
- Communication Logs: A record of the interactions between the agents and customers.
- KPIs and Performance Metrics: A record of response times, ticket resolution, customer satisfaction comments and so on.
Prioritization – One of the most powerful features that a ticket management system should offer you is the ability to create priority queues that allow you to address the more important tickets (based on level of severity and complexity) instead of addressing them on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Dashboards and Reporting – The solution should feature a dashboard that offers real-time information on the progress and status of tickets, allows you to easily generate custom reports and helps you gain insights to make the right business decisions quickly and confidently.
Collaboration – The solution should provide a platform that enables different teams to work together more efficiently on resolving tickets on the basis of expertise, service record and so on.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) – In order to provide an element of accountability, the system should allow for the creation of clear goals and service standards that the agents can strive to achieve.
Superior Customer Experience – In addition to well-defined SLAs, the solution should allow tickets to be addressed and resolved more quickly and with better accuracy, thus improving customer relations. Customer satisfaction correlates highly with speed of resolution of IT issues. Many companies track “First Contact Resolution rate.”
Integrations With RMM and IT Documentation Tools – The solution should provide seamless integration with RMM and IT Documentation tools and enable technicians to easily remote into an endpoint from the ticket window to troubleshoot the issue. Integration with the IT Documentation solution also enables technicians to have key asset information readily available at their fingertips, which helps them resolve tickets faster.
What Are the Benefits of a Good Ticketing System?
Let’s summarize some of the key benefits of a good ticketing system:
- Increases operational efficiency of the help desk team
- Better prioritization of tickets based on level of severity and complexity
- Higher quality IT service delivery due to faster ticket resolution
- Lower overhead costs for help desk staffing
- Refinement of support processes with data received from other systems such as RMM and IT documentation
- Better communication and collaboration between the technician and the requester
- Maintaining customer service standards
- Tracking of important service metrics and KPIs
Ticket Management Best Practices
Here’s a list of important best practices to follow for more streamlined and efficient ticket management:
- Create a User-Friendly Experience – Select help desk tools that provide a user-friendly interface and easy-to-use ticketing system.
- Establish a Clear Prioritization System – Establish a priority queue and system for grading that minimizes the potential for costly disruptions to the business.
- Identify & Document Common Issues – Look for patterns and document common issues and fixes; make it easy to access these documents from the ticketing system.
- Focus on Evaluating the True Cost of Your Service Offering – Metrics like Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR), tickets per asset and cost per ticket can help you evaluate the true cost of your service offering. Make sure that your ticketing system offers reporting of key metrics.
- Encourage Self Service & Enablement – Create a knowledge base so that customers can find answers on their own when possible and remediate their own issues.
- Focus on Customer Experience and Solicit Feedback – Above all, be sure to keep the customer and customer experience in mind. Focus on how you can make it easier for them and improve your processes.
Superior Ticket Management With Kaseya BMS
Kaseya BMS is a comprehensive professional services automation (PSA) solution that enables you to run your IT managed services business more efficiently at a fraction of your current costs. In addition to its Service Desk/Ticketing system, Kaseya BMS offers many other useful features such as:
- Project management
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Billing and finance
- Business Intelligence and reporting
Want to know more about boosting IT efficiency and improving customer service? Request a demo of Kaseya BMS now!
