A beginner’s guide to a ticketing software

Are you still using email for customer support? Do you find it extremely difficult to track and prioritize important customer requests? Are you fed up of setting up multiple folder structures and complicated color coded tags to filter your emails? Are you looking for a way to streamline how you handle customer support? While you were searching for a solution, you might have stumbled across the term “ticketing software” or “ticketing system”. If you’re wondering what it is and how it can make your customer support better, you are in the right place.

What is a ticketing software?

A ticketing software converts all incoming support requests from multiple channels into tickets. From the ticketing system, it’s easier to prioritize, track and follow-up on customer requests from one place. This will help your customer support team communicate better with customers, and handle issues more efficiently.

Let’s say you’re an online retailer selling T-shirts on your website. You probably get a lot of queries from customers on a variety of issues everyday. The queries can range from size issues to billing concerns to expected delivery dates and requests for new designs. Based on the size of your business, you would have set up multiple channels for your customers to reach out to you. Some customers might prefer conventional channels like phone or email, while others might hit you up on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. Regardless of the medium used for communication, the customers’ primary concern will remain instantaneous replies and quick resolutions. They will also expect you to keep a track of how their issues have progressed (irrespective of which channel they used previously to address their concern) and give them timely updates on the same. This is where an online ticketing software comes in.

As there is a single location where all your requests from multiple channels are stored, you can categorize and prioritize these tickets, and decide how you want to go about responding to each customer.

Let’s say, your customer sends an email about a T-shirt that is out of stock. You assure the customer that the T-shirt will come back in stock very soon. A few weeks later, when the same customer follows up on Twitter, this Tweet will be automatically converted into a ticket and will be added to the thread of the previous conversation. So, when anyone on your team looks up this customer, all the previous interactions and context you need is in one place enabling your agents to give a quick and helpful response.

A quick look at how an online ticketing software can help you

Streamline customer queries

With a ticketing software, incoming queries from multiple communication channels are stored in a single common location. This way, your support agents can track, prioritize and solve tickets without having to juggle between multiple tools.

Access context from one place

When support agents have access to previous interactions with a customer, it gives them all the context they need to provide better answers. A ticketing software lets you access past customer conversations from any channel on a single, unified customer database.

Automate tasks for better efficiency

A ticketing software lets you automate routine tasks to improve the efficiency and speed of responses. From assigning tickets to a particular agent, to creating pre-set responses to frequently asked questions, to defining escalation rules if deadlines aren’t met, you can do it all.

Enable customers to help themselves

Most online ticketing software can be integrated with a knowledge base where you can publish detailed solution articles and other resources which customers can use to find important information. This helps in keeping the ticket volumes down, as it eliminates the need to reach out to support.

Get insights into team performance

With a helpdesk ticketing software, you can gauge how your support team is responding to customer issues. You’ll be able to draw insights from the various metrics available and use this data to drive future decisions.

Improve Customer Loyalty

With a well-organised customer support process courtesy of an online ticketing software, it becomes easier to satisfy customers. These happy customers will be loyal to your brand, and will help spread the word about their positive experiences.

Who can use a ticketing software

TICKETING FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

As an SMB, you can use a good helpdesk ticketing software to streamline your customer support processes. You can take the redundancy out of routine tasks, and focus on growing your business through fast and responsive customer service.

Choosing the best ticketing software for your business

Type of support

How do your customers contact you? Do they reach out to you via phone or email, or do they prefer to chat with your agents on your website or social media handles? Based on the resources you have set up for customer support, you need to look at a ticketing system that is optimized to handle the different communication platforms you offer.

Ease of use

The more usable and intuitive a helpdesk ticketing software is, the easier it is for your support agents to pick up the different nuances required to handle customer queries. A simple, uncomplicated UI will also make sure your agents don’t have to spend long hours on training and education. They can get started right away.

Price

Compare and contrast the different online ticketing software in the market and the various pricing plans they provide. Be sure to check if their feature sets are in line with your customer support requirements. If you are looking to provide B2B support, sometimes even a free helpdesk software will suffice.

Find out how much Freshdesk can help you save. Try out the helpdesk ROI calculator 

Essential Features of a ticketing software

There are so many ticketing system software available today, and all of them have a wide variety of features on offer. It’s important you choose the one that fits your business needs the best. Here’s a list of five features that are an absolute must for any helpdesk ticketing software.

Multi-Channel Ticketing software

A helpdesk ticketing software lets you support your customers on multiple channels such as email, phone, chat, social media etc. It combines incoming requests from all these channels into a single repository. This makes it that much more easier for your support agents to tackle queries from a wider audience, and respond quickly and efficiently without having to juggle between various websites, passwords and tools.

Learn more about multi-channel support

Automation

With a robust online ticketing software, you can save a lot of time by automating different tasks using time-based or event-based triggers. With automations, you can define rules with complex workflows to ensure customer calls and questions are being routed to the right team or agent. Automations can also help you maintain stability in your customer support lifecycle by helping you set up deadlines and escalation rules.

Learn more about automation to streamline your support processes

Customization

When customers reach out to you, they expect the support experience to be consistent with your brand's personality. With a good ticketing software, you can customize your helpdesk completely to make it look like a seamless extension of your brand. From background colors to fonts, you can tweak every little detail to ensure your helpdesk matches your website's style and design.

Learn more about how customizations can help you support better

Self-service

The right ticket software will have support for an extensive knowledge base where you can add detailed solution guides and articles. This can be a valuable resource to customers, as they would be able to find answers to frequently occurring problems, without having to reach out to your support team every time.

Learn more about self-service in customer support

Reporting and Analytics

Comprehensive helpdesk ticketing software ensure you’re able to keep track of the health of your customer support at all times. In-depth metrics about how well your support team is handling customer queries can help you make the right decisions for your business. Most ticketing software have these insights built in, but if you are already using specific analysis tools, do make sure the ticketing system you opt for supports seamless integration with the tools of your choice.

Learn more about reporting and analytics

Integrations

Your business might be using a variety of tools to perform different business operations. For example, most SMBs will be using dedicated tools for CRM, invoicing, email marketing etc. It is therefore essential for the ticketing software you choose to be tightly integrated with these solutions. Look for ready-to-use integrations, as well as the availability to build your own integrations that will cater to your needs.

If you’ve just started using an online ticketing software, bookmark our Customer Support Glossary for easy references to all the terms.