If you look at monthly satisfaction rates for chats and tickets, satisfaction for a regular customer service chat is typically much higher than for a support ticket. This anomaly has a rather clear cause: When clients’ cases are pushed to support tickets, they are usually already dissatisfied with the service they have received. Why? Support ticket cases are the ones that can’t be handled easily, are hard to crack and require quite a bit more time to resolve. This longer wait time does little to calm upset clients.

How do you take a disappointed client and, in the end, turn them into a satisfied customer? Although not every case can be expedited, there are certain shortcuts you can use to deliver better service to your ticket customers.

1. Give Tickets to Those Who Can Resolve Them

   Although this may seem like an obvious statement, it is a vital part of keeping customers happy that many companies might inadvertently ignore. If you know that the person who initially responds to a support ticket is going to pass it along to someone who actually possesses the knowledge and skills necessary to resolve it, there is a serious problem. The ticket should go directly to someone who can take care of it immediately to increase customer satisfaction.

   In some cases, there might be a difficult ticket that no one wants to pick up. Support teams should be encouraged in these situations to see finding a solution as a challenge that needs to be overcome.

2. Utilize Tiered Support

   Different cases require different levels of expert knowledge to handle. This makes a tiered support system crucial in efficiently handling cases after live chat fails. A basic tiered support setup involves two separate groups of agents: those who receive incoming cases from customers and the experts who actively deal with the cases. The receivers are the first to pick up the ticket, then they escalate it to the experts, who deal with it depending on the case type.

   One expert could deal with managing payments. Another could handle returns. This allows experts in certain areas to handle the cases that they have been so thoroughly trained on. It makes little sense to have experts in one area handling matters from other areas. This assures that the workers with the highest credentials are immediately assigned the cases that only they can handle.

3. Keep Track of Tickets

   One of the easiest ways to further anger an already bothered customer is to lose their ticket. Tickets are commonly lost when they are assigned to a person who is out of the office for more than a day or so. It is completely avoidable and should never happen. Only actively working individuals should receive new tickets.

4. Provide the Details

   If a ticket is passed to another worker, it is vital that all the ticket’s details are provided. Without that information, resolving the issue can be greatly prolonged. Any missing information will have to be filled in a second time by the requestor, which will lead to a longer case resolution and an overall poorer experience.

For the cases that cannot be resolved via live chat support, tickets are unavoidable. However, the customer experience can be positively affected if support technicians simply follow these four steps.