What is AI Ticketing and 10 of Its Benefits to Customer Support Businesses

AI ticketing is a powerful way to leverage Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools that incorporate AI-powered chatbots and AI-based systems to handle customer queries, resolve problems, and find answers to questions customers have.

Automated support ticketing is a great way businesses can improve the customer experience and customer satisfaction scores, and reduce customer losses. AI ticketing can improve this and other processes even more.

In this article, we look at the advantages of using AI ticketing for customer service teams and IT Service Management (ITSM).

What is AI Ticketing?

AI ticketing is a way of using AI-powered chatbots and AI-based systems to assign customer support tickets to the relevant agents and team members to solve their problems.

Customers want their problems resolved quickly. Customers also want to find answers themselves so they don't need to phone support helplines.

Automated support ticketing has been around for longer than AI and uses simpler text-based automated flags to prioritize customer support tickets to the right agents at the correct priority levels.

AI ticketing is the use of AI-based tools and software, such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) within ticketing systems. On the other hand, automated ticketing is starting to incorporate AI.

An automated ticketing system works in the following way:

• The automated ticket system tags and assigns support tickets
• The tickets are then routed to the correct agent or team to deal with (e.g., "thinking of leaving" = retentions; whereas a complaint is sent straight to the complaints team)
• The automated system then files tickets according to SLA KPIs, using automated custom fields and timescales for resolutions

With AI ticketing, these existing workflows are even more streamlined and accurate.

Further, AI ticketing systems include AI-powered chatbots so that customers can get automated and instant responses to their questions without having to interact with an IT help desk or customer service agent. In most cases, AI chatbots are now used as the first touchpoint if a customer can't find a solution to their problem using self-serve tools, documents, articles, and videos. But then if the chatbot is unable to help, the AI ticket process seamlessly takes the customer to the next level via a ticket. There, the right agents for the job are given AI-generated summaries and suggestions to more quickly solve issues.

With numerous advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), deep learning, neural networks, and other popular large language models (LLMs), foundation models, such as ChatGPT-4, DALLE-2, BERT, and dozens of others based on these AI models, it's no surprise that AI support ticketing is becoming a normal part of customer service operations and IT help desks.

Watch Our Video on AI Ticketing for Customer Support

Why Businesses Need AI Ticketing

According to Zippia, up to 89% of consumers have made the switch to a competitor after just one bad customer experience, and AI ticketing is a way to ensure this doesn't happen. Here are some of the advantages of using AI ticketing and  AI powered automation:

Did you know?  60% of brand loyalty is driven by customer experience.

• Happy customers keep coming back. Unhappy customers go elsewhere. Whether your business is customer-centric or you're managing an IT help desk, keeping customers happy is essential, and AI  ticketing systems ensure that nothing gets overlooked.
• AI-led support ticketing, through self-serve tools or chatbots, answers questions automatically. Thanks to these options, customer help desks, and customer support agents can help customers with more complex problems.
• AI-powered ticket automation saves time and money compared to manual retrieval methods. Automated and AI-based systems are simply faster, more accurate, and can function 24/7. That means there are fewer issues that require human intervention. Also then, it isn't the responsibility of one of the team to assign tickets to the right team members. All of this saves an enormous amount of time and money.

With that in mind, here are 10 benefits of using AI ticketing and AI-powered automation.

10 AI Ticketing Business Benefits

If you're not using AI-based ticketing to automate where support tickets go or help customers using AI tools then you're causing numerous unnecessary challenges, and headaches, and costing yourself a lot of money.

Let's take a closer look at the 10 business benefits of using AI ticketing:

1. Offers immediate and highly relevant self-help for customers

   AI ticketing can direct customers to the relevant self-help articles, tools, and troubleshooting so that  they can resolve problems themselves. All of this saves a huge amount of time and money compared to manual ticketing.

2. Routes urgent tickets more quickly to the right person

   In customer service teams, every support ticket comes through with the same level of urgency. Tickets are routed on a time-stamped basis from the moment a customer sends in the query. In most cases, these need to be manually prioritized and sent to the right teams or team members to deal with.

   In IT, customers are asked to rate their tickets based on how urgent and important they think it is. IT help desk customers usually rate their support tickets as more urgent and important than an IT help desk agent knows they are.

   Manual ticketing and prioritization take time that should be spent resolving these tickets. So, the most effective solution is automated ticket prioritization built into the ticketing software to ensure every ticket goes directly to the right team member at the most accurate priority level.

3. Lowers Average Handling Times (AHT)

   Key Performance Metrics (KPIs) such as Average Handling Time (AHT) are improved. AI ticketing systems allow agents to more quickly gather information from various resources such as other tickets or knowledge bases. Further, this information is then formatted in an empathetic and presentable way already in UI response fields. These result in the agent spending less time in the processing of a ticket, allowing them to close the issue more quickly.

4. Classifies tickets more accurately

   Resolving IT tickets can be achieved more effectively when front-line IT agents are assigned ones they have the skills and tools to handle. For example, there's no sense in assigning a hardware ticket to an agent who only handles Level 1 software issues.

   With AI-based ticket classifications that leverage NLP and ML, support tickets will go through to the right agents at the right time. Not only that, but it will ensure more timely resolution response rates. This helps keep everything within Service Level Agreements (SLAs). More accurate ticketing classifications also mean that tickets don't need to be re-assigned to the right agent, speeding resolution.

5. Reduces repetitive ticketing

   Another advantage of AI-based ticket classifications is a reduction in the number of repeat tickets thanks to creating helpful self-serve solutions.

   Customers can be directed to self-serve solutions several ways, such as:

   • An AI chatbot could automatically send the link to self-serve articles, videos, and step-by-step guides
   • Links to those same self-serve guides could be sent to customers via email with the ticket being closed automatically under SLA unless a customer asks for an agent to help them
   • Social media AI chatbots and landing pages could also encourage customers to make use of self-serve articles, videos, and step-by-step guides

6. Increases employee satisfaction

   Help desk agents or customer service representatives are already on the front line often facing angry or very dissatisfied customers. Requiring them in this situation to manually sift through every customer support ticket to find answers can greatly increase stress levels. This in turn can cause high turnover rates.

   The ability of AI ticketing to gather and summarize information in the heat of the moment can help quickly de-escalate situations. This can result in lowering the stress of a difficult job, thereby increasing employee satisfaction.

7. Provides better actionable insights

   AI-based tickets also provide more accurate and useful actionable insights about what customers need help with, how often they ask for support, and the types of questions they usually ask.

   Most customer help desk and support SaaS platforms come with analytics as standard. AI-powered systems give customers even more valuable insights and information, covering everything from keywords customers use to the days/times people ask for help.

   With this data, organizations can further improve the level and type of support they provide customers, and this can be adjusted over time as new data comes in.

8. Improves resolution recommendations

   Thanks to AI-based NLP, resolution recommendations can be improved to serve customers more effectively. AIs can be used to constantly assess and understand what customers need help with. This means the service provided can consistently iterate and improve.

   AIs can more accurately and quickly assess the tone, content, and context of customer queries. In turn, this can more effectively ensure customers are being served better from the moment they get in touch to when an issue is resolved.

9. Summarizes vast amounts of data at scale

   One of the reasons businesses have been quick to embrace AI is this technology's ability to summarize large ticket volumes of text and data. Imagine you receive 1000 support tickets every day: that's over 30,000 in the average month.

   It's impossible for support teams to understand and summarize those tickets, spot patterns and trends, customer sentiment, and other important indicators. But an AI can. Quick summarizations can generate valuable actionable insights. This in turn can have a profound impact on the service your teams provide, including the creation of new self-serve and self-help content.

10. Provides more relevant information to management

    Upper level managers have little time to view summary reports, let alone individual tickets. AI ticketing systems can bring together not only large quantities of data for summaries but can further analyze that data to show overall trends. These trends can then be used to discover service gaps and costs. Managers will then have better information to lead and plan their organizations' paths forward.

    Overall, AI-powered chatbots and AI ticketing systems solve numerous problems for organizations that need to modernize, driving forward digital transformation goals and improving everything from the customer experience (CX) to employee satisfaction, operational efficiencies, and competitiveness.

Why Should Your Business Invest in AI Ticketing?

There are numerous advantages to investing in AI ticketing, including but not limited to:

• More accurate and timely classifications for support tickets
• Support tickets getting to the right agents who can actually resolve them
• Improved SLAs and other KPIs
• Reduced costs, lower help desk team member workloads, and increased customer retention

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