Every customer support team goes through a stage where the number of emails adds up into hundreds every day, and the need for a new process originates. 

There are different strategies to decide the addressing order of tickets. A lot of factors influence the decision, such as subject, paying or free users, agreements of service your team has, rules, skill sets of team members, and many more. 

All these processes may differ but are equally advantageous to manage your ticketing system and customer support queue.

Ideas to manage customer support queue

If you are planning to refine or redefine your customer support queue, consider incorporating these ideas to serve your patrons better –

1. First Come First Serve (FCFS) or picking & choosing

Managing tickets on a first-come, first-serve basis is helpful for small teams; serving the oldest ticket first. 

On the other hand, picking & choosing works best when you want to give proper attention to complicated tickets and fast reply to the one with simple issues. It is easy and enjoyable to pick and choose simple tickets. For eliminating some common types of tickets, creating a knowledgeable article for your customer can be a great idea. You can link such documents in the area of your project.

2. Assign roles 

When it is a matter of SLAs and timings, you can try multiple different options with a ticketing tool to reduce the response time. 

You can divide the team in two and then assign from the newest tickets to the half team and from oldest to the other half. You can also introduce the role of ninja to one or two members, where they begin with the newest tickets and handle them as quickly as possible. They can escape the tickets which are taking more time, and work on the ones they can answer quickly. Senior team members can manage difficult and complex tickets. 

3. Priority support

With increasing ticket volume, it becomes essential to handle the paying customer tickets first through trouble ticket software. Because, if they are paying for your services they expect better support. Some companies provide email support to paying customers only. 

4. An unassigned queue

Usually, companies that want automatic assigning of tickets use a customer service ticketing system. This way, agents can have their queue in ticket tracker, where they can take the follow up with the reply, and take accountability for entire communication and finding solutions to their problem. 

A helpdesk ticketing system offers them quick access to knowledge literature, where they can get to the information they need without spending much of their precious time searching for it.

5. Triage 

Some companies have support team members with a particularly strong area. The leader keeps an eye on the queue. Assign tickets according to the volume per teammate and their skill sets. It ensures the highest-quality responses and better productivity. 

You can also tag tickets by subject, and use a support ticket system to assign the tickets to relevant teammates. 

6. Enable self-service

Facing the same tickets or issues every now and then? Responding to similar questions every now and then? 

One of the smartest ways to cut down the ticket queue is to enable self-service. If you empower your customers and make it easier for them to find a resolution to common problems, they will be happier than ever.

Publish an answer to a question in your ticket system’s knowledge base and you will see a notable drop in your support tickets. 

7. Automate Workflows

Companies often think that workflow automation is just about eliminating tedious tasks. While it is an important benefit of workflow automation, it also helps you manage support queues. 

Automation allows managers or support teams to stay on top of incoming requests and ensure tickets are assigned to the right department. Along with minimizing the human error, a helpdesk ticketing system with a powerful workflow engine like Wowdesk notices administrators when response schedules or SLAs have been violated.

While every approach has its upsides and downsides, it purely depends on the ticketing software you use and the processes that work the best for your team. 

If you are looking for a well-rounded ticketing system software, contact Wowdesk – the software will help you stay efficient and manage a satisfied customer base. Keep visiting this space for more such posts!