Tickets are an essential part of many businesses and organizations. They allow you to organize and categorize different types of tickets that your business uses. Implementing a ticketing system with clear categories helps streamline processes and improves efficiency. In this article, we will look at what ticket categories are, why they are important, and some examples of common ticket categories used by various businesses and organizations.
What are ticket categories?
Ticket categories simply refer to the different types or classes that tickets can be divided into within a ticketing system. Categorizing tickets allows businesses and organizations to sort and filter tickets based on their type, priority, department, issue, etc. Some common examples of ticket categories include:
- Support tickets
- Sales tickets
- Project tickets
- Task tickets
- Enhancement tickets
- Bug tickets
Ticket categories help distinguish between the various kinds of tickets your business needs to manage. For example, a software company may want to separate bug tickets from feature enhancement tickets. A concert venue may want to separate sales tickets from guest services tickets. Clear ticket categories make it easy for employees to identify, prioritize and handle different tickets appropriately.
Why are ticket categories important?
Implementing a ticketing system with well-defined categories offers many benefits for businesses and organizations:
Improves organization
Ticket categories help organize tickets so they can be more easily searched, filtered and reported on. Sorting tickets into relevant categories makes it simpler for agents to find the tickets they need to work on.
Enables routing to the right teams
Ticket categories allow you to automatically assign tickets to the appropriate teams or agents. For example, support tickets can go straight to customer service while bug tickets are routed to the engineering team.
Allows ticket priority
Categories can be used to determine ticket priority. For instance, bug tickets related to site outages can be marked high priority versus small UI bugs. Clear priorities help agents focus on the most important tickets first.
Provides useful reporting
Ticket categories enable helpful reporting such as how many tickets of each type are being created, status of different ticket types, resolution rates, etc. This gives visibility into how well different teams are handling various ticket categories.
Aids in SLA monitoring
SLAs (service level agreements) may differ based on ticket category. For example, support tickets may need to be answered within 1 hour while bug tickets have a 24 hour SLA. Categorizing tickets makes it easy to monitor and meet different SLA policies.
Enables rules and automation
Rules and automation can be applied to ticket categories to improve efficiency. For instance, certain email addresses could auto-create sales tickets, while errors on a website may automatically generate bug tickets.
Examples of ticket categories
The specific ticket categories used will vary for different businesses and organizations based on their structure and needs. Here are some common examples:
Support/Customer Service
Support or customer service tickets relate to inbound requests and issues from end users or customers. These could include:
- Account support
- Order status
- Returns/refunds
- Shipping questions
- Payment issues
- General product questions
Sales
Sales tickets help manage leads and sales inquiries. Types of sales tickets may include:
- New leads
- Lead qualification
- Proposal requests
- Contract reviews
- Renewals
- Upsells/cross-sells
Project Management
Project tickets help coordinate tasks across teams to manage projects. Project tickets can be used for:
- Project plans
- Resource requests
- Project tasks
- Deliverable tracking
- Staffing
- Budgeting
Development
Development tickets track product bugs and improvements. Development ticket types include:
- Bugs
- Feature requests
- UI enhancements
- Technical support
- Integration requests
- Performance issues
Marketing
Marketing tickets help manage campaigns, events, and assets. Marketing tickets can include:
- Campaign requests
- Event planning
- Content requests
- Email design
- Social media posting
- Creative requests
HR
HR tickets help track employee requests and issues. HR ticket categories can be:
- Benefits questions
- Policy clarification
- Onboarding tasks
- Time-off requests
- Training needs
- Performance reviews
Facilities
Facilities tickets help manage office maintenance, equipment, and vendors. Facility ticket types include:
- Maintenance requests
- Equipment issues
- Office supplies
- Vendor management
- Office moves
- Cleaning services
Legal
Legal tickets track contractual and compliance needs. Legal tickets can be used for:
- Contract reviews
- IP issues
- Regulatory compliance
- Data requests
- Litigation
- Privacy concerns
Finance
Finance tickets help manage accounting, budgeting, and reporting tasks. Examples include:
- Audit support
- Account reconciliation
- Reporting requests
- Expense approvals
- Invoicing questions
- Budget changes
Best practices for ticket categories
Here are some best practices to follow when setting up ticket categories:
- Involve all teams in creating categories and defining processes
- Keep categories simple, clear, and consistent
- Use no more than 10-15 top-level categories
- Have 2-3 levels of subcategories maximum
- Use categories consistently across tools (email, forms, etc)
- Set up rules and SLAs appropriately for each category
- Regularly review and update categories as needed
Using ticket priority with categories
Ticket priority can be used in conjunction with categories to indicate the urgency or severity of a ticket. Here is an example priority matrix using common priority levels:
Priority | Definition | Initial Response Time |
---|---|---|
High | Critical impact, system down | 15 minutes |
Medium | Significant business impact | 1-2 hours |
Low | Minor issue or request | 24 hours |
This priority matrix can be applied across the various ticket categories used by your business. For example, a high priority support ticket may indicate a customer is unable to login to your app. A high priority HR ticket could mean an employee can’t access critical benefits or payroll information.
Main takeaways
Implementing clearly defined ticket categories provides many benefits for organizations and helps support efficient ticketing workflows. Some key takeaways include:
- Ticket categories allow you to organize and filter tickets based on type.
- Categories enable proper routing to the right teams and agents.
- Categories help set ticket priority and monitor SLAs.
- Reporting and analytics are improved by segmenting ticket data.
- Rules and automation can be applied based on categories.
- Common ticket categories relate to support, sales, projects, development, HR, legal, facilities, and more.
- Categories should be simple, consistent, and regularly reviewed for optimization.
Implementing a thoughtful category strategy is crucial for ticketing success. Categories provide the backbone for managing all tickets across your business workflows. Following ticket categorization best practices will help ensure tickets are handled efficiently across your organization.