How a ticketing system can make you a customer service hero

Zendesk’s CX Trends 2022 Report found that 61 per cent of customers would switch to a competitor after just a single bad customer service experience—a horrifyingly high statistic for businesses without an organised system to provide excellent customer service.

But fear not, ticketing systems are here to help. These flexible and intuitive systems keep everything organised by bringing customer interactions from different channels together in one place. Track, prioritise, and solve customer questions, requests, and concerns with ease.

Ticketing systems are software programs that help businesses track customer service requests and store information about customer problems. You can think of them as hubs for customer support. They’re great at automating basic customer service processes, like creating tickets, assigning tasks, and sending notifications when tickets are updated—nothing too scary and definitely not rocket science.

Here’s the basic process:

1. Customer contact
   A customer gets in touch with a question, query or complaint about a product or service.
2. Ticket creation
   Their message automatically flows into the ticketing system, which creates a ticket.
3. Ticket assignment
   The ticket is then assigned to a support agent based on predefined criteria, e.g. agent availability, channel specialism, or previous contact with the customer in question.
4. Ticket assessment
   The customer service agent evaluates what the customer needs by looking at their message and customer profile, which details all previous interactions.
5. Ticket processing
   The agent uses all the information and tools available to them, e.g. knowledge bases and pre-prepared answers, to find a solution to the customer’s issue.
6. Customer response
   The agent then responds to the customer without switching between applications.
7. Customer solution
   The customer receives a timely first response with an appropriate answer.
8. Ticket conversation
   Agents can collaborate on more complicated problems, with internal conversations recorded on each ticket.
9. Ticket escalation
   Some customer issues may need to be transferred to a dedicated team, e.g. tech support, for further assistance.
10. Ticket resolution
    A happy customer means the ticket can be closed and logged for future reference.

Put simply, a ticketing system makes it easy to keep track of customer interactions, provide context to customer contact, and assign enquiries to the most relevant agent. It’s the perfect tool to keep everyone on the same page by providing a clear overview of problems, priorities, and the people reporting them.

A ticketing system helps bring omnichannel communication together in one place to avoid bottlenecks. What’s more, it’s a shared space for support teams to coordinate their efforts.

But let’s go over a few of the main benefits in more detail.

Answer every question

Ticketing systems help you better track your customer interactions, so every customer gets the support they need. Nothing slips through the cracks, and you never lose a ticket.

Tailor your service

Customer context, e.g. order history, allows your agents to empathise with customers and provide personalised support. It goes without saying that efficient, relevant, and personal communication goes a long way toward great customer service.

Resolve tickets faster

Creating, categorising, and routing tickets automatically helps your customer service team run like clockwork—not to mention reduce resolution times. Plus, a knowledge base allows you to provide automated answers to common questions.

Empower your agents

Ticketing systems are intuitive and user-friendly. This makes it easy for agents to deliver high-quality omnichannel support because they have all the information they need right at their fingertips—no more switching between tabs or browsers.

Improve your process

Tickets contain valuable data that can provide insight into your customers and company. Feeding this information into performance metrics, KPIs, and SLAs allows you to make data-driven decisions to improve your workflows and grow customer satisfaction.

Spot important trends

Tracking and recording your customer service requests can help you identify trends, e.g. multiple customers reporting the same issue. This can help you react quickly and put solutions in place before anything snowballs.

Keep customers onboard

Provide support anywhere—from email and messaging to help centres and forums—and respond to customers on their preferred channels for great customer service experiences.

Scale and adapt

Ticketing systems grow with your business. They’re both flexible and scalable, so you have all the agility you need in a powerful tool.

Zendesk is a powerfully easy ticketing system that works right out of the box. Get your agents up to speed in hours and take your customer service to the next level by managing support tickets with ease.

When customer service teams can see the entire customer journey they don’t need to waste time searching for information, and can focus on connecting seamlessly with customers across all platforms. Just ask our customers…

Starling Bank is a digital-only challenger turning the banking sector on its head. The company allows customers to manage their money using the Starling banking app and benefit from no fees when using the Starling card abroad.

As the UK’s first mobile-only bank to offer current accounts, outstanding customer service has been a cornerstone of Starling’s success, with the bank currently handling around 500 customer queries a day.

But growing customer contact meant Starling needed a customer service solution that could keep up. Zendesk’s omnichannel approach allows support agents to respond to customers on any channel whilst seamless tracking means requests can move between teams with ease.

Zendesk’s ticketing system has also helped Starling better understand its customer satisfaction, in real time. Ticket numbers for each contact method reveal preferred channels, which also helps the bank plan for busier times.

“Our favourite feature of Zendesk is that it allows each engagement with a customer to be linked to a support ticket. This means that each point of communication with a customer can be seen by all authorised users… We therefore get a clear map of our customer service journey.” - Patrick Vardhan, Head of Customer Service at Starling Bank

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