How To Optimize Automated Ticket Routing & 14 Top Tools for Success

Oct 10, 2024

•

How To Optimize Automated Ticket Routing & 14 Top Tools for Success

Table of Contents

Do not index

When customers submit questions or complaints, they want a speedy resolution. The longer they wait, the more frustrated they become. A ticket not routed to the right team or individual can further prolong their wait. Automated ticket routing tackles this challenge head-on.

This blog will help you understand how automated ticket routing works and how to set it up within HubSpot Help Desk Software. Let’s explore the benefits of automation for your customer support team and their performance. ChatBee's AI customer support is a valuable tool for achieving your objectives.

What Is Ticket Routing & Why It Matters to Customer Service

Ticket routing guides customer inquiries to the correct support department or agent. Efficient ticket routing means faster response times, reduced customer wait times, and improved customer satisfaction. When a customer submits a support request, they want help resolving their issue quickly. The longer they wait for a resolution, the more frustrated they become. Efficient ticket routing directly impacts how quickly a customer receives assistance and improves service quality.

How Ticket Routing Works

Ticket routing assigns support tickets to the correct department or individual agents. Routing tickets is based on several criteria, such as:

Inquiry’s topic

Urgency

Language

Support level

Others

Automated ticket routing systems have primarily replaced the manual process of ticket routing, where help desk agents sorted through tickets and assigned them to the best-qualified department or individual. Today, intelligent routing systems automatically determine the order in which tickets are allocated and which agents are best qualified to handle them.

Use Cases of Ticket Routing in Customer Service

Escalate Top-priority Tickets

With automated ticketing AI, you can create rules around specific tickets to ensure they are immediately assigned to the right agent. For example, suppose a ticket contains keywords indicating a severe product defect or performance issue. In that case, the system can escalate the ticket and assign it to an agent who can help immediately.

Provide Appropriate Support Levels

You can apply support level tags (e.g., 1,2,3) to each new ticket. For example, GoCardless implements this system effectively. Here’s how it works:

Tickets with the tag 1 need immediate attention and are routed to the next available agent.

Example: Organic Basics, an eCommerce fashion store, prioritizes customer tickets from subscribers as they are more likely to make a purchase. These tickets would be tagged one so they can get eyes on them as quickly as possible.

Tickets tagged as 2 are of medium priority and are handled once all level 1 tickets are resolved.

Tickets tagged as 3 are the lowest priority and can be addressed after levels 1 and 2 are resolved.

Skills-Based Routing

You may have tickets that require a specific skill set, like language or technical skills. Create tags for each skill set and set them to be automatically routed to the correct agent who can help. For example, James Villas, a villa holiday company, utilizes tags to route tickets to the agent who can best help. Whether it be booking issues or questions about pricing, the automated routing had decreased their first reply time by 46% in the first few weeks.

SLA-Based Routing

Let's say you have an SLA set for each ticket. The response time is 24 hours. Create an automated routing rule in which these tickets are tagged with an “over SLA” tag and routed to the next available agent. Or perhaps an entire queue of tickets that are over SLAs.

Sentiment-Based Routing

Angry customers are wrong all around. They're more likely to leave bad reviews, and they're more likely to churn. Sentiment-based ticket routing would help you prioritize irate customers and ease their frustrations.

Team Insights Routing

Many companies share support insights across departments to improve the customer-centricity of their products and processes. Routing can be perfect for this. For example, product teams love to get insights and feedback from customers. Work with them to understand what insights they'd like, then set up an inbox that receives all relevant tickets. You must route them to your customer service team's inbox to ensure they're handled.

How to Optimize Ticket Routing

If your ticket routing processes are not up to the mark, you will send your customers through a maze. You don’t want your customers to spend an hour hopping across seven agents before they finally reach someone capable of resolving their issue.

Routing tickets to the right agent the first time reduces your customers' effort to find answers to their questions. It increases customer satisfaction and could improve metrics like your First-Contact Resolution Rate.

What Are the Benefits of Effective Ticket Routing?

Here are the most significant advantages of optimizing your ticket routing process:

Speed

Since cases are assigned automatically, your agents don’t have to spend time picking their next ticket.

Balanced Workloads

You don’t need to worry about some agents picking only the easy tickets and dumping the complex ones on the other agents.

Increased Agent Productivity

Agents are assigned tickets that they can handle and resolve. They don’t need to waste time, only tickets they cannot resolve, only to transfer the conversation to another agent.

Reduced Customer Effort

Customers do not have to spend time and energy explaining their problems to multiple agents, only having them passed on to the next agent. Sending them directly to an agent who can help them would minimize customer effort and frustration.

Higher Customer Satisfaction

Optimizing your ticket routing can increase customer satisfaction rates. Customers can get immediate answers without navigating through multiple support agents.

Ticket Deflection

Reduce Support Tickets

Automate Support

Scaling Customer Support

Ticket Analysis

Ticket Queue Management

Key Differences Between Manual and Automated Ticket Routing

Ticket routing, also known as ticket triage, is the process of delivering an inbound customer support request to a:

Particular individual

Team

Queue location

For example, many companies have teams trained to handle complex requests. A ticket routing system would help identify complex support tickets and send them to the right queue. Setting up routing rules is the easy part. You decide which topics or characteristics to prioritize and implement (available in most help desk software).

The Challenge of Manual Ticket Routing

Identifying the tickets that fit your rules is where things get complicated. Reading and understanding one customer support ticket is easy for us humans. But at high volumes (say 10,000 to 100,000 requests each month), this becomes an eye-watering task for an agent or two to complete manually.

Automated ticket routing vs manual ticket routing char Automated routing would leverage an AI-based ticket tagging technology to apply tags like:

Topic

Sub-topic

Sentiment

A manual process means higher response times and room for error. 58% of American consumers will switch companies because of poor customer service, so it is more important than ever to provide a stellar customer experience. Fast, accurate ticket routing helps deliver a faster, more tailored response to the customer requests you value most.

The Benefits of Automated Ticket Routing

How does automated ticket routing work? "There's no middle man with automated routing. A lot of teams have one or multiple people manually triaging tickets to the most relevant or available agents. However, with AI these team members can work on tickets instead or work on more scalable things like helping to build out new help center articles or FAQs." Kirsty Pinner, head of product at SentiSum Automated ticket routing, can use an automated ticket routing AI, automatically assigning tickets to the correct agent or team.

For example, James Villas, the international holiday letting agent, leverages automated routing to reduce first response time to frustrated and worried customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The team struggled with customers reaching out due to:

Uncertainty

Frustration

Necessary cancellations and travel date changes

“The challenge was to prioritize tickets in a way, so that urgent cases were handled as quick as possible so that our customers could travel at ease.” Johannes Ganter, head of CRM AI-based ticket tagging, identified customers in need and routing rules and added their requests to a "priority" inbox.

They are reducing the first reply time by 46%. First, reply time is reduced by automated routing AI, which is a powerful addition to a computerized routing setup. Machine learning-based AI uses data and algorithms to imitate how humans learn, gradually improving accuracy.

Optimizing RAG for Internal Operations

ChatBees optimizes RAG with our AI customer support software for internal operations such as customer support, employee support, etc. This software provides the most accurate response and is easily integrated into workflows in a low-code, no-code manner.

ChatBees' agentic framework automatically chooses the best strategy to improve the quality of responses for these use cases. This improves predictability/accuracy, enabling these operations teams to handle more queries. No DevOps is required to deploy and maintain the service.

Try our AI customer support software today to 10x your customer support operations. Get started for free; no credit card is required. Sign in with Google and start your journey with us today!

Why Set up Automated Ticket Routing and How to Do It Right

Automated ticket routing speeds up the process of assigning customer issues to the right people, improving both agent and customer experience. With automated ticket routing, you won’t have to wait for an agent to manually assign a ticket before they can start working on it. Instead, identifying and delegating the issue to the right team member happens automatically. Customers get quicker responses and resolutions, two things every customer wants.

Studies show that 33% of customers expect to hear back from customer service within 30 minutes or less. Automated ticket routing helps you meet (and exceed) those expectations.

Reduces Human Error

Routing tickets manually leaves too much room for human error. Even if your support reps mean well, they can make mistakes when assigning tickets, ultimately delaying the resolution process. For instance, a customer submits a ticket about a technical issue.

Ensuring Accurate Ticket Routing

When routing the ticket manually, an agent may accidentally assign the ticket to someone who specializes in billing instead of the correct person. With automated ticket routing, you can create rules that ensure tickets are routed accurately based on specific criteria like skill sets, ticket priorities, and more to reduce resolution times and improve customer satisfaction.

Improves Team Efficiency

Not only does automated ticket routing help improve the customer experience, but it also boosts team efficiency. With automated routing, customer support managers can spend less time manually assigning tickets, freeing them up to focus on more strategic tasks.

Reducing Burnout

Automated ticket routing helps eliminate repetitive tasks that bog down customer service teams and can lead to burnout. Instead of starting from scratch every time a customer opens a new ticket, automated ticket routing allows agents to quickly pick up where the last conversation left off, improving team and customer morale.

6 Benefits of Automated Ticket Routing

1. Boosts Team Efficiency by Balancing Workload Among Support Agents

Automated ticket routing helps organizations make the most efficient use of their resources. With this system in place, tickets are automatically distributed to the most qualified support agents based on set parameters. This relieves pressure on team leaders and prevents support burnout by ensuring that agents evenly distribute tickets.

2. Distributes Tickets Intelligently to Prevent Backlog

Automated ticket routing reduces the chances of backlog by ensuring all tickets are resolved promptly. The system intelligently distributes tickets based on set parameters, such as the specific issue and the support agent’s skill level. This prevents delays in resolution and improves overall ticket management efficiency.

3. Prevents Support Teams from Cherry Picking Tickets

Another advantage of automated ticket routing is that it minimizes the chances of tickets being overlooked. When tickets are distributed manually, there’s a chance that support agents will pick and choose the issues they want to resolve. This can lead to some tickets being neglected, especially if there’s a backlog of topics.

Automated ticket routing reduces this risk by ensuring tickets are assigned immediately and distributed based on specific criteria rather than the preferences of support agents.

4. Reduces the Need for Manual Intervention

The fundamental purpose behind automated ticket routing is to drastically reduce the need for manual involvement in ticket allocation. This reduces the chance of mistakes and increases productivity by allowing support teams to focus on resolving issues instead of wasting time on ticket distribution.

5. Reduces Ticket Resolution Time

Implementing automated ticket routing:

Streamlines internal workflows

Reduces effort spent on ticket distribution

Promotes collaboration

Thereby improving ticket resolution times. The system ensures that tickets are assigned to the right people quickly to resolve issues faster.

6. Enhances Customer Satisfaction

Automated ticket routing increases swift, accurate, and punctual customer responses, leading to a gratifying user experience.

14 Best Automated Ticketing Systems

1. ChatBees: The AI Customer Support Software of the Future

ChatBees optimizes RAG for internal operations like customer support, employee support, etc. with our AI customer support software, which has the most accurate response and easily integrates into their workflows in a low-code, no-code manner.

Try our AI customer support software today to 10x your customer support operations. Get started for free; no credit card is required. Sign in with Google and get started on your journey with us today!

2. Zendesk: A Customer Service Powerhouse

Zendesk is the complete customer service solution for the AI era, boasting AI pre-trained on the industry’s largest dataset. Unlike other automated ticketing systems, Zendesk is fast to set up and easy to use, so you can get started on day one and keep costs low. Zendesk AI agents are adept at understanding and resolving many customer interactions, freeing human agents to focus on high-value tasks.

Intelligent workflow tools help admins streamline service operations. For example, you can route customer requests based on:

Sentiment

Language

Intent

Agent skill

Capacity

Status

Conversion priority

Zendesk empowers agents with AI assistance tools. They get the full context behind every interaction within their workspace, including insights into customer sentiment and intent. AI can also:

Summarize customer conversations

Surface similar tickets

Make macro suggestions and more

This enables agents to deliver faster support. Meanwhile, our agent copilot takes a proactive approach, presenting agents with suggested responses and actions based on customer queries, which agents can customize before sending.

3. Zoho Desk: A Smart Automated Ticketing System with AI

Zoho Desk is Zoho’s built-in ticket management system for customer support workflows. This ticketing software works across various customer channels with omnichannel support. When a customer submits a ticket, Zoho Desk automatically classifies it by:

Urgency

Topic

Product

This routes inquiries to the most qualified agent. Zoho Desk also utilizes its proprietary AI assistant, Zia, to automate repetitive tasks. Zia deflects tickets by directing customers to informative help center articles. She can then report to system administrators on any insufficient documentation to ensure they’re aware of gaps in the existing knowledge base.

4. Freshdesk: A Scalable Help Desk Solution for Customer Support

Freshdesk is Freshworks’ help desk solution. When customers submit tickets, Freshdesk routes them based on pre-defined rules. Depending on your customer support needs, these rules can relate to urgency, topic, or product, so the query finds an agent with relevant experience to address it.

Freshdesk also offers automation features for repetitive tasks and integrates with third-party knowledge base solutions. Though Freshdesk has AI features, they aren’t uniform across its products and require manual training, which makes the solution less scalable. According to a study from Nucleus Research, users who moved from Freshdesk to Zendesk saw benefits like a 42 percent decrease in time to first response and a 27 percent decrease in average handling time.

5. LiveAgent: An Automated Ticketing Solution with Collaboration Tools

LiveAgent’s ticketing system automatically distributes tickets for agents. It can route incoming tickets to different departments or team members based on rules you set, such as trigger keywords within the ticket itself. The automated system tags the ticket and sends it to the corresponding party.

LiveAgent’s automated ticketing solution consolidates inbound customer communications from various channels into a central location, including:

Phone calls

Website chat messages

Social media mentions and more

It can also suggest pre-written responses to inbound messages and use collision detection to prevent multiple agents from simultaneously working on the same ticket.

6. HubSpot Ticketing System: A Free Tool for Existing Users

HubSpot primarily focuses on marketing but also offers a ticketing system. Its free tier includes limited access to certain ticket management features and email automations. Ticket automation in HubSpot originates from email and chat channels, where it:

Generates a ticket

Tags the ticket

Routes it to the appropriate agent

HubSpot also has internal and external knowledge bases for employee and customer support. The paid packages include more reporting and analytics tools, such as data-driven dashboards. Agents can also set up automated notifications to inform customers about ticket status.

7. Support Bee: A Collaboration Tool for Customer Support

SupportBee’s ticketing system is a collaboration tool for interdepartmental support on customer tickets. It analyzes incoming tickets based on pre-determined factors and automatically assigns them a priority level. It has collision detection that routes tickets away from busy agents and ensures no two agents work on the same ticket. The platform also has an:

Integrated knowledge base

Customer portal

Shared inbox

Users can set up multiple knowledge bases. SupportBee offers some no-code customization options and third-party integrations.

8. TeamSupport: A B2B Help Desk Solution with Ticket Management Features

TeamSupport is a B2B customer service solution with ticket management functionality. It offers various no-code third-party integrations. It also features SLA management tools and templates to define and track SLAs at different levels, such as:

Individual customer accounts

Product lines

Specific ticket types

TeamSupport includes basic automation functionality for customer support tickets, primarily focused on repetitive tasks. Its Macro functionality allows agents to create pre-defined workflows that can be triggered manually or automatically based on specific criteria. A live chat support function powered by AI and ML engages with simple customer inquiries.

9. HappyFox: A Customizable Automated Ticketing System

HappyFox is a cloud-based ticketing system built for operations teams. HappyFox has a Smart Rules feature to automate essential support communications and simple agent duties. It also offers automations for recurring tasks and editable templates for frequently encountered issues. Agents can modify templates with the following:

Pre-written text

Attachments

Specific ticket fields

HappyFox provides custom ticket queues to analyze customer conversations from multiple channels, such as:

Social media

Chat

Phone

Users can set up auto-timers to track resolution times, understand trends, pull data from integrated apps, and direct customers to self-service resources.

10. Jira Service Management: An Automated Ticketing System for IT and Beyond

Jira Service Management by Atlassian is an automated ticketing system for legal, IT, HR, and other teams. It offers pre-built service desk templates for different use cases, each equipped with the following:

Pre-configured workflows

Automations

Fields

Jira can also:

Tag and categorize tickets based on keywords

Send email notifications to customers upon receiving a ticket

Assign tickets to specific agents based on availability and skill sets

Users can leverage integrations to import communications from their typical messaging applications or customize their software view. In addition to imports, Jira Service Management requires integrations for:

Collaboration

Task management

Compliance

Productivity

Planning

Self-service

Reporting

Pipeline needs

Many add-on features cost an additional charge per seat.

11. Web Help Desk by SolarWinds: A Ticketing System with IT Management Capabilities

SolarWinds offers a ticketing system that integrates with multiple communication channels. It allows ticket routing based on configurable rules. Technicians can define rules to automatically escalate tickets that haven’t received a response or progressed beyond a specific stage within a certain time frame.

With SolarWinds, businesses can build a service desk to customize specifications for:

Issue tracking

IT management

Change management

Employee or customer self-service

SolarWinds Web Help Desk also integrates with external knowledge base solutions, enabling users to add features like article suggestions based on ticket keywords.

12. Tidio: A Customer Service Tool with Automated Ticketing Features

Tidio is a comprehensive customer service platform ideal for small and medium businesses with an automated ticketing system feature. It offers multichannel support, enabling you to:

Monitor customer requests

Prioritize inquiries

Assign tasks all in one place

You can also use the help of AI chatbots to automate your responses and handle more repetitive queries.

13. HelpScout: A Simple Yet Effective Automated Ticketing System

This automated ticketing software system has many features to accelerate agent productivity and workflow. Some of Help Scout’s valuable features include canned responses and AI assist functionality that can help you make the most of each conversation. This tool also provides actionable insights and analytics to help you monitor your results.

14. Kayako: A Help Desk Solution with a Customer Journey View

Kayako is a help desk and ticketing software with features like:

Multi-channel support

Ticket Automation

Reporting

It allows businesses to provide seamless customer support across email, live chat, and social media. Kayako also offers a Single View feature that allows agents to visualize the entire customer journey.

Hubspot Help Desk

Service Hub Hubspot

Hubspot Ticketing System

Ticketing Tools

Hubspot Operations Hub

Hubspot Notion Integration

Hubspot Tickets

Call Center Ticketing System

Best Ticketing Apps

5 Must-Have Features of the Automated Ticket System

1. Ticket Automation: Efficient Ticket Management for Rapid Resolutions

Ticket automation enables the help desk to assign, categorize, and prioritize support tickets based on predefined rules. This feature:

Accelerates the workflow

Reduces ticket volume

Ensures no queries are unanswered

2. Ticket Tracking: Keep Customers Informed On Their Resolutions

Ticket tracking features help track the progress of each ticket until resolution, providing real-time updates. This lets agents and customers know the status and expected ticket resolution time.

3. Agent Collaboration Tools: Improve Teamwork to Solve Customer Issues Faster

Tools and features such as ticket transferring, categorization, and tagging can facilitate collaboration between multiple agents, especially if a ticket requires a joint effort. This encourages teamwork and speeds up the solving of customer issues.

4. Customer Self-Service Options: Empower Your Customers to Find Solutions

The tool you’re using should provide a platform where customers can track their ticket status and find solutions to common queries. Providing a web self-service portal or an FAQ/knowledge base empowers customers and reduces the burden on the support team.

5. Reporting and Analytics: Monitor Key Metrics to Enhance Performance

Your automated help desk system should offer valuable reports and analytics to monitor key customer service metrics and improve performance. These insights can guide you in strategic decisions to boost operational efficiency and client satisfaction.

Ticketing Management System

Ticket Management Tools

Most Popular Ticketing Systems

Hubspot Autoresponder

Smart Ticketing System

Ticketing Automation

Hubspot Ticket Automation

Helpdesk Integrations

Best Help Desk Tools

How To Implement Automated Ticketing Software

Identify Your Automation Needs Before Jumping into Ticket Automation

Before implementing an automated ticketing system, you must identify your automation needs. Analyze historical ticket data to find areas within your support operations that are ripe for automation.

Key metrics to consider include:

The most common types of support requests

Average ticket volume

Resources required for resolution

Average resolution time

With this understanding, you can strategically tailor your ticketing system to specific goals. For example, you should increase your first response time by 25 percent.

Choose the Right Automated Ticketing System for Your Business

Research and select an automated ticketing software that fits your requirements. Consider factors like time to value, scalability, and total cost of ownership.

Create Ticket Automation Rules to Get the Most Out of Your New System

Once you select a ticket management system and fully understand your business needs, the next step is to set up ticket automation rules.

Some ways you can automate ticketing and create more dynamic workflows include:

Leveraging skills-based routing

Using standardized inputs and fields

Setting and managing service level agreements (SLAs)

Using triggers to minimize repetitive tasks

Every automation aims to optimize operations for efficiency, giving your team valuable time to focus on non-manual tasks.

Build a Knowledge Base to Speed Up Ticket Automation

Harnessing a knowledge base is a rapid method for implementing ticket automation. Connecting your AI agent to your knowledge base allows them to swiftly access support articles to address customer inquiries and relay relevant details within seconds.

AI-powered tools can also help you write knowledge-based content faster. For example, Zendesk AI can turn a few bullet points into a complete article and adjust the tone to suit your brand voice better.

Create Pre-Written Responses to Common Support Queries

Pre-written responses are ready-to-go replies to simple yet common questions. You can also use these standardized responses in “no-reply” situations to speed up response times.

For example, you can use a pre-written response to let customers know you’re working on their ticket or closing a conversation due to a lack of response.

You can create a pre-written response by:

Addressing the customer by name

Re-stating the situation

Explaining the next steps

Providing a way for the customer to follow up

Signing off with a real agent’s name

AI can also suggest pre-written responses to automate based on ticket context.

Monitor and Adjust Your Ticket Automation Over Time

Once the system is in place, monitor its performance and gather feedback from customers and agents. Use this information to adjust and optimize the system for better efficiency and user satisfaction.

Use ChatBees’ AI Customer Support Software to 10x Customer Support Operations

ChatBees optimizes RAG with our AI customer support software for internal operations such as customer support, employee support, etc. It provides the most accurate response and easily integrates into workflows in a low-code, no-code manner.

Try our AI customer support software today to 10x your customer support operations. Get started for free, with no credit card required. Sign in with Google and start your journey with us today!