Help Desk Ticket Workflow: How to Improve and Optimize

Introduction

This post will review the following topics:

  • Defining help desk ticket workflows
  • Leveraging software for optimal workflows
  • Where to get started

Establishing a quality help desk ticket workflow is the key to achieving quicker and higher quality resolutions. Not only does this achieve better outcomes for users, but it also improves business operations and makes service departments more cost-effective. Many of the issues that cause delayed responses, missed tickets, or return tickets for issues that weren’t resolved correctly are caused by broken or poorly optimized help desk ticket workflows.

By streamlining workflows and including helpful tools that organize and automate the steps, businesses can improve these metrics and reduce workloads for their associates. This leads to lower staffing costs, happier employees, and faster results for users.

“To realize the potential of every team without compromising product quality or the well-being of employees, organizations must implement automation wherever possible, conduct consistent audits to assess where there is room for improvement, and augment the communication flow between teams.”
– Reggie Yativ, Forbes Councils Member, Forbes Business Council

What Is a Help Desk Ticket Workflow?

A help desk ticket workflow is a pre-planned set of procedures taken to respond to help desk tickets. The best service departments typically have a variety of workflows designed for their most common ticket types, ensuring that every ticket gets the right response.

These are usually documented in the form of a flowchart like the one below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, workflows aren’t typically linear, and steps may be repeated or skipped depending on each ticket outcome. A planned flow simply gives associates and users a consistent, repeatable process that follows industry best practices to ensure reliable service.

How To Leverage Software To Optimize Workflows

The best way to improve help desk ticket workflows is to adopt high-quality CSM software that can assist in their creation, automation, and organization. Comprehensive software will help you do all of the following:

Organize Improve the organization of support tickets by implementing a system that can categorize and route them to the proper agent automatically, as well as clearly label and prioritize them with tags signifying the ticket’s urgency and the lifecycle stage.
Expedite Expedite processes by creating custom workflows for every category of ticket, providing agents with clear steps to follow depending on the type of incident or problem they seek to resolve. This is also accomplished by automating and streamlining information gathering and delivery.
Track & Adapt Follow the success of these measures with a metric tracking tool like Average Time Before First Response, Average Hours to Resolution, and SLA On-Target % to identify where improvements need to be made.

 

The “Expedite” section is where most optimization occurs. Customizing a workflow involves more than just developing a flowchart for associates to follow.

Help desk ticket workflow optimization also includes, but is not limited to:

  • Designing multiple workflows tailor-made for common help desk ticket types
  • Creating an escalation process for tickets
  • Developing an organized, easily searchable knowledgebase for users and agents
  • Automating ticket responses by directing users to the proper sections of the knowledgebase to reduce the number of tickets that agents have to handle
  • Logging and delivering automated response histories so that agents know what information has already been delivered to users

Comprehensive CSM software will allow companies to do all of this and more while providing analytics to inform leadership on the parts of their workflow that need work. A single, unified platform makes implementation simple and quick, as new workflows are visible to all employees the moment they are altered.

“Since service desk profiles vary widely, a generic model to weighted prioritization just won’t work. A more complex model that takes into consideration a multitude of factors is required – a complex algorithm that can be customized to the individual service desk.”
– Quentin McPhee, ITSM Consultant

 

Fortunately, Vivantio offers a cutting-edge CSM platform that includes all of these features and more.

Optimize Help Desk Ticket Workflows With Vivantio

To leverage the benefits outlined in this article, managers must choose a platform with the right feature set. Vivantio provides a cutting-edge customer service software platform that offers all of the benefits listed above and more, including:• Integrations to make implementation easy

  • Automatic ticket routing to ensure every ticket reaches the proper agent
  • Workflow designer tool that allows managers without technical knowledge to customize the framework of their CS operations
  • White-label service portals so businesses can maintain a cohesive brand throughout the service process
  • A holistic view of each client to ensure that no agent is left without vital information

For businesses that are ready to level up their customer experience, Vivantio’s highly configurable solutions deliver.

For more than two decades, Vivantio has been helping clients optimize their service organizations by leveraging a unified service management platform. To find out how Vivantio can help you improve help desk ticket workflows, contact our team today or register for a free demo.

 

Reference Links:

Vivantio: White Paper – Boost Your Service Desk with New Ticket Prioritization Strategies.

Forbes: Increasing Efficiency Across The Enterprise in 2023

 

Share This Story!

FREE GUIDE

Get the roadmap that puts your customer service at the center of your company’s business strategy.