8 Ticket Handling Best Practices For IT Teams

In this article, we'll explore 8 ticket handling best practices that your IT team should consider implementing to expedite the ticket management process.  

Why is there a need for best practices in ticket handling? In the past, IT teams didn't have a proper system for handling tickets; that's why they often went for the traditional way of managing tickets, i.e., multi-step request management processes.

In this process, tickets would go through various stages before reaching final approval. Unfortunately, along the way, tickets were often overlooked. This, in turn, delayed the approval process and impacted the productivity of employees who raised the tickets.

So clearly, this process can become excessively time-consuming and error-prone without a proper strategy and system in place. This is where ticket handling best practices step in to streamline the process and enhance your IT team's efficiency.

But what strategies are included in ticket handling best practices? Let's find out.

8 Ticket Handling Best Practices To Maximize Your IT Team’s Efficiency

Below are 8 recommended ticket handling best practices that your IT team can follow to streamline the request management process.

1: Create Tags For Incoming Tickets

One of the crucial ticket handling best practices is to create tags for incoming tickets. But what does creating tags mean? In simple words, it means labeling incoming tickets (access requests raised by employees).

Why is it important? By assigning tags, your team can categorize tickets based on their nature and priority. For instance:

• Employees requesting access to Spendflo's SaaS utilization tracking features can be tagged as \"access request for Spendflo's feature\" (this is an example of \"nature of ticket\")
• Another example is that your team is conducting an annual audit and needs access to review or audit tools. This is an urgent situation, as every organization needs to conduct quarterly or annual audits to stay compliant and avoid penalties. This request can be tagged under a high-priority ticket. Furthermore, tags help ensure these tickets are directed to the appropriate individuals or teams for management and approval. This streamlines the ticket handling process and prevents tickets from getting lost or overlooked.Also, tags provide valuable insights about the ticket, helping the end approver understand its nature and urgency at a glance. This expedites the approval process.

2: Create A Hierarchy – Who Will Manage & Who Will Be Responsible For Approving The Ticket Request

Another best practice for handling tickets is to create a hierarchy. This process clearly defines roles and responsibilities for managing and approving ticket requests. Doing so helps clarify who is responsible for handling incoming tickets and who has the authority to approve them.

In simple terms, this process involves designating specific individuals or teams to oversee ticket management tasks such as tagging, assigning, and updating ticket statuses. And assigning the responsibility to managers or authorized individuals (app owner, department head) to approve ticket requests.

By creating this hierarchy, you can hold the right person accountable for their actions, maintain transparency, and prevent delays in the approval process.

Apart From that, you also need to create a multi-tiered support structure.

This structure ensures that the most skilled team (upper-tier executives) concentrates on resolving and approving complex requests. And a less experienced team (lower-tier)to handle simpler tasks such as ticket categorizing, review, and routing.

Moreover, implementing a tiered support structure maximizes your IT team's and approvers' productivity and minimizes ticket management time and costs across all levels. This increased efficiency is another advantage of ticket handling best practices.

3: Verify The Ticket Request

Once the hierarchy is established, the next crucial step is to verify/validate the ticket request. You team needs to verify the below key points before initiating the ticket for approval process:

• Confirm that the employee is authorized to raise request
• Verify that the request the employee raised is truly needed by them

This step is essential to prevent unnecessary delays, as it ensures that only valid and reasonable requests are forwarded for approval.

4: Follow The Ticket Status

When initiating the ticket approval process, ensure that your IT team categorizes each ticket into distinct statuses:

• New/Open
• In Progress
• On Hold
• Closed

Following this practice, your team can easily view, assess, and monitor the ticket’s status. This way, your team can prevent re-working on the same ticket and ensure that the prioritized tickets are addressed first.

Note: IT teams need to establish consistent criteria for assigning each type of ticket status.

5: Avoid Or Control Unnecessary Escalation Of Tickets

What does ticket escalation mean? Ticket escalation refers to the process of transferring a request ticket from one level of support or management to a higher level.

This typically happens when the current team is unable to manage the ticket request efficiently due to the involvement of intricacies (like approving requests for critical apps).

But why is there a need to control such escalation? Escalating a ticket to a higher support level increases the total cost of approval.

For instance, when a ticket is escalated, it is typically handled by specialized teams or experts who bring their unique skills and knowledge to the table. However, their involvement often requires additional resources and time, leading to an increase in the cost of ticket management & approval.

Therefore, it's crucial to only escalate when necessary. This not only saves time but also minimizes unnecessary expenses, a key goal for any efficient IT support team.

But how to find out if the ticket is suitable for escalation? To determine if a ticket should be escalated, consider these factors:

• Difficulty: Is the ticket request too complex for the current team to handle?
• Time: Is the ticket at risk of missing deadlines?
• Authority: Does the current team have the authority to approve the requested ticket?
• Past Experience: Have similar issues been escalated before?

6: Document The Ticket Management Process

Throughout the escalation process, tickets are often managed by various team members. Your team needs to document the entire process to understand how each individual or team handled the ticket.

This practice also spares employees who initiated the ticket from repeatedly explaining their requirements to different IT teams involved in the approval process.

Additionally, having a documented history helps in quicker resolution of similar escalations in the future. Your team can streamline troubleshooting efforts by referring to past solutions that effectively tackled similar issues, reducing redundancy and optimizing problem-solving time.

7: Track The Key Metrics & KPIs Of Your Team

To effectively streamline your ticket management process, closely monitoring your team's performance is essential. You can evaluate their effectiveness by tracking your team's key performance indicators (KPIs) such as:

• Time taken to respond (open the ticket)
• Overall time taken for management and approval of the ticket
• The number of tickets escalated

8: Introduce Self-Service Portal

Implementation of self-service portal offers various benefits to your IT team:

• Reduce Workload: Self-service portals empower employees to submit access requests independently, without much involvement or assistance from the IT team. This reduces the burden on IT teams and saves their time, which can be directed towards other critical areas.
• Expedite The Approval Process: Automated workflows within the self-service portal streamline request management processes. Predefined approval paths ensure requests reach the right team. This way, the right individual or team can quickly validate the ticket and send it for approval.
• Provides Complete Control: Most (if not all) of the self-service portals' views can be customized, so your IT team can restrict the view of critical applications. This way, they can have better control over what employees see and what they can request.

• After reviewing the best practices, you may have realized that some of them can be difficult to execute without a proper tool. So, to simplify the implementation and effective execution of ticket handling best practices, you can consider opting for an automated request management tool like Zluri. Let’s find out how one such solution can make a difference.

Automate Your Ticket Handling Process via Zluri

Zluri offers an access management solution that streamlines access request management processes. This advanced solution provides your team with complete visibility into incoming, pending, recently raised, and approved requests.  

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With this visibility, they can effectively manage, organize, and prioritize requests, making the approval process faster and saving significant time.

But how does it do that? Zluri's access management integrates with Slack, providing your team with instant notifications for access requests in real-time. Therefore, whenever an employee submits a request, your teams receive notifications via Slack.

Furthermore, the app access request details (who has requested for what apps and for how long) appear in the IT team's Slack channel and also in Zluri's access request dashboard under pending requests.

But how do you approve the request?

Here are the steps to approve access requests:

Step1: Click on the application module (let's take Zoom as an example) and then click on the automation

Step 2: Under automation, you will find an option for provisioning, where you can create a playbook for auto provisioning (to grant access to Zoom).

Step 3: You need to set the actions (invite user, assign license). These actions will automatically run when you click on approve.

Step 4: You can also set automation rules. This option is available under \"access request.\" With this feature, you can create triggers by filling in when and then conditions to run certain actions.

Another step under this is selecting app approvers (app owner or department head).

Step 5: Finally, you need to go back to Slack and click on approve, and the provisioning playbook or automated actions will run.

Then, the employee will be notified that their request has been approved.

Compete View Of All The Access Requests Raised Under App Requisition

Zluri's access management centralizes all access requests raised by employees, providing your team with complete request details in one convenient location, i.e., under app requisition. This helps your team prioritize which app requests must be approved first.

Additionally, to provide your team with a more detailed view, Zluri's access management categorizes requests into two subsections: pending and completed.

In the pending section, your IT team can easily identify which applications are awaiting approval, while the completed section displays all approved requests.

This way, they don't have to go back and forth through different screens to find out which requests are pending and which are completed, saving time and improving efficiency. Also, this minimizes the chances of missing out on approving requests.

Additionally, audit trails allow for tracking of actions taken, providing visibility into all details.

Automated Request Approval Triggers

Your team can create triggers (when and then conditions) to automate request approval actions. For instance, your team can set automated rules for when a new employee from the procurement department joins the organization and grants them access to Procurify.

What are you waiting for? Book a demo now to witness how Zluri's advanced capabilities simplify your service management process.

FAQs

1: How can your team implement these best practices effectively?

Implementing these best practices effectively requires thorough planning, collaboration among team members, monitoring, and evaluation. So, your team needs to assess their current processes, identify areas for improvement, and gradually implement changes while working on feedback from managers or other stakeholders.

2: What are some common challenges faced in ticket handling, and how do these best practices address them?

Common challenges in ticket handling include delays in approval, miscommunication, and inefficiencies in workflow. Ticket handling best practices address these challenges by providing clear guidelines for ticket management, improving communication among team members, and automating the processes to ensure timely ticket approval.

3: How often should your team review and update ticket handling processes to ensure they remain effective?

Ticket handling processes should be reviewed and updated regularly to adapt to changing requirements. So, your teams need to conduct periodic reviews(quarterly or annually) and make adjustments as needed to ensure the continued effectiveness of their ticket handling practices.