What Are B2B Support Ticket Priority Levels?
When establishing a B2B support ticketing system, one of the most critical decisions facing team leaders is determining priority levels for support tickets. Without a standard for prioritization, systems would essentially dump all support tickets into one pool, leaving teams with no clear starting point or goal. This lack of direction often leaves urgent issues unattended, causing potential security risks, major downtime, and customer dissatisfaction.
It might seem logical to assume B2B support ticket priority levels are dependent on the business in question, but some standard practices exist to help guide businesses looking for practical next steps.
To give company leadership an idea of where to start and how to begin, we will discuss:
- The Information Technology Internet Library (ITIL) Priority Matrix
- Implementing B2B support ticket priority levels with software
- How to get started
Let’s look more closely at each topic to get a clearer understanding of how to improve ticket prioritization.
The ITIL Incident Priority Matrix
The standard method for crafting B2B support ticket priority levels is by using the ITIL Priority Matrix (below). This matrix serves as an industry-agnostic guideline to provide a general framework that will work for almost any business striving to create a better system for organizing their tickets.
The priority matrix categorizes tickets based on two criteria: urgency and impact. Urgency is dictated by the severity of an issue or how significantly the issue inhibits work functions. Impact refers to the number of users affected by the issue. These criteria are further divided into three levels, which are used to map the matrix that ultimately dictates the priority level for each ticket.
Despite being titled the incident priority matrix, the table’s principles can be easily translated to problem management, request management, or change management scenarios, as each of those tickets will have a different level of urgency and impact, just as incidents do.
While it offers a helpful reference for individual team members deciding how to prioritize tickets, business owners must still understand how to incorporate the ITIL priority matrix into their ticketing systems. For that, they will need the right software tool.
Implementing B2B Support Ticket Priority Levels with Software
Quality information technology service management (ITSM) software platforms will allow administrators to set this criterion to be applied automatically to each new ticket upon submission. For manually submitted tickets, this task usually requires manual input. For automatically generated tickets—for example, when configuration management software suddenly notices certain devices going offline—some tools can automatically assign an impact score from the matrix by detecting the number of devices with a change in status.
This is by far the quickest and most efficient way to implement B2B support ticket priority levels, as software built on an industry-standard framework like ITIL will ensure every ticket is assigned the proper level of exigency, reducing the risk of clerical errors. Also, as we’ve already mentioned, some of these tools can automatically generate tickets to address some issues before anyone’s workflow is actually impeded.
In order to ensure this is the case, though, business owners need to select the right tool.
Improve Ticket Handling With Vivantio
While implementing a priority matrix for support tickets can benefit most businesses, such efforts are fruitless when managers choose a platform that doesn’t offer all the necessary features. Vivantio offers a cutting-edge customer service software platform with everything you need and more, including:
- Endless integrations for easy implementation
- Automatic ticket routing to ensure every ticket gets to the proper agent
- Workflow designer tool that allows managers to customize the framework of their CS operations without any previous technical knowledge
- White-label service portals so businesses can maintain cohesive branding throughout the service process
- A holistic view of each client to ensure no agent is left without vital information
For businesses that want to bring their customer experience into the modern age, Vivantio is the obvious choice.
