Ticket routing, also known as ticket triage, is the process of delivering an inbound customer support requests to a particular individual, team, or 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 implement them (available in most help desk softwares).
However, 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 routing would leverage an AI-based ticket tagging technology to apply tags like topic, sub-topic, and 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.
"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 centre articles or FAQs."—Kirsty Pinner, Head of Product at SentiSum
Automated ticket routing, the process of tickets being automatically assigned to the correct agent or team, is possible using an automated ticket routing AI.
For example, James Villas, the international holiday letting agent, leverages automated routing to reduce first response time to their frustrated and worried customers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The team struggled with customers reaching out due to uncertainty, frustration, as well as 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 added their requests to a "priority" inbox. Overall, reducing first reply time by 46%.
AI is a powerful addition to an automated routing setup. Machine learning-based AI focuses on using data and algorithms to imitate how humans learn, gradually improving its accuracy.
Routing systems can automate your ticket-assigning process, deliver faster reply times, and improve your agent's job satisfaction. Here are six workflow ideas you could setup.
Here are five workflows that I have used for my team throughout my five years working in customer support.
When tickets come in, they can be automatically routed based on certain characteristics like the channel they came through, the service level agreement, the topic, or the language.
Deciding which characteristics you would like your tickets to be evaluated can help organize your team and pinpoint areas of expansion or simplification.
Characteristics can include:
Here's our guides to setting up automated ticket routing in your help desk.
Zendesk and Freshdesk and a similar process for setting up automated routing. Our AI integrations with all major help desks.
We often hear from customers that they are frustrated with the limitations of their built-in automation options. They spend more time editing and trying to fix their routing than utilizing the benefits.
These limitations impact your agent's ability to be efficient. This results in customers waiting longer to receive help and impacts their overall experience.
We wanted to fix this problem for good. So we developed SentiSum's AI tagging and routing capabilities to solve it.
Book a full product tour with our team here.
Implementing an AI-based ticketing routing system such as SentiSum will benefit your customers throughout their journey. Whether it is a bug that needs to be escalated or a question about pricing, your customer's inquiries will be routed to the person who can best help get the answers they are looking for in real-time.
It is not only your customers who will benefit, though. You will increase your team's job satisfaction by improving their productivity and reducing the number of manual tasks they are responsible for. This will lead to a higher retention rate and a happier team. A satisfied team equals a satisfied customer.
Ticket routing can be done manually. However, AI-based automated routing helps with accuracy and happens in real time, so you won’t need a full-time agent to go through each ticket individually. That way they can spend their time working with customers instead.
Some of the benefits of using automated ticket routing are:
"Ticket routing improves response and resolution time. With automation in place, tickets are not waiting in a generic backlog waiting to be triaged or picked up by an agent. The most relevant agent can respond to the ticket straight away.
This can have then have a knock on effect of receiving higher CSAT results from customers because they've received a fast, relevant response to their query.—Kirsty Pinner, Head of Product, Sentisum
Manually assigning each ticket is time-consuming, causing a delay in response and a potentially upset customer. With automated routing, you can ensure tickets are assigned to the agent who can best handle them the first time, providing your customer with a quick and thorough answer. Companies that turned on automation and AI between September 2019 to September 2021 saw a 15% or higher improvement in first reply time.
This means that if they reach out and have to wait a long time for an answer, or the answer they receive needs to be corrected, you most likely have lost a potential customer. 90% of Americans use customer service to decide whether or not to do business with a company. To facilitate the conversion, you can use automation AI to ensure that potential customer tickets are fielded to the best team. This can encourage customers to follow through with their purchase as they have had a positive 1st interaction with you. 93% of customers will likely make repeat purchases with excellent customer service companies.
Want to learn more? Reach out and book a product tour with us here.
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