Imagine queuing at a restaurant for forty minutes, only to find that the couple three places behind you had have been given a table.
Worse still, you just overheard them say they “weren’t that hungry”!
Would you still trust the restaurant to take care of your needs?
Well, that’s essentially the situation IT help desks create when their ticketing system has no priority rankings; we call it “ticketing chaos”.
Ticket priorities are crucial to keep end-users happy, improve efficiency and ensure people trust the ticketing system - and therefore actually use it.
In this blog, we’ll explain why that is and how DeskDirector helps you make ticketing priorities easy and intuitive for every end-user.
What is Ticketing Priority?
Ticketing priority dictates the order that techs process service tickets. In an effective system, every ticket will have a priority level assigned to it so that things are dealt with in the most efficient order possible.
In DeskDirector, we use four basic priority levels:
- Low priority
- Medium priority
- High priority
- Urgent priority
Why Ticket Priorities Are Key to an Efficient Help Desk System
1. Risk Management
From cybersecurity to system outages, there are many IT problems that can cause severe damage over a very short period. As a result, techs need the ability to focus their attention immediately on those problems and mitigate the associated risks or harms.
Ticketing priorities ensure that such business-critical issues can essentially “jump the queue” by being given “urgent priority”, while simple requests can be marked as “low priority” and dealt with only when everything is running smoothly.
2. Keep Key Stakeholders Happy
Not all employee tech issues hold the same weight, and ticketing priority ensures your system reflects that fact. Leaders expect their problems to be resolved more quickly, as their work has a wider influence on the organization’s operations.
There is also an important “relationship management” element to this, as your IT help desk needs to keep leaders happy - so that they continue to trust your team. The limited number of ticketing priority levels in DeskDirector ensures that no single department feels they are being overlooked - and therefore ensures more employees make use of the system.
3. Enable Ticket Automation
Ticketing automation is essential to make your system as efficient as possible. Not only does it remove manual tasks that nobody enjoys; it accelerates resolutions and contributes to a more efficient overarching IT ecosystem. However, without ticketing priorities, automation can cause problems by failing to address critical issues quickly enough.
Priority levels are therefore a key part of unlocking the considerable efficiency gains from ticketing automation. But exactly how should you assign ticket priority?
3 Ways to Assign Ticket Priority
1. Persona-based hierarchy
Who issued a ticket is often indicative of how urgent the ticket is. In most situations, if a serious problem arises it will be left to a more senior employee to issue the ticket. A persona-based hierarchy sets the priority of a ticket based on the individual issuing it, so that a cybersecurity manager is likely to have inherent priority over a junior in HR.2. Request-based hierarchy
There are many instances where the type of request is more important than who issued the ticket. A data breach is an urgent priority, regardless of who found it - and a request-based hierarchy sets the priority based on the specifics of the task. This means end-users don’t need to make a judgment about how important their request is - it is automatically determined by the automated system in DeskDirecor.
3. Time-based hierarchy
While a ticket may not be urgent at the point it is issued, most end-users will become frustrated if their tickets are left unresolved for a long time. That is why time-based hierarchies are important, as they allow your ticketing system to automatically upgrade the priority of a given ticket after a specific period - so that it is not left unresolved indefinitely.Create a More Efficient Ticketing Queue with DeskDirector
Ticketing priorities are essential, but you need the right system to automate them. DeskDirector’s smart tickets and Microsoft Power Automate connector enables you to create a seamless system where every ticket is treated with the right level of urgency - and your entire organization runs more smoothly.
Want to see it in action?
