When it comes to Service Management, ticket routing is a key step to ensure the request falls into the hands of the appropriate team to assess, prioritize, and solve it efficiently.
It is common to have difficulties to quickly and correctly route tickets, especially when you have to do it manually. But, as with many ITSM processes, the right software and automation are your best allies to avoid bottlenecks and get the process running smoothly. Not only will it save you time, it will also ensure that tickets aren’t left unattended for too long.
In this article, we will explore what ticket routing is, its main benefits, and some possible challenges to look out for. Finally, we will see how you can easily automate it on InvGate Service Desk.
Let’s dive in!
What is ticket routing?
The ticket routing system ensures that, when a customer reaches out to a company with a question, concern, or problem, it is handled by the correct agent or department in the organization, in order for it to be solved efficiently.
So, the goal is to provide customers with accurate IT support, while also guaranteeing that internal teams can prioritize and manage their workload and not get overwhelmed. By automating this process, you will streamline customer service operations and reduce response times — which will both alleviate your team, and also lead to higher customer satisfaction.
4 ticket routing benefits
As we've seen, efficient ticket routing offers several benefits to organizations and their IT teams work processes. Let's look at some of them in more detail:
- Improving customer satisfaction - When tickets are accurately routed, response times are lower and customers are more satisfied. Improved customer experience will help boost loyalty and retention rates.
- Increasing efficiency and productivity - While manual ticket routing leads to reduced productivity, automation can free up IT teams and get them to focus on more complex tasks.
- Reducing Ticket Escalation - A well-built routing will help make sure that the right agent is attending to the request, which will reduce your Escalation Rate.
- Improving collaboration - A centralized platform for tracking and managing customer inquiries can facilitate collaboration both within and between teams, giving them a chance to learn from each other and improve their work.
6 ticket routing challenges
However, there are also some challenges associated with this process to take into account when looking to improve it:
- Lack of automation - This is one of the biggest drawbacks. Without automated processes in place, you will have to route every ticket manually, leading to delays and increasing human errors.
- Inaccurate routing - If a ticket is routed to the wrong team or agent, it can lead to delays in response times and reduced customer satisfaction.
- Inefficient workflows - The process can only run smoothly when the workflows are accurately built and adapted to your needs right from the beginning.
- Ticket escalation - Correct ticket escalation is a big challenge when it comes to ticket routing. Some tickets will always end up in the hands of a team that isn't prepared to handle them, so you still need to make sure that they have adequate training, information, and tools to escalate them successfully.
- Managing multiple tiers of support - Depending on the complexity of customer inquiries, you may have to route tickets to different support tiers. This can be challenging as it requires careful coordination between teams and agents.
- Providing support from multiple locations - When you have a mid or big infrastructure, you will probably provide support to and from multiple locations. In this scenario, assigning the ticket to the right agent can be complex, specially if you don’t count with the right tool.
How to automate ticket routing with InvGate Service Desk
Having the right tool will give you a huge advantage when it comes to ITSM practices. InvGate Service Desk is an all-round solution that can help you easily and quickly automate your ticket assignment processes. Now, let's see how it's done.
First thing first, you have to build the help desks that will attend to the different request types. You can create a different one for each team, support tier, and even location. In there, you can choose between the three assignment rules it offers you:
- Round Robin - Assigns tickets automatically to the next available agent in a sequence.
- Workload - Assigns tickets automatically based on the agent's current workload.
- Free - Instead of automatically assigning tickets, agents pick up the tickets out of a queue.
After this, you must build your service catalog. This is where the end-users will find the request category that better suits their problem, so you can make sure that the ticket is assigned to a help desk to each category. Within the configuration of every category, you will find the tab rules, which allow you to select the conditions to assign a ticket to one help desk or the other.
The best thing about this is that InvGate Service Desk allows you to customize a different rule to each case and, once you've done it, re-use it in as many categories as you need to.
Wrapping up
Correct ticket routing is a critical part of any well functioning service desk, as it helps ensure that customer inquiries are directed to the right team or agent. However, managing this process manually is time-consuming and inefficient.
Automating ticket routing is the best way to streamline the process. You can do so with InvGate Service Desk to reduce response times, improve team morale, and overall customer experience.
To start automating your ticket routing right away, ask for a 30-day free trial!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the omnichannel routing method?
The omnichannel routing method is a customer service system that allows customers to interact with a company across multiple channels. This means that customer inquiries are routed to the appropriate agent, regardless of the channel they used to make the inquiry.
What are the three types of routing?
The three types of routing are Round Robin, Workload, and Free.
