Ticket Prioritisation
In early 2024, our IT Service Desk meticulously tested a new internal ticket prioritisation process, in order to improve our support service even further. And we were delighted to share with you the positive results and what that meant for your business IT support. Here’s a summary, so you can remind yourself of what ticket prioritisation is and how it works for you…
Ordinarily, all tickets that were logged by our customers entered a queue system. These tickets could have come via the telephone, email or customer self-service portal. The tickets were addressed in chronological order and were monitored against our service level agreements.
The drawback of that traditional method is tickets that had a major impact on a business’s operations and those that did not affect a customer’s core business, but caused some inconvenience to one person, were dealt with in the same manner and with the same timescales and SLAs. The result of which was that those tickets which required attention as a higher priority, could take longer to be addressed and resolved.
Our IT Service Desk, with oversight from our Chief Service Delivery Officer, Tony Pearson and IT Services Director, Nik Howarth, successfully trialled the new ticket prioritisation system that we use now, after working with great success.
Where all tickets were previously treated with the same urgency, we introduced priority levels that are linked to incident response times. What does that mean for you? It means that when critical issues arise that impact the entire business, they are prioritised by our team. Your urgent issues receive immediate attention and swift resolution, ensuring minimal disruption to your operations.
To do this, we split tickets into one of four categories:
Priority 1
15-minute guaranteed response and 4-hour target fix time
A complete business down situation or single critical system down with high financial impact. The client is unable to operate.
Priority 2
30-minute guaranteed response and 8-hour target fix time
A major component of the client’s ability to operate is affected. Some aspects of the business can continue but it’s a major problem.
Priority 3
1-hour guaranteed response and 2-day target fix time
The client’s core business is unaffected, but the issue is affecting efficient operation by one or more people.
Priority 4
2-hour guaranteed response and 3-day target fix time
The issue is an inconvenience but there are clear workarounds or alternatives, or there is no urgency.
Our highly-skilled team are equipped to prioritise your ticket to ensure that it is treated with the level of priority which is required.
Using Our Customer Self-Service Portal
Importantly, during that time, we also strengthened our customer self-service portal, ensuring you get real value from a powerful tool at your disposal.
To simplify the way you log and monitor tickets, we expanded the features on the portal. We improved the end-user experience and introduced a wide range of helpful resources that cover all of the most commonly asked questions (and plenty more).
Our goal is to empower you to resolve non-urgent issues independently while providing a smoother and more intuitive interface. We encourage all users to utilise the portal for logging non-urgent issues, enabling efficient tracking and updates on open tickets. With this enhanced self-service option, you have access to a wealth of help sheets and guidance, allowing you to address common issues promptly and conveniently.