6 Ticket Categories You Need for Your Help Desk

In the digital age, businesses need to maintain robust, efficient, and effective customer support systems. 

One of the critical components of a solid customer support system is a help desk. The help desk is the first point of contact for customers when they experience issues with a product or service, or when they have inquiries. 

Managing a help desk can be challenging, especially when dealing with high volumes of customer inquiries or complaints. This is where ticket categories come into play. 

In this post, we'll delve deeper into the concept of ticket categories, including how to categorize help desk tickets, the most common ticket categories, and how to define additional categories. We'll also discuss best practices for help desk ticket categories. 

What Are Ticket Categories?

Ticket categories are essentially classifications or labels that you assign to each help desk ticket that comes in. These classifications provide an overview of the ticket’s nature or the issue at hand, which helps your customer support team prioritize and assign tickets more effectively. 

When appropriately implemented, ticket categories can significantly improve resolution times, aid in reporting, enhance customer satisfaction, and, ultimately, contribute to the overall efficiency of the help desk. Simply put, they help keep your help desk operations organized and manageable, allowing you to deliver top-notch customer service consistently. 

How Do You Categorize Help Desk Tickets?

Categorizing help desk tickets is a process that involves reviewing the issue presented in the ticket and assigning it to a specific category. You can do this manually or through automation using artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies. 

The primary goal is organizing tickets based on their nature, urgency, complexity, or other relevant factors. This helps streamline the ticket resolution process, ensuring that each ticket is handled by the right person or team and is resolved promptly. 

It’s worth noting that effective categorization isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. It requires a thorough understanding of your products or services, your customers, and the common issues they face. 

Now, let’s delve into the most common ticket categories you should consider for your help desk: 

1. Technical Issues
2. Billing and Payments
3. Product Inquiries
4. Complaints and Feedback
5. Account Management
6. Policy Questions

"It’s worth noting that effective categorization isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. It requires a thorough understanding of your products or services, your customers, and the common issues they face." 

Technical Issues

The technical issues category is typically reserved for tickets related to software bugs, hardware problems, connectivity issues, or any other technical glitches your customers might encounter while using your product or service. These issues can range from minor inconveniences to major problems that prevent the customer from using your product or service effectively. 

Assigning technical issues to a separate category helps you quickly route them to your technical support team. This ensures that individuals with the technical know-how address these issues to diagnose and resolve them. 

It also helps track and analyze the types of technical issues that customers frequently encounter, which can provide insights for product development and improvement. 

Billing and Payments

Tickets related to billing and payments include inquiries about invoices, payment methods, payment failures, refund requests, and other finance-related concerns. This category is crucial because it directly impacts your revenue and customer satisfaction. 

By categorizing these tickets separately, you can ensure they are handled by staff with the necessary financial expertise and access to sensitive financial data. This speeds up the resolution process and minimizes the risk of financial errors or misunderstandings, which can negatively impact your customer relationships. 

Product Inquiries

Product inquiries cover all questions related to the usage and features of your product or service. This can include customers needing help with setup or installation, troubleshooting usage issues, understanding specific product features, or even seeking advice on maximizing the use of your product or service. 

By having a specific category for product inquiries, you can ensure that these tickets are handled by team members who deeply understand your product or service. They can provide detailed and accurate responses to customers, improving customer satisfaction and potentially increasing product usage and loyalty. 

Complaints and Feedback

Complaints and feedback are from customers expressing dissatisfaction with your product or service, or providing suggestions for improvement. These tickets are crucial for identifying areas where your business can improve. They provide valuable insights into what is not working well and what changes or improvements can enhance the customer experience. 

You can systematically analyze this information by categorizing complaints and feedback separately to identify trends and patterns. This can inform your business strategy and help you make data-driven decisions about product development, customer service improvements, or operational changes. 

Account Management

Account management tickets involve changes in user profiles, password resets, account verification, privacy settings, and other account-related inquiries. These tickets usually require high security and confidentiality and are best handled by a specialized team. 

By having a specific category for account management, you can ensure that these tickets are prioritized and handled with the necessary care and urgency. 

Policy Questions

"Categorizing policy questions separately lets you quickly provide customers with accurate and up-to-date information about your company’s policies and procedures."

This category includes tickets related to your company’s policies and procedures. Customers might have questions about your privacy policy, terms of service, return policies, shipping procedures, or any other operational processes. 

Categorizing policy questions separately lets you quickly provide customers with accurate and up-to-date information about your company’s policies and procedures. This helps build trust and transparency with your customers, which is essential for long-term customer relationships. 

Defining Additional Ticket Categories

While the above categories are common across many industries, your business might have unique needs that require additional categories. Here are some guidelines on how to define additional ticket categories: 

• The volume of tickets—If a specific type of ticket is high in volume, it might deserve its own category. This can help manage the volume more effectively and improve resolution times.
• Specialized knowledge—If certain tickets require specialized knowledge or skills to resolve, consider creating a separate category for them. This ensures that the right team handles them and can contribute to better resolution outcomes.
• Business priorities—Some tickets might be more critical to your business operations than others. Create separate categories for these to ensure you can handle them promptly and effectively.

Help Desk Ticket Categories Best Practices

Last, let’s talk about some best practices for managing your help desk ticket categories. 

• Keep it simple. While having a range of categories to cover all potential tickets is essential, avoid creating too many categories, as it could confuse your team and slow down the ticket assignment process. Aim for a balance between specificity and simplicity.
• Train your team. Make sure that your team understands the purpose of each category and how to assign tickets correctly. This includes ongoing training to accommodate changes or additions to your ticket categories.
• Regularly review and update. As your business evolves, so will your ticket categories. Periodically review and update your categories to reflect changes in your business operations, product or service offerings, or customer needs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, well-defined ticket categories are crucial for efficient help desk operations. They ensure that each ticket is handled by the right team and on time, ultimately leading to higher customer satisfaction. 

So, start with the common categories outlined above, then define additional ones as needed to suit your unique business needs. 

Always remember to keep your categories simple and straightforward, train your team, and regularly review your categories for relevance and effectiveness. 

With these strategies, your help desk operations will be well-organized and equipped to deliver excellent customer service, leading to happier customers, improved customer retention, and a more robust business reputation. 

Manage Your Help Desk in Slack

The help desk has evolved. Today, more companies are turning to Wrangle, a Slack ticketing and workflow application. Unlike traditional ticketing systems, Wrangle enables your team to manage complex processes and requests in Slack. Imagine managing approvals and ticketing requests directly in your Slack channel. 

Teams are using Wrangle to manage:

• IT Help Desks
• IT Access Requests
• Procurement Processes
• Marketing Collateral Approvals
• Employee Onboarding and Offboarding
• Customer Onboarding
• Contract Approvals 

If it’s a process that needs automation in Slack, Wrangle has you covered. You can start creating tickets and workflows with Wrangle’s no-code platform in minutes. You build your flows in the easy-to-use web interface, but your end user makes requests in your Slack workspace minimizing context switching.   

To get started, try the app today and see firsthand how Wrangle can improve productivity within your company. We can also provide you with a personalized demo, which you book on our website.

This post was written by Juan Reyes. As an entrepreneur, skilled engineer, and mental health champion, Juan pursues sustainable self-growth, embodying leadership, wit, and passion. With over 15 years of experience in the tech industry, Juan has had the opportunity to work with some of the most prominent players in mobile development, web development, and e-commerce in Japan and the US.

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