Why a Ticketing System is Crucial to the Success of a Help Desk

It's one of the most basic tenets of the business world: the customer is king. Providing good customer support is vital to the success of a business, and that means providing the customer with a positive, satisfying experience. Having help desk software is all but necessary for larger businesses, and even small businesses can benefit from having a software solution that can resolve customer issues quickly and easily. Read on to find out why having a ticketing system can be crucial to the success of your business.

What Is Help Desk Software?

First, a brief explanation of help desk software. A help desk is a centralized point of contact between customers and the business where customers can get assistance, report issues, and resolve problems. A help desk might include features like an online knowledge base, a phone bank, an AI chatbot, or all of the above. Having a help desk provides structure and organization to your customer service, meaning customers get their issues resolved faster and walk away happier.

Ticketing Systems and Why They're Important

So what is a ticketing system? A ticketing system is a software solution to organize and manage those customer issues. When a customer makes a query, requests support, or otherwise asks the help desk for assistance, that query is converted into a "ticket," which is tracked through the life cycle of the issue. Not all help desks have a ticketing system in place -- a business owner might rely on spreadsheets, email, or other manual methods of tracking issues. But a ticketing system offers some powerful advantages over these methods.

Why is a ticketing system so important? Let's explore some of the main reasons:

Customer Experience

As previously mentioned, the customer experience should be one of your top priorities as a business owner. This means no customer query should get lost, ignored, or overlooked. Having a ticketing system means customer issues can be categorized, prioritized, assigned to the correct support agents, and resolved. Not only can customer queries get resolved faster, but these processes can often be automated, notifying customers and agents of important changes automatically.

Agent Productivity

Not only is a ticketing system great for customer satisfaction, but it can also serve as a valuable tool for your support agents.

First and foremost, a ticketing system streamlines the support process. A good ticketing system can automate the routing and assignment of tickets to make sure they get to the right person -- eliminating the time and overhead needed to perform those tasks manually. It also avoids the possibility of tickets "falling through the cracks" and getting lost.

A quality ticketing system can also support several communication channels -- chat, email, phone, and more -- which lets agents handle customer issues across multiple platforms. Having these communication options on hand makes it easier for agents to collaborate when addressing customer queries.

Finally, because a customer ticket is tracked through its resolution, an agent can look at a customer's history, allowing them to personalize support -- something that's in more demand these days.

Business Benefits

Finally, let's take a look at the benefits of a ticketing system from a purely business perspectove.

As we've established, a help desk with a ticketing system can significantly level up your customer service -- and that's great for business. For example:

• Having fewer obstacles to purchase decisions means more conversions.
• Satisfied customers means better customer retention, loyalty, and lower churn rates.
• Valuable insights on support agent performance through tracking response time, resolution rates, and satisfaction ratings from customers.

Choosing the Best Help Desk Ticketing Software

So now that we've firmly established the benefits of having a ticketing system, let's talk about how to choose the best help desk ticketing software for your business.

Here are the main features you should focus on:

• Automation. Having certain crucial processes automated means less chance of error, more reliable routing, and less time spent doing repetitive tasks manually.
• A tagging system. Being able to tag tickets helps sort them into categories so common problems can be identified -- an invaluable metric to have at your disposal.
• Customization. A good ticketing system should have plenty of room to customize things like submission forms, ticket status options, and more. This increases productivity and reduces barriers to customer satisfaction by reducing the need for follow-up questions or manually writing emails.
• Omnichannel capabilities. Ideally, you want a ticketing system that supports as many platforms as possible -- phone, email, live chat, AI chat, and social media. The more ways customers can get in touch with you, the happier they'll be.
• Tracking and metrics. Being able to measure your success is the most powerful way to improve upon it. A ticketing system with robust reporting and metrics will let you identify trouble spots in your workflow and make improvements.