A pileup of Ticket backlog is bad for business. They are the overdue unresolved customer requests which last beyond the typical response time of your company. Ticket backlogs might first seem like a good thing (a huge customer base), but in the long run, it indicates that something is off with your customer service process. A study conducted by Zendesk revealed that 52% of B2C customers stopped purchasing because of a single disappointing customer support reaction. Every customer believes that his/her ticket should be prioritized. This makes prompt response very important.

Here are three quick tips for efficiently avoiding unresolved ticket backlog.

1. Focus on Responding Before Resolving

When you focus on responding first, rather than immediately resolving (which might take much longer), you make your customers feel valued and acknowledged. This way, you create less risk of customers feeling ignored or abandoned.

Look at this:
A survey by NM Incite revealed that 33% of customers would still recommend a brand that was quick to reply, even if the response was not complete.

Responding first will assure customers that their issue is being addressed, and this will give you more time to resolve their query. Slow responses can be easily addressed using Slaask —the customer service app for all Slack users. You can also personalize and customize your canned support ticket responses using Slaask

2. Prioritize Your Tickets

Your complaint management solution should allow you to prioritize tickets as they arrive. This is especially important when you have a large number of tickets backed up. When the tickets are prioritized, you can easily assign them to your support team and distribute the tickets accordingly, making sure requests are assigned to the appropriate team member. Pay attention to reply time, a ticket that has been sitting on your desk for more than two hours without being assigned might require your utmost attention. You can sort the tickets by date, type of issue or any other criteria you choose.

3. Optimize Reassign Process

One common reason for a delayed ticket response is assigning a ticket to an ‘inappropriate’ team member (due to work overload, off-duty, lack of experience). In cases like this, your reassign process should be fast-paced and optimized. A manual process might take some time, and some tickets might be left unanswered. Using a CRM integrated with automatization makes this process much easier. The best optimization method is an automated reassigning process using tags. This is done by sending similar tickets under a tag directly to the support team (or whatever team is concerned). This approach saves time and maintains the organizational process.

Look at this:
There are two reasons why businesses lose customers. First, when customers feel poorly treated. Second, failure to quickly resolve a query.

As Scottish Scientist William Thomson said: “if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it”. 

So, measure your customer support performance at intervals and make improvements where necessary. The most important tip to remember is that your support team must offer prompt and helpful service. It is very crucial to carry all your customers along, making sure none of them feel unattended to or left behind.

About the author