The Importance of Ticket Deflection

Any given support team will collect a large amount of tickets. These can range in complexity from simple to complex, and require a wide range of skill sets to manage, track and resolve.

The first step in handling those tickets is to gather them all in one spot with a tool like Zendesk, Jira, Asana or something else. This allows groups to track their status, report on them and manage the workload. Generally a small group (sometimes just one person!) handles all the tickets.

Eventually, however, the number of tickets and the types of tickets that come  in begins to grow. That small team will find itself buried under a landslide of requests, and will be rapidly shifting from one type of ticket to another. This constant pressure, and need to context switch takes its toll.

Tiered Approach

To help address the wide range of tickets that come in, companies tend to evolve a multi-tiered approach for their support teams to handle the influx:

• Tier 1 - This is the front line and is equipped with stock responses to as many tickets as possible. They’re typically trained how to triage any given ticket, and if they have a response to provide it. Examples of tickets this group can handle are things like password resets, simple Q&A and general feedback.

• Tier 2 - This is a more specialized group that takes over any ticket that Tier 1 isn’t equipped to handle. They may have some stock responses, but generally this tier has either access or training that the Tier 1 group lacks. There are, however, some things Tier 2 can’t handle.

• Tier 3 - These are your super-experts and they handle the most complex or challenging topics. Ideally only a small percentage of tickets end up in this group as there tend to not be many of them, and the requests can take a while to respond.

This structure allows the team to specialize. Some agents tackle the large numbers of “simple” tickets, while a smaller number focus on the “complex” ones. This increases response times, as well as satisfaction, as the simple ones are knocked out more quickly, while a more knowledgeable agent handles the harder ones.

This approach, however, requires humans - someone who is trained in how to respond to, and resolve, issues. In many cases a human is required to help out, however, employing someone to answer tickets can be expensive, and it can result in it taking longer to get an answer.

The 0-eth Tier

This is where ticket deflection, or Tier 0, comes in. This tier is everything the customer can do BEFORE asking for help. It could involve reading a wiki page, asking a chatbot something, or trying it themselves. There’s a wide range of things this COULD be, but they all result in the customer getting an answer/help without having to interact with someone on a support team. 

Examples include:

1. A knowledge base - Having robust, customer-facing documentation is a great way to empower customers to answer their own questions. These do take time to setup and maintain, however, directing customers to them is significantly cheaper than having a human answer at ticket. Many customers also want the ability to lookup information on their own, so having a knowledge base available also helps fill that need.

1. In addition to questions and answers, knowledge bases can also contain step-by-step guides customers can try on their own to resolve their issues. This subset of information gives customers one more thing they can do before having to interact with your support team. This allows customers to get help 24/7, and further reduces the demands on your support desk.

2. Chat bots - Chat bots are getting a LOT smarter and a lot more helpful. While there are certainly some gaps and features that aren’t quite there yet, these interactive tools make accessing information and guiding customers to responses a bit quicker than search. Some of the newer tools are even able to take action on behalf of a customer - for example resetting their password. This reduces the number of things your TIer 1 team is responsible for, both simplifying their workload but also reducing it.

3. Automated Tools - This one can be a bit trickier to setup, but having a tool the customer can use, without having to access a support team, is another way to deflect tickets. Resetting a password is a common example - customers click a button and go to their email to get back in. This shortens the distance between the customer having an issue and getting it solved.

Typically Tier 0 starts out as a small help-center, however, it should be constantly evaluated, expanded and updated as time goes on. Not only will older content need to be refreshed, but new pages, tools and guides can be added. 

Tier 0 Improvements

Agents should be constantly on the lookout for opportunities to improve Tier 0. Not only do they see all the incoming requests, but they have solutions for them. There’s several ways this can be done:

1. Writing (or rewriting) articles - Agents are typically closest to the problems, and solutions, so they should either have the ability to directly edit or update articles, or have a process to suggest changes. 

2. Product improvements - Agents should have a pathway to suggest product changes to avoid the need for a ticket. These suggestions should be reviewed by product, marketing, or other teams, to see what can be incorporated to help alleviate the need for a ticket.

3. Training materials - Agents should suggest ways to train customers or users on how to use systems. This can directly reduce the number of “how do I do X” tickets.

Deflection can be a bit tricky to quantify, after all you’re stopping them from having to do something (put in a ticket), so you may never know how much it’s REALLY impacting. There are a few ways to keep an eye on it.

1. Knowledge base utilization - Tracking which pages are used can give you insight into how much pressure it’s taking off your ticketing system. For example if you add a new article on password resets and that ticket type drops, you can infer the article had some impact.

2. Automated actions - The number of times your chatbot (or other tool) takes actions is another way to see how effective it is. Each password reset done automatically is essentially a ticket that wasn’t submitted.

Ticket deflection is incredibly important to a successful ticketing system. Not only does it reduce pressure on your support teams by both reducing volume and the number of things they have to handle, it empowers customers to take action… and is faster than putting in a ticket. There is a bit of legwork needed to determine what can be done, but it’s more than worth it.