Top 20 AI Ticketing Automation Tools for Efficient Customer Support

Oct 11, 2024

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Top 20 AI Ticketing Automation Tools for Efficient Customer Support

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Picture this: a customer sends a support ticket, and instead of an agent, a robot responds. The automated message has the exact answer the customer hoped to find. This scenario is the goal of ticketing automation. Using artificial intelligence to "automate" the ticketing process helps you improve your response time and enhance customer satisfaction. And the best part? You won’t have to lift a finger.

This blog will cover everything you need about ticketing automation, from its benefits to implementing it with AI customer support using HubSpot Help Desk Software.

What Is Ticketing Automation?

Ticketing automation streamlines customer support and IT service management by:

Reducing manual work

Automatically sorting, prioritizing, and routing incoming tickets

Automated Ticket Routing and Assignment

When a user opens a ticket, the software immediately processes the request based on preset rules. For instance, if a user reports an issue with a specific software, the system can automatically assign the ticket to a knowledgeable team member and inform them of the potential problem. This type of automation helps teams resolve issues faster and improve their overall productivity.

Ticketing Automation Alleviates Tedious IT Tasks

Ticketing management often falls into a tedious job. Staff members don’t want to open and close tickets; they want to solve problems and delight customers. Nevertheless, ticketing systems are fundamental to tracking, managing, and resolving incoming requests. That’s why we must improve the processes to make them less painful.

The Limitations of Traditional Ticketing Management

Current ticketing management systems often require tedious and repetitive tasks. Sure, they can help you organize and track your progress. But there’s a lot of room for improvement. For example, IT teams have to enrich tickets without automation manually. When a user reports an incident, the alert generated by your security tool stack is registered as a ticket.

The Challenges of Manual Ticket Enrichment

Opening this ticket won’t reveal the root cause of the issue. Instead, it contains basic information about the alert. The analyst in charge of the ticket would have to undertake the enrichment process manually. With varied sources of intelligence and information, the analyst quickly multiplies the tabs even if they just want to check the litigious URL in a database like VirusTotal.

The Complexities of Ticket Management in Cybersecurity and IT

Multiple factors make a properly functioning ticket management system challenging in cybersecurity and IT. Take ticket routing (or assignment), for instance. Sometimes, companies do not have rules determining how incident tickets are assigned to agents or teams.

Agents take the tickets as they appear, disregarding their knowledge and skills. This system can also cause agents to avoid tickets deemed too challenging or requiring a more significant amount of work at first glance.

The Inefficiencies of Manual Ticket Routing

Manual ticket routing is also time-consuming and not productive. Time lost could be spent somewhere else, significantly when the flow of tickets is growing. Once the ticket has been created, there’s the enrichment issue. Most of the time, the original alerts need further investigation to qualify as a true positive or false positive or even to see if they’re duplicates.

Why Ticketing Automation Matters

Although the tasks involved in determining the nature of the alert aren’t complex per se, the time and effort needed to complete them are too great. If incidents were sparse, this manual system would hold. As incidents have multiplied exponentially in recent years, most ticketing systems are drowned in incident tickets.

The Risks of Ineffective Ticket Management

It creates a dangerous state where analysts cannot ingest the flow of tickets and even determine their criticality, leaving potential loopholes undetected and unprocessed for days. Long story short, risk, risk, and risk. On top of that, the elasticity of the cyber professionals’ workforce is a known issue.

The Challenges of Hiring and Retaining Cyber Professionals

In 2021, there was a gap of 3.1 million workers. Companies need to hire more analysts. The truth is that there needs to be more talent to recruit. Second, these jobs aren’t attractive and prone to high turnover, besides generating stress. Third, it’s just not the way to go!

You’re not resolving the core issues by recruiting more and more people. It’s the processes that are the issue. They’re the ones that need to change. The answer to these challenges is ticketing automation.

Why Is AI Ticketing Automation Important?

Artificial intelligence is transforming ticketing automation for help desks and customer support teams. AI ticketing automation provides advantages over traditional ticketing systems. It automates tasks so businesses can do more with less, boosting efficiency and reducing costs. AI improves customer satisfaction through fast response times, quick ticket resolution, and personalized support. It also improves over time by learning from each interaction.

How an AI Ticketing System Works

Let’s peek behind the curtain and learn how AI ticketing systems work. Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) enable your AI-powered ticketing system to automate and optimize various tasks throughout the ticketing process.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a critical technology in AI ticketing systems. By analyzing text data from customer inquiries, AI can understand and interpret human language.

Here’s how NLP contributes to the efficiency of AI ticketing:

Text Analysis

NLP systems analyze the text in customer tickets to extract meaningful information. This involves identifying:

Key phrases

Keywords

Overall context of the inquiry

By understanding the content of the message, AI can determine the nature of the customer’s issue.

Sentiment Analysis

NLP also performs sentiment analysis to gauge the customer’s emotions and tone. The system can prioritize tickets requiring immediate attention by assessing whether a customer is frustrated, happy, or neutral. Sentiment analysis ensures that urgent or sensitive issues are handled promptly.

Intent Recognition

Recognizing the intent behind a customer’s message is crucial for accurate ticket routing. NLP algorithms identify the purpose of the inquiry, such as:

Requesting information

Reporting a problem

Seeking assistance

This understanding allows the system to direct the ticket to the appropriate department or agent.

Language Detection

In a globalized market, customers may communicate in various languages. NLP enables AI ticketing systems to detect the language of the inquiry automatically. This feature ensures that customers receive responses in their preferred language, enhancing their overall experience.

Machine Learning (ML)

Machine Learning (ML) is another cornerstone of AI ticketing systems. ML algorithms analyze historical data to improve the system’s accuracy and efficiency. Here’s how ML enhances the functionality of AI ticketing:

Data Analysis

ML algorithms process vast historical ticketing data to identify patterns and trends. By examining past interactions, the system learns which solutions were effective for specific issues. This analysis helps AI make informed decisions when handling new tickets.

Predictive Modeling

Predictive modeling is a powerful ML technique used in AI ticketing systems. It involves creating models that predict future outcomes based on historical data. For instance, the system can predict which tickets will likely escalate or which issues may become recurring problems. This foresight allows support teams to address potential challenges proactively.

Resource Allocation

Efficient resource allocation is vital for managing high volumes of support tickets. ML algorithms help AI systems prioritize tickets based on various factors, such as urgency, customer history, and predicted resolution times. This prioritization ensures that resources are allocated where needed most, improving overall efficiency.

Continuous Learning

One of the most significant advantages of ML is its ability to learn continuously. As the AI system processes more tickets, it becomes better at recognizing patterns and making accurate predictions. This continuous learning loop means the system evolves and improves over time, leading to more effective and personalized ticket management.

Integration of NLP and ML

The integration of NLP and ML creates a dynamic and powerful AI ticketing system. This combination allows the system to understand customer needs deeply and automate various processes for a seamless support experience. Here’s how this integration works:

Automated Ticket Routing

By leveraging NLP, the AI system can interpret the content and sentiment of customer inquiries. ML algorithms then use this information to route tickets to the most suitable agents or departments. This automated routing ensures that tickets are handled by the right people, reducing response times and improving efficiency.

Tailored Solutions

NLP helps the AI system understand each ticket's specific context and details. ML algorithms then suggest tailored solutions based on historical data and predictive modeling. This personalized approach ensures that customers receive relevant and effective responses, enhancing their satisfaction.

Trend Identification

AI systems can identify emerging trends and common issues by continuously analyzing ticket data. NLP extracts valuable insights from customer inquiries, while ML models predict future trends and potential problem areas. This proactive approach allows businesses to address recurring issues before they escalate, improving overall service quality.

Adaptive Learning

The combination of NLP and ML enables AI ticketing systems to adapt and evolve continuously. The system refines its algorithms and improves accuracy as it processes more data. This adaptive learning ensures the system effectively handles new and diverse customer inquiries.

Challenges of Ticket Systems Without AI Ticketing

A list of traditional ticketing system challenges accompanies an illustration. Conventional ticketing systems without AI add extra obstacles to ticket management. Here are a few drawbacks associated with a manual ticketing process:

Difficulty Classifying and Assigning Tickets to the Right Agent

Without AI, classifying and assigning support tickets to the right agent is tough. With traditional ticketing systems, agents must read each ticket and manually classify and assign it. This process can be time-consuming, especially when there are many tickets.

Agents can also misread or misinterpret the meaning of ticket requests, which can lead to:

Mistakes

Delays

Frustration

Traditional systems aren’t necessarily equipped to provide helpful information during ticket resolution, so agents waste time looking for answers, and customers don’t always get the help they need. Without AI, this process is slow, mistake-prone, and can lead to bad customer service.

How AI Ticketing Helps

AI uses intent detection, language detection, and sentiment analysis to automatically classify incoming requests, prioritize them, and route them to the best-suited agent or department.

Lack of Personalization

Without AI, traditional ticketing systems may struggle or find it nearly impossible to personalize customer conversations at scale. Integrating bots with your tech stack can help deliver highly personalized customer responses. AI can recognize past customer interactions and preferences, providing agents with insights to personalize the experience. For example, AI can summarize tickets and surface the intent and sentiment of an interaction to get agents up to speed faster.

How AI Ticketing Helps

AI ticketing systems can analyze customer sentiment within conversations, giving agents the insight and context necessary to tailor their responses and proactively adapt their approach.

Repetitive Tickets

Support agents often find themselves handling the same common problems. Repetitive tickets can slow down issue resolutions, frustrating both agents and customers. Traditional systems may have ways for customers to find answers independently, but they don’t offer digital agents to handle these recurring requests. AI chatbots can:

Provide 24/7 support

Answer frequently asked questions

Resolve common issues

Chatbots can also pull consistent and accurate information from your knowledge base to help customers solve their problems independently. This means fewer repetitive tickets for your agents and quicker customer resolutions.

How AI Ticketing Helps

AI can speed up agent reply times by providing recommended responses based on the context of the conversation.

Limited Insights

Every day, support desk requests create a massive amount of data. Traditional ticketing systems need help to:

Analyze information efficiently

Extract meaningful data

Identify trends or patterns

Without AI-powered insights, management teams can miss opportunities to proactively address potential issues, optimize processes, and personalize future interactions based on customer preferences. As a result, support teams take a reactive approach, waiting for issues to arise before taking action.

How AI Ticketing Helps

AI-generated insights can power intelligent workflows and enable management teams to discover new ways to optimize operations.

Inconsistent Brand Voice

New agents might use different tones or communication styles as they learn your brand voice. Without AI, delivering that consistent brand tone and voice may be a slower process. AI-powered tools help agents by providing suggested replies and enabling them to adjust the tone, resulting in faster responses that align with the brand personality.

How AI Ticketing Helps

Agents can also use generative AI tools to adapt messages and maintain a consistent brand voice.

Revolutionize Your Customer Support with AI

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Ticket Deflection

Reduce Support Tickets

Automate Support

Scaling Customer Support

Ticket Analysis

Ticket Queue Management

5 Examples of AI Ticketing System Use Cases

1. Travel and Hospitality: Revolutionizing Customer Experience

AI ticketing systems make the ticketing process smoother for customers in the travel and hospitality industry. AI-powered travel chatbots act as personal assistants, offering personalized recommendations and suggesting upgrades or add-ons based on customer preferences.

Beyond simplifying the booking process, AI-powered chatbots provide 24/7 support in multiple languages. Baleària, a maritime transportation company, implemented a Zendesk travel chatbot to answer common customer questions and prevent ticket creation. This resulted in a 96 percent customer satisfaction (CSAT) score.

Healthcare: Transforming Patient Care

The healthcare industry uses AI ticketing automation to simplify scheduling appointments, which can benefit patients and staff. AI chatbots can help patients book or change doctor’s visits anytime, day or night, freeing up administrative staff for other essential tasks.

Automated appointment reminders via text or email reduce missed appointments and improve clinic efficiency. Medline, a medical product distributor, uses Zendesk to help agents manage more than 800,000 tickets per year across numerous channels.

AI-Powered Customer Service at Medline

Medline deploys bots to increase employee productivity and plans to implement Zendesk Advanced AI to help existing agents be more thoughtful about problem-solving. “The insights coming in through AI give us the chance to be better customer service agents and provide a better customer experience,” says Billy Abrams, executive vice president of distribution at Medline.

Education: Improving Learning Experiences

The education industry can use AI-powered tools to improve the teacher and student experience. AI chatbots can answer questions about courses, scheduling, and professor availability for students, simplifying the registration process and deflecting tickets from support teams.

Bots can also analyze student data to suggest courses based on:

Strengths

Interests

Focus

Khan Academy, an online education platform, leverages automated triage within the Zendesk ticketing system. This intelligent process helps teams prioritize support requests and assign the right agent to help. Thanks to Zendesk, Khan Academy has achieved a 92 percent customer satisfaction score.

Retail and E-Commerce: Elevating the Customer Journey

AI ticketing benefits shoppers and businesses in the retail and e-commerce industry. It enhances the customer's shopping experience by making it more personalized and seamless. AI acts as a virtual assistant, helping shoppers find what they need and suggesting new items based on their preferences.

Businesses like Grove Collaborative use Zendesk AI for intelligent triage to streamline ticket requests. It captures request types and automatically assigns tickets to agents, eliminating the need for manual assignment and boosting efficiency.

Recruitment and Human Resources: Streamlining Talent Management

Businesses are using AI to improve:

Recruitment

Hiring

Onboarding processes

Smart assistants can automate communications:

Keeping candidates updated and informed throughout the process

Improving their experience

Deflecting tickets to keep workflows manageable

AI can be used as a workforce management tool to help manage staffing needs. Peek uses Zendesk WFM to allocate staffing resources for seasonal support appropriately. With help from Zendesk, manual processes that previously took four to five hours to complete now take just five minutes.

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

11 Benefits of AI-Powered Ticketing Automation Systems

1. Smooth Ticket Routing Reduces Response Times and Improves Customer Satisfaction

One of the key benefits of AI-powered ticket automation is its ability to intelligently route tickets to the most appropriate agents or departments. Traditional systems may rely on manual assignment or follow a predefined path, leading to delays and potential misdirection.

AI ticketing systems analyze the content and context of each ticket, ensuring that it reaches the right person for prompt resolution. By automatically matching the ticket with the agent’s expertise, businesses can minimize response times, avoid unnecessary escalations, and provide a more efficient ticket resolution process.

2. Proactive Customer Support Boosts Satisfaction and Brand Loyalty

In the era of instant gratification, customers expect swift and reliable support services. By integrating AI technology, businesses can offer round-the-clock customer support without increasing the workload of their support teams.

Armed with a vast knowledge base, AI-powered chatbots can respond to common queries and FAQs instantly, providing customers with prompt assistance and reducing waiting times—this proactive approach to support leads to increased customer satisfaction and improved brand loyalty.

3. Higher Agent Productivity Improves Support Operations

Ticket management can be demanding for support teams, with manual ticket assignment and resolution taking up valuable time and resources. AI-powered ticket automation alleviates this burden by intelligently routing tickets to the most suitable agents or departments. This automation enables support agents to focus on more complex issues requiring human intervention, enhancing productivity and reducing agent burnout.

4. Intelligent Ticket Categorization Keeps Operations Organized

As the volume of tickets increases, categorizing them accurately becomes a daunting task for support teams. AI-powered ticket automation brings machine learning algorithms to the rescue, automatically categorizing incoming tickets based on their content and urgency.

AI-Powered Ticket Categorization

The system learns from past categorization patterns, improving its accuracy over time. This automated categorization allows for a more organized and efficient ticket management process, prioritizing critical issues while routine inquiries are handled appropriately.

5. Personalized Customer Interactions Improve Satisfaction and Retention

Customers appreciate interactions catering to their unique needs in the age of personalization. AI ticketing systems can store customer data and interaction history, allowing agents to provide personalized responses and recommendations. For instance, if a customer has previously inquired about a specific product or service, the AI-powered system can proactively offer updates or promotions related to that inquiry. This level of personalization enhances customer satisfaction, fosters a sense of importance, and strengthens the customer-business relationship.

6. Seamless Integration with Knowledge Bases Improves Support Consistency

Knowledge bases are invaluable resources for support teams, providing vital information and solutions to various issues. AI-powered ticket automation seamlessly integrates with knowledge bases, empowering agents with instant access to relevant information.

When handling complex queries or unfamiliar scenarios, agents can rely on AI to suggest appropriate solutions based on the wealth of knowledge stored in the database. This integration ensures consistency in responses across all customer interactions, reinforcing the company’s credibility and trustworthiness.

7. Proactive Issue Resolution Improves Products and Services

One of the most valuable aspects of AI ticketing systems is their ability to identify recurring issues and patterns. By analyzing ticket data and customer interactions, AI can pinpoint common problems, allowing businesses to take proactive measures to address these concerns.

This approach prevents potential escalations and demonstrates a commitment to continuously improving products and services. By acting on these insights, companies can enhance their offerings, increasing customer satisfaction and retention rates.

8. Reduced Workload on Support Teams Improves Employee Satisfaction

Manual ticket management can be time-consuming and overwhelming for support teams, leading to burnout and decreased productivity. Automating routine tasks with AI frees up support teams to focus on more complex and high-value tasks. With mundane, repetitive tasks taken care of by AI, employees can be more productive and engaged in resolving intricate issues that require human intervention. This, in turn, improves employee satisfaction and job performance.

9. Data-Rich Insights Help Businesses Improve Operations

The vast amount of data generated through ticketing systems holds valuable business insights. AI-powered ticket automation facilitates the following:

Analysis of ticket data

Customer interactions

Patterns

By mining this data, businesses can identify areas of improvement, recognize emerging trends, and optimize processes. Data-driven insights enable data-backed decision-making, empowering enterprises to make informed choices that drive growth and success.

10. Scalability and Flexibility to Support Business Growth

As businesses grow, ticket management needs to evolve, too. Traditional ticketing systems may need help handling increasing ticket volumes, which can result in performance issues and delays.

AI-powered ticket automation offers scalability and flexibility to adapt to changing requirements, ensuring seamless ticket management even during periods of high demand. Whether handling seasonal spikes or accommodating business expansion, the AI ticketing system can efficiently scale up or down to meet the organization’s needs.

11. Cost Savings Improve Business Financial Performance

While investing in AI ticketing systems may seem like a significant upfront cost, the long-term benefits far outweigh the initial investment. The following factors contribute to long-term cost savings:

Enhanced operational efficiency

Reduced manual errors

Optimized resource allocation

With improved customer satisfaction, businesses can expect higher customer retention rates, contributing to increased revenue. The streamlined ticket management process reduces the need for extensive manual intervention, saving time and money.

3 Platform Features Required for Automating Ticketing

Automating ticketing processes can save your support team hours of manual work. Here are three must-have features to include in your ticketing automation solution.

1. Low-Code Automation Building

Low-code automation builders allow everyday users to create ticketing automations without help from IT or engineering. This is especially important for support teams, as they are the ones that understand their workflows best. A low-code tool empowers these users to optimize their processes and create automations that improve their day-to-day operations.

2. Trigger-Based Automations

Automations built on triggers or business events work when needed, whether on a time-based cadence or when specific activities occur in an app or database. The benefits of employing trigger-based automations are multifold, but chief among them is that your team won’t have to worry about running the automations; your team can rest easy knowing they’ll occur at the appropriate times.

3. Customizable Chatbots

As referenced earlier, this chatbot allows your employees to access the data and actions in their apps, within their permission levels, inside your business communications platform. Aside from the productivity gains this brings your team, it ensures that your data stays safe and that your business complies with various data privacy and security measures.

In addition, the chatbot can be customized to meet all your automation needs, whether it’s streamlining basic tasks (e.g. closing a ticket) or automating more complex workflows end-to-end (e.g. incident management escalations).

20 Best AI-Powered Ticketing Automation Tools

1. ChatBees: The AI Ticket Assistant That Speeds Up Ticket Resolution by 52%

ChatBees enhances your team’s efficiency throughout the ticket lifecycle with an AI Agent, reducing the number of clicks required by human agents or engineers and improving ticket resolution time by up to 52%.

By building a comprehensive Knowledge Graph from historical tickets in HubSpot and other internal data sources (such as Confluence, Web Help Center, Google Drive, Notion, etc.), ChatBees provides a unified view that places the customer at the center of your agents' daily workflow.

Auto Knowledge Graphs Building

Connect a HubSpot ticket pipeline. ChatBees immediately begins an automatic scan of your historical tickets and constructs a comprehensive Knowledge Graph. The app actively monitors ticket closure events in real time. As soon as a ticket is marked as closed, ChatBees automatically incorporates it into the existing knowledge graph.

Integrate with Internal Knowledge

Connect PDFs, Web Help Center, Confluence, Notion, Google Drive, and more with new data automatically refreshed. As products evolve and new features are added, knowledge bases can become outdated. ChatBees intelligently extracts valuable insights from historical tickets and automatically identifies gaps in your existing knowledge base.

Auto Reference Resolution

When a new ticket is created in HubSpot, ChatBees springs into action, automatically analyzing the ticket's content. Drawing from the comprehensive Knowledge Graphs, it swiftly generates a suggested resolution and provides support agents with a valuable reference point, offering relevant information and potential solutions at their fingertips.

Ticket Copilot

Explore deeper into ticket-related inquiries, gaining more comprehensive insights when needed. Leverage ChatBees' advanced AI to draft customer reply emails based on the proposed resolution. Copilot without leaving the HubSpot? Contact us to share your requirements and participate in our early trial!

Automations & Insights - Coming Soon

ChatBees AI Agent automates complex issue resolution processes, including processing refunds and other common customer requests, with human agent verifying and confirming these AI-initiated actions. ChatBees is developing advanced AI-powered analytics capabilities, such as:

Analyzing trends

Common issues

Resolution patterns

And more

AI Ticket Agent Integrates with these HubSpot Features

Service:

Knowledge base

Multiple ticket pipelines

Ticketing

AI Ticket Agent Pricing

This integration requires one of the following AI Ticket Agent software subscription plans:

Standard Plan

Auto generative answer for your tickets

14-day free trial

$49 /mo

500 tickets per month

One Ticket Pipeline

AI automatic reference resolution

Ticket Copilot Plan

Auto-scan new tickets

Knowledge Graphs from 5000 tickets

Knowledge from PDFs

Integration with Web Help Center, Confluence, and more

Enterprise Plan

Contact the company for pricing

All Standard features

Multiple Ticket Pipelines

Enterprise SSO

Role-Base Access Control

Integrate with your workflow

AI Agent Auto Actions

Advanced AI Insight Analytics

Prioritized Engineering Support

2. Hiver: The AI Ticketing Tool Designed for Email

Hiver transforms your inbox into an automated ticketing system. It’s straightforward to set up and start with since it intuitively fits into your inbox’s interface.

Hiver is ideal for small—to medium-sized businesses that want to automate support across multiple channels—email, chat, WhatsApp, voice, and knowledge base—without using a complicated help desk.

Key Features

Rule-Based Automations: Auto-assign incoming queries based on keywords, sender information, and other triggers. This helps prioritize and route support tickets efficiently.

Round-Robin Assignments: Assign customer tickets evenly among support agents to ensure fair workload distribution.

Automated Tagging: Automatically apply tags to incoming emails based on predefined criteria. Organize tickets by categories such as urgency, issue type, or type of customer. This streamlines the search and retrieval of specific customer tickets.

Shared Inboxes: Assign, track, and collaborate on queries inside team inboxes like info@ and support@. Get complete visibility into what queries your team is working on and how many queries still need attention.

Analytics and Reporting: Gain insights into key customer support metrics like response time, ticket volume, and average handling time, which are essential for improving agent performance and service delivery.

Hiver also comes with some powerful AI features:

AI Summarizer

AI Summarizer uses large language models to compress long email conversations into concise notes. This helps support agents quickly grasp long customer conversations and get a snapshot of what’s being discussed – without endless scrolling.

Auto-Close Emails with Harvey

Harvey is Hiver’s AI bot created to augment support teams’ productivity by performing intelligent actions on specific types of customer emails. Using sentiment analysis, Harvey detects and automatically closes conversations that don’t need a response, say a ‘thank you’ email from a customer after you’ve resolved their issue. They can also get reopened due to non-actionable “Thank you” responses from customers.

Email Template Suggestions with AI

Your support agents don’t have to scroll through multiple templates to determine the right one. Hiver’s Harvey has got their back! With robust AI integration, Harvey offers template suggestions based on the type and nature of customer queries.

Pricing

Lite plan: $19/user/month

Pro plan: $49/user/month

Elite plan: $79/user/month

Free trial: 7 days

3. Zendesk – Multichannel Automated Ticketing System

Zendesk is a customer service software widely known for its scalability and robust feature set. While the software caters to businesses of all sizes, it’s mainly used by large enterprises.

The platform stands out for its ability to customize solutions to fit the specific needs of different industries. One drawback, though, is that it can be quite expensive. For instance, Zendesk costs twice as much as Hiver.

Key Features

Omnichannel Support: From a single unified interface, manage all customer interactions across email, live chat, social media, and phone.

Advanced Automation and AI: Automate workflows, ticket responses, and even the routing of inquiries to the right agents, reducing manual tasks and speeding up response times.

Customizable Ticket Views: Create and customize views to organize and prioritize tickets based on your team’s workflows, ensuring that critical issues are addressed promptly.

Integrations and APIs: Easily integrate with other business tools and systems, including CRM software, productivity apps, and more.

Pricing

Suite Team: $55/user/month

Suite Growth: $89/user/month

Suite Professional: $115/user/month

Enterprise: You need to contact their sales team to know the pricing

Free trial: 14 days

4. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is known for its intuitive user interface and comprehensive feature set. The software also offers AI-powered automation to streamline customer service processes.

Freshdesk is particularly suitable for companies that require a flexible, scalable solution capable of handling ticket queries coming from various channels, such as:

Phone

Chat

Social media

Key Features

AI-Powered Automation: Use Freddy, Freshdesk’s AI bot, to offer suggestions for ticket resolution, automate repetitive tasks, and provide predictive insights to support agents.

Customizable Workflows: Enables businesses to create workflows for ticket routing, escalations, and other operational tasks.

Self-Service Portals: Help support teams build a comprehensive knowledge base that customers can access anytime. This reduces overall ticket volume and empowers customers to find solutions independently.

Pricing

Free plan: Free up to 10 users

Growth Plan: $14.39/user/month

Pro Plan: $51.58/user/month

Enterprise Plan: $82.78/user/month

Free trial: 14 days

5. Zoho Desk

Out of its many features, Zoho Desk offers artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to enhance customer service. It integrates seamlessly with the broader suite of Zoho applications, providing a cohesive platform for businesses that are already part of the Zoho ecosystem.

Key Features

AI-Powered Assistance: Zoho’s AI assistant, Zia, offers contextual help to agents by suggesting answers based on the customer’s history and the specifics of their current issue.

Automation of Routine Tasks: Automates repetitive tasks such as ticket sorting, assignment, and prioritization, helping teams focus on solving more complex issues.

Contextual Collaboration: Analyzes customer information from various Zoho apps to provide agents with all the context they need to resolve tickets efficiently.

Advanced Reporting and Analytics: Offers comprehensive insights into team performance, customer satisfaction, and help desk activity to drive informed decision-making.

Pricing

Free Plan: Free up to 3 users

Standard: $15.60 per month per user

Professional: $25.20 per month per user

Enterprise: $38.40 per month per user

Free trial: 15 days

6. Front

Front is a ticketing system that helps teams manage customer interactions from a common inbox-like interface. Every incoming ticket, whether via email, social media, or chat, can be automatically assigned to team members based on availability and expertise.

Front offers pricing plans for various businesses, from startups to large enterprises.

Key Features

Centralized Platform: This platform consolidates support queries from email, social media, and other channels into one single dashboard that can be accessed and managed by the entire team.

Automated Routing and Assignment: Utilizes rules to automatically route incoming queries to the right team member, ensuring quick and accurate responses.

Integration with Other Tools: Seamlessly integrates with CRM systems, project management apps, and other tools to provide a holistic view of customer interactions.

Customizable Tagging and Categorization: Enables teams to tag and categorize messages for easy ticket tracking and prioritization.

Analytics and Reporting: Provides detailed analytics on team performance, customer response times, and workload distribution to help optimize processes and improve service delivery.

Pricing

Starter: $19 per person per month

Growth: $59 per person per month

Scale: $99 per person per month

Premier: $229 per person per month

Free trial: 7 days

7. Jira Service Management

Jira Service Management is tailored for IT and technical support teams. It specializes in managing incidents and addressing technical problems.

This platform is especially suitable for businesses seeking advanced ITSM capabilities and a seamless connection between support tickets and development tasks.

Key Features

Incident Management: Quickly record, track, and resolve incidents to minimize downtime and keep operations running smoothly.

Problem Management: Identify and address the root causes of recurring issues to prevent future occurrences.

Change Management:** Manage and track changes in your IT environment with approvals and automation to ensure stability and compliance.

Service Request Management: Provides a user-friendly portal where employees can request help and services quickly.

Pricing

Free: Free for up to 3 users

Standard: $17.65 per person per month

Premium: $44.27 per person per month

Enterprise: You need to contact their sales team to know the pricing

Free trial: 7 days

8. HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot Service Hub is a ticketing platform that integrates deeply with the HubSpot ecosystem, connecting customer service with sales and marketing data.

This integration gives businesses a comprehensive view of each customer, allowing them to provide personalized and informed support. It’s perfect for companies of all sizes that want to enhance customer satisfaction by linking all customer-facing activities.

Key Features

Unified Customer Views: Provides a complete overview of customer interactions across sales, marketing, and service, enabling personalized and informed support.

Automation and Routing: You can automatically assign tickets to the appropriate team members based on availability or expertise.

Live Chat and Bots: Chatbots and live chat widgets enable customers and website visitors to get assistance in real-time. Automated bots, for instance, can handle commonly asked queries.

Knowledge Base: Allows businesses to create help articles and FAQs that enable customers to find answers independently, reducing the load on support staff.

Pricing

Service Hub Starter: $50 per month for 2 users

Service Hub Professional: $450 per month for 5 users

Service Hub Enterprise: $1200 per month for 10 users

Free trial: 14 days

9. HappyFox

HappyFox is a user-friendly platform that combines simplicity with robust automation features.It helps teams offer support across email, website, social, and chat channels.

Key Features

Smart Automation: Streamline operations with rule-based automations for ticket routing, escalation, and other repetitive tasks.

SLA Management: Helps ensure that customer inquiries are responded to within the time frame set by Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Mobile App: Allows agents to respond to tickets and manage support tasks on the go from their mobile devices.

Pricing

Basic: $14 per user per month

Team: $69 per user per month

Pro: $119 per user per month

Enterprise: You need to contact their sales team to know the pricing

Free trial: Not specified. You need to contact their team to get a custom trial period.

10. Kayako

Kayako helps teams provide a unified customer experience across multiple channels. It offers features like SingleView, which shows the complete customer activity at a glance. So you can see your customers’ site visits, purchase history, previous inquiries, and more on a unified platform. This helps support teams to offer more personalized and informed assistance.

Kayako is ideal for businesses of all sizes focused on delivering a cohesive and tailored customer support experience.

Key Features

Automation of Routine Tasks: Automate routine tasks such as assigning tickets and responding to commonly asked questions.

Real-Time Customer Support: Helps your company connect with customers in real time through a live chat widget on the website.

Reporting and Analytics: Provide detailed analytics to track customer satisfaction, agent performance, and customer ticket volume.

Pricing

Inbox: $15/user/month

Growth: $30/user/month

Scale: $60/user/month

Free Trial: 14 days

11. Help Scout

If you’re looking for a simple and user-friendly ticketing tool, Help Scout is an excellent option. Startups and small businesses mainly use it.

Key Features

Shared Inbox: Allows multiple team members to manage and respond to customer emails efficiently, ensuring a collaborative approach to customer service.

Automation Tools: Includes workflow features that automate steps like tagging, categorizing, and routing conversations based on custom rules, saving time and reducing manual effort.

Knowledge Base: Enables businesses to build a self-service resource for customers, which helps reduce incoming ticket volume and empowers customers to find solutions independently.

Live Chat: Offers live chat capabilities, allowing businesses to communicate with customers in real time.

Pricing

Standard: $22 per user per month

Plus: $44 per user per month

Pro: $65 per user per month

Free trial: 15 days

12. Tidio

Tidio is a comprehensive customer service platform ideal for small and medium businesses that offers automated ticketing system features. It comes with multichannel support, allowing you to monitor, prioritize, and assign customer requests in the same place. Moreover, you can use AI chatbots to automate your responses and handle more repetitive queries.

Main Features

Multichannel support for live chat, email, Messenger, and Instagram

Departments to divide your team and handle specific requests

Ticket triage options like automated ticket routing, tagging, and categorization

AI chatbots with NLP technology

Analytics to monitor and track performance

Pricing

Free version available

Starter ($29/mo)

Flows ($29/mo)

Lyro AI ($39/mo)

Growth ($59/mo)

Tidio+ (starts at $749/mo)

13. Live Agent

Live Agent is ideal for small to mid-sized companies. While its primary function revolves around live chat, the tool offers a plan with an automated help desk ticket system and call center features. Your agents will use Live Agent’s hybrid ticketing feature and access all tickets in one thread, whether from email, live chat, or social networks.

Pros

Multichannel support

Advanced automation rules

Customer portal with knowledge base

Cons

Not as comprehensive as competitors

The user experience (UX) design is a bit old

Pricing

Free plan available

Small business ($15/mo/agent)

Medium business ($35/mo/agent)

Large business ($59/mo/agent)

Enterprise ($85/mo/agent)

14. SupportBee

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, a customer portal, and a shared inbox. Users can set up multiple knowledge bases. SupportBee offers some no-code customization options and third-party integrations.

Features

Shared inbox

Integrated knowledge base

Customer web portal

Mobile ticketing system

Easy installation

Pricing

Paid plans start at $13 per user/month, billed annually

Free plan available

14-day free trial offered

15. TeamSupport

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, or specific ticket types.

Basic Automation and AI-Powered Live Chat

TeamSupport includes basic automation functionality for customer support tickets, primarily focused on repetitive tasks. Its Macro functionality allows agents to create predefined 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.

Features

Email integration

Ticket automation

Customizable workflows

Knowledge base article suggestions

Sentiment analysis

Pricing

Plans start at $29 per agent/month

16. SysAid

If you’re an IT team looking for an AI-powered ticketing system, SysAid is one to consider. You can automate workflows and tasks like prioritizing, assigning, and sorting requests. There are also generative writing features that help agents write responses to requests.

With SysAid, you can also offer SLAs for multiple organizations and self-service customer portals. They also have several prebuilt ITIL templates teams can use to get up and running quickly.

Price

Contact for pricing

17. Intercom

Intercom started mainly as a chat and pop-up messaging tool but has added more support capabilities. Their core AI feature is an AI agent called Fin. Fin is trained in your help documentation and can interact with customers directly.

Fin also offers agent assist features. For example, Fin can suggest answers for requests based on previous conversations or surface relevant help center articles to share. You can also set up custom ticket sorting and assign workflows.

Price

Free trial available

Plans start at $39/seat per month

AI features are available at additional cost (check the Intercom pricing page for more details)

18. Web Help Desk by SolarWinds

Web Help Desk by SolarWinds is web-based IT service management software best suited for IT support teams. It provides a ticketing system for managing, tracking, and resolving IT service requests.

The platform includes asset management, change management, and knowledge base integration features. It’s particularly well-suited for organizations needing an IT-focused help desk solution to manage their technical support workflows.

Key Features

Asset Management: Track and manage IT assets alongside tickets.

Knowledge Base: Create a centralized repository of knowledge articles.

SLA Management: Ensure compliance with service level agreements.

Pricing

Starts at $426 for a subscription

19. Yellow.ai

Yellow.ai’s Generative-AI-powered platform offers stellar customer service , helping multiple enterprises transform customer and employee experiences. Ticketing system software is increasingly essential for companies aiming to enhance customer service. The need for faster issue resolution, centralized customer queries, and real-time analytics drives the shift to cloud-based and AI-powered solutions.

Centralized and Efficient Ticketing Management

This software centralizes and organizes customer requests, assigns them to appropriate team members, and provides comprehensive data analysis. Enhanced by AI-driven automation, omnichannel support, and mobile-first design, ticketing systems streamline service operations and improve efficiency.

There are several benefits of using the Yellow.ai ticketing system. Let’s consider them and their key features.

Boost Agent Efficiency

Ensure seamless conversation transfer from AI Agents to humans. Powered by generative AI, our models are trained on billions of conversations, leading to high intent accuracy. Generative AI-powered features like chat summarizer, tone change, reply suggestions, etc. help increase agent productivity.

Multilingual and Omni-Channel Support

Yellow.ai supports asynchronous messaging, voice, and web interactions across over 35 channels in more than 135 languages.

Effortless Bot Creation

Create and deploy bots by adding URLs, uploading documents, and connecting to desired channels for a true zero-setup experience.

Faster Time to Value

Achieve 30-40% faster implementations with zero setup bot deployment that automates more than 90% of incoming queries.

Powerful Integrations

With 100+ pre-built integrations, businesses can go live in an instant. Integration with top platforms helps realize value 2X faster and scale.

20. BoldDesk

BoldDesk is a comprehensive help desk solution streamlining customer support through advanced automation features.

Its automated ticketing system simplifies the management of customer inquiries, allowing businesses to efficiently handle support requests while maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction.

AI-Powered Ticket Routing and Resolution

By leveraging AI and automation, BoldDesk helps route tickets to the appropriate agents, improves response times, and delivers consistent, high-quality service across multiple channels.

This tool includes an AI functionality that examines conversations and recommends relevant knowledge-based articles. This enables agents to deliver prompt and well-informed responses, greatly enhancing chat resolution times.

Top Features

Ticket Routing and Assignment: All incoming emails are automatically converted to support tickets and forwarded to the relevant agents.

Custom Email Templates: To preserve consistency in tone and substance, create and save regularly sent emails as templates for later use.

Shared Inbox: Consolidate all customer service inquiries into one location, assign them to the appropriate agents, and enable your team to collaborate effectively in addressing customer issues.

Collision Detection: Stop several agents from simultaneously working on the same client ticket.

Seamless Integration: To improve processes, integrate BoldDesk with your current tools and applications.

Artificial Intelligence: To improve the quality of replies and information your team provides, use AI support tools included in tickets and knowledge base articles. These features include translation, summarization, and more.

Built-in Reports: Examine real-time support data using the built-in reports and dashboards to help you make decisions that enhance customer care.

SLA Management: Establish deadlines for responding to and resolving support issues, reminders, and alerts to guarantee that customer concerns are addressed as soon as possible.

Omnichannel Support: Manage all your customer interactions from various channels(phone, social media, online forms, live chat, and email, among others) within one unified inbox.

Pricing

Startup Plan

Free/10 agents/1 year

Agent-Based Plans

Scale: $25/agents/month (3 agents included)

Growth: $50/agent/month (5 agents included)

Enterprise: $75/agent/month

Unlimited Agents Plans

Essential: $799/month

Pro: $1499/month

Business: Contact sales team

Free trial: Free for 15 days; no credit card needed.

Features to Look for When Choosing an AI Ticket Solution

Agent Assistance: Seek AI Help for Human Agents

AI can help with ticketing automation, but the real value comes from how it can assist human agents. Seek out options that augment the capabilities of your existing team rather than replacing them. Look for features like writing assistants, the ability to summarize conversations, or capabilities to surface articles and suggest responses. All of those features help agents respond faster and expend less energy.

Task Automation: Automate Repetitive Ticketing Tasks

There’s a lot of customer support work that is repetitive and predictable. Those tasks like sorting and assigning requests can be a drain on human agents, but they’re no problem for AI. Look for options that let you automate those more mundane tasks.

Self-Service Capabilities: Help Customers Help Themselves

As anyone working in support knows, there are some widespread questions where the answer always stays the same. Though you probably have a knowledge base customers could look through, having something like an AI chatbot is a better experience. If you’re a team that gets many routine questions about things like return policies, it’s probably worth finding options with AI chatbots or AI autoresponders.

Technical Steps to Integrate an Automated Ticketing System

The first technical step in implementing an automated ticketing system is ensuring your chosen AI/automated solution integrates with all existing databases, support channels, and any additional software within your infrastructure. Such instances can include:

CRM software

Social media accounts

Support inboxes

Apps

Payment portals

Others

Integrating the automated help desk ticketing system with your existing tech stack provides a more comprehensive context on client issues and business operations to speed up ticket resolution.

Data Migration: Transferring Existing Tickets

One critical element of successful process automation is your existing data migration. As an MSP, data is at the core of my service desk ticketing system; you must ensure its availability, integrity, and security throughout the upgrade process.

To do so, organizations must prepare the data and infrastructure for the migration. The process involves:

Backing up existing tickets

Fixing errors and inconsistencies

Deduplication

Data fields and format mapping

Testing the migration process before you initiate it

Before migrating your ticket database, you must ensure infrastructure compatibility, performance, and capacity and make the necessary adjustments.

Set It Up: Setting Up Automated Workflows and Rules

System admins and support agents can work together to create efficient automated workflows by:

Defining specific service level agreements (SLAs), such as system response times.

Configuring ticket prioritization and escalation triggers based on priority, request type, and client preferences.

Creating an official ticket handling policy to minimize communication issues and optimize the ticket flow process (e.g., round-robin ticket assignment).

Implementing SMS and email alerts, agent reminders, and standardized templates. Implementing a separate escalation process for specific IT issues within the MSP to ease agent-technician communication and problem resolution.

Configuring the automated ticketing software according to the best support standard to drive a client-centric support strategy.

Train Your Team: Ensuring a Smooth Transition

Workforce resistance can be a significant challenge to automation integration. To address this, MSPs must:

Take the time to explain and manage the change an automation upgrade brings to their business, workforce, and operational culture.

Plan, design, and execute a change management strategy to address an automated ticketing system's potential impact, risks, and benefits to their employees, clients, and stakeholders.

Employ a governance framework to define the rules, roles, policies, and procedures for monitoring and enhancing automation project management.

Inspire a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement among support teams through regular training, individual coaching sessions, and additional automation support for clients and employees.

Tools and Resources for Training

Many resources and tools are available for MSP employee training, including:

Workshops

Webinars

Online courses

Training sessions

Coaching and mentoring

Books, videos, podcasts

Peer learning and more

Every approach has advantages and disadvantages depending on your company's content, context, and audience. To ensure the success of your employee training strategy, consider factors such as:

Information relevance and quality

Cost and accessibility

Using flexible resources to reach your entire support workforce while reducing expenditure is best. Not all resources you find will perfectly match your specific needs and preferences. In such a case, you can customize existing resources to align them with your strategy and vision. For example, you can:

Reformat an existing presentation

Modify the language and content

Add specific examples or exercises tailored to your MSP business

This ensures an optimal learning experience that aligns with your workforce, objectives, and brand vision.

Monitoring and Improving the Training Process

After selecting, modifying, and implementing the required resources to train your support workforce, evaluating the training program’s results is crucial. You can do this by using:

Tests

Surveys

Observations

Interviews

These methods help gather feedback from employees and trainers to identify areas for improvement. The data collection process should be thorough enough to address key questions, such as:

Did the resources meet your training objectives and expectations?

Did the resources improve employee skills, behavior, and performance?

Was the learning experience pleasant and engaging for employees?

Once you answer these questions, you can start defining weaknesses in the training process and work to correct them as quickly as possible to ensure a positive customer support experience for your workforce and clients.

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

ChatBees optimizes RAG with our AI customer support software for internal operations like customer support, employee support, etc. It provides the most accurate response and easily integrates 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 and 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, with no credit card required. Sign in with Google and get started on your journey with us today!