Improve Service Desk Ticket Queue Management

Improve Service Desk Ticket Queue Management

Strong queue management is the foundation to good customer service

Analyst Perspective

Secure your foundation before you start renovating.

Service Desk and IT leaders who are struggling with low efficiency, high backlogs, missed SLAs, and poor service desk metrics often think they need to hire more resources or get a new ITSM tool with better automation and AI capabilities. However, more often than not, the root cause of their challenges goes back to the fundamentals.

Strong ticket queue management processes are critical to the success of all other service desk processes. You can’t resolve incidents and fulfill service requests in time to meet SLAs without first getting the ticket to the right place efficiently and then managing all tickets in the queue effectively. It sounds simple, but we see a lot of struggles around queue management, from new tickets sitting too long before being assigned, to in-progress tickets getting buried in favor of easier or higher-priority tickets, to tickets jumping from queue to queue without progress, to a seemingly insurmountable backlog.

Once you have taken the time to clearly structure your queues, assign resources, and define your processes for routing tickets to and from queues and resolving tickets in the queue, you will start to see response and resolution time decrease along with the ticket backlog. However, accountability for queue management is often overlooked and is really key to success.

Natalie Sansone, PhD
Senior Research Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• Tickets come into the service desk via multiple channels (email, phone, chat, portal) and aren’t consolidated into a single queue, making it difficult to know what to prioritize.
• New tickets sit in the queue for too long before being assigned while assigned tickets sit for too long without progress or in the wrong queue, leading to slow response and resolution times.
• Tickets quickly pile up in the queues, get lost or buried, or jump between queues without finding the right home, leading to a seemingly insurmountable backlog and breached SLAs.

Common Obstacles

• All tickets pile into the same queue, making it difficult to view, manage, or know who’s working on what.
• There are no defined rules or processes for how tickets should be assigned and routed, meaning they often take too long to get to the right place.
• Technicians have no guidelines as to how to prioritize their work, and no easy way to organize their tickets or queue to know what to work on next.
• Nobody has authority or accountability for queue management, meaning everyone has eyes only on their own tickets while others fall through the cracks.

Info-Tech’s Approach

• Clearly define your queue structure, organize the queues by content, then assign resources to relevant queues depending on their role and expertise.
• Define and document queue management processes, from initial triage to how to prioritize work on assigned tickets. Ensure everyone who handles tickets is clear on their responsibilities.
• Establish clear ownership and accountability for queue management.
• Once processes have been defined, identify opportunities to build in automation to improve efficiency.

Info-Tech Insight

If everybody is managing the queue, then nobody is. Without clear ownership and accountability over each and every queue it becomes too easy for everyone to assume someone else is handling or monitoring a ticket when in fact nobody is. Assign a Queue Manager to each queue and ensure someone is responsible for monitoring ticket movement across all the queues.

Timeliness is essential to customer satisfaction

And timeliness can’t be achieved without good queue management practices.

As soon as that ticket comes in, the clock starts ticking…

A host of different factors influence service desk response time and resolution time, including process optimization and documentation, workflow automation, clearly defined prioritization and escalation rules, and a comprehensive and easily accessible knowledgebase.

However, the root cause of poor response and resolution time often comes down to the basics like ticket queue management. Without clearly defined processes and ownership for assigning and actioning tickets from the queue in the most effective order and manner, customer satisfaction will suffer.

For every 12-hour delay in response time*, CSAT drops by 9.6%.

*to email and web support tickets
Source: Freshdesk, 2021

A Freshworks analysis of 107 million service desk interactions found the relationship between CSAT and response time is stronger than resolution time - when customers receive prompt responses and regular updates, they place less value on actual resolution time.

A queue is simply a line of people (or tickets) waiting to be helped

When customers reach out to the service desk for help, their messages are converted into tickets that are stored in a queue, waiting to be actioned appropriately.

Ticket Queue

Email/web
Ideally, the majority of tickets come into the ticket queue through email or a self-service portal, allowing for appropriate categorization, prioritization, and assignment.

Phone
For IT teams with a high volume of support requests coming in through the phone, reducing wait time in queue may be a priority.

Chat
Live chat is growing in popularity as an intake method and may require routing and distribution rules to prevent long or multiple queues.

Queue Management

Queue management is a set of processes and tools to direct and monitor tickets or manage ticket flow. It involves the following activities:

• Review incoming tickets
• Categorize and prioritize tickets
• Route or assign appropriately
• View or update ticket status
• Monitor resource workload
• Ensure tickets are being actioned in time
• Proactively identify SLA breaches

Ineffective queue management can bury you in backlog

Ticket backlog with poor queue management

Without a clear and efficient process or accountability for moving incoming tickets to the right place, tickets will be worked on randomly, older tickets will get buried, the backlog will grow, and SLAs will be missed.

Ticket backlog with good queue management

With effective queue management and ownership, tickets are quickly assigned to the right resource, worked on within the appropriate SLO/SLA, and actively monitored, leading to a more manageable backlog and good response and resolution times.

A growing backlog will quickly lead to dissatisfied end users and staff

Failing to efficiently move tickets from the queue or monitor tickets in the queue can quickly lead to tickets being buried and support staff feeling buried in tickets.

Common challenges with queue management include:

• Tickets come in through multiple channels and aren’t consolidated into a single queue
• New tickets sit unassigned for too long, resulting in long response times
• Tickets move around between multiple queues with no clear ownership
• Assigned tickets sit too long in a queue without progress and breach SLA
• No accountability for queue ownership and monitoring
• Technicians cherry pick the easiest tickets from the queue
• Technicians have no easy way to organize their queue to know what to work on next

This leads to:

• Long response times
• Long resolution times
• Poor workload distribution and efficiency
• High backlog
• Disengaged, frustrated staff
• Dissatisfied end users

Info-Tech Insight

A growing backlog will quickly lead to frustrated and dissatisfied customers, causing them to avoid the service desk and seek alternate methods to get what they need, whether going directly to their favorite technician or their peers (otherwise known as shadow IT).

Dig yourself out with strong queue management

Strong queue management is the foundation to good customer service.

Build a mature ticket queue management process that allows your team to properly prioritize, assign, and work on tickets to maximize response and resolution times.

A mature queue management process will:

• Reduce response time to address tickets.
• Effectively prioritize tickets and ensure everyone knows what to work on next.
• Ensure tickets get assigned and routed to the right queue and/or resource efficiently.
• Reduce overall resolution time to resolve tickets.
• Enable greater accountability for queue management and monitoring of tickets.
• Improve customer and employee satisfaction.

As queue management maturity increases:
Response time decreases
Resolution time decreases
Backlog decreases
End-user satisfaction increases

Ten Tips to Effectively Manage Your Queue

The remaining slides in this deck will review these ten pieces of advice for designing and managing your ticket queues effectively and efficiently.

1. Define your optimal queue structure
2. Design and assign resources to relevant queues
3. Define and document queue management processes
4. Clearly define queue management responsibilities for every team member
5. Establish clear ownership & accountability over all queues
6. Always keep ticket status and documentation up to date
7. Shift left to reduce queue volume
8. Build-in automation to improve efficiency
9. Configure your ITSM tool to support and optimize queue management processes
10. Don’t lose visibility of the backlog

#1: Define your optimal queue structure

There is no one right way to do queue management; choose the approach that will result in the highest value for your customers and IT staff.

Sample queue structures

*Queues may be defined by skillset, role, ticket category, priority, or a hybrid.

Triage and Assign

• All incoming tickets are assigned to an appropriate queue based on predefined criteria.
• Queue assignment may be done through automated workflows based on specific fields within the ticket, or manually by a
• Queue Manager, dedicated coordinator, or Tier 1 staff.
• Queues may be defined based on:
• Skillset/team (e.g. Infrastructure, Security, Apps, etc.)
• Ticket category (e.g. Network, Office365, Hardware, etc.)
• Priority (e.g. P1, P2, P3, P4, P5)
• Resources may be assigned to multiple queues.

Define your optimal queue structure (cont.)

Tiered generalist model

• All incidents and service requests are routed to Tier 1 first, who prioritize and, if appropriate, conduct initial triage, troubleshooting, and resolution on a wide range of issues.
• More complex or high-priority tickets are escalated to resources at Tier 2 and/or Tier 3, who are specialists working on projects in addition to support tickets.

Unassigned queue

• Very small teams may work from an unassigned queue if there are processes in place to monitor tickets and workload balance.
• Typically, these teams work by resolving the oldest tickets first regardless of complexity (also known as First In, First Out or FIFO). However, this doesn’t allow for much flexibility in terms of priority of the request or customer.

#2: Design and assign resources to relevant queues

Once you’ve defined your overall structure, define the content of each queue.

Info-Tech Insight

Start small; don’t create a queue for every possible ticket type. Remember that someone needs to be accountable for each of these queues, so only build what you can monitor.

#3 Define and document queue management processes

A clear, comprehensive, easily digestible SOP or workflow outlining the steps for handling new tickets and working tickets from the queue will help agents deliver a consistent experience.

Process recommendations

As you define queue management processes, keep the following advice in mind:

Rotate triage role

The triage role is critical but difficult. Consider rotating your Tier 1 resources through this role, or your service desk team if you’re a very small group.

Limit and prioritize channels

You decide which channels to enable and prioritize, not your users. Phone and chat are very interrupt-driven and should be reserved for high-priority issues if used. Your users may not understand that but can learn over time with training and reinforcement.

Prioritize first

Priority matrixes are necessary for consistency but there are always circumstances that require judgment calls. Think about risk and expected outcome rather than simply type of issue alone. And if the impact is bigger than the initial classification, change it.

Define VIP treatment

In some organizations, the same issue can be more critical if it happens to a certain user role (e.g. client facing, c-suite). Identify and flag VIP users and clearly define how their tickets should be prioritized.

Consider time zone

If users are in different time zones, take their current business hours into account when choosing which ticket to work on.

Info-Tech Insight

Think of your service desk as an emergency room. Patients come in with different symptoms, and the triage nurse must quickly assess these symptoms to decide who the patient should see and how soon. Some urgent cases will need to see the doctor immediately, while others can wait in another queue (the waiting room) for a while before being dealt with. Some cases who come in through a priority channel (e.g. ambulance) may jump the queue. Checklists and criteria can help with this decision making, but some degree of judgement is also required and that comes with experience. The triage role is sometimes seen as a junior-level role, but it actually requires expertise to be done well.

For more detailed process guidance, see Standardize the Service Desk

Info-Tech’s blueprint Standardize the Service Desk will help you standardize and document core service desk processes and functions, including:

• Service desk structure, roles, and responsibilities
• Metrics and reporting
• Ticket handling and ticket quality
• Incident and critical incident management
• Ticket categorization
• Prioritization and escalation
• Service request fulfillment
• Self-service considerations
• Building a knowledgebase

#4 Clearly define queue management responsibilities for every team member

This may be one of the most critical yet overlooked keys to queue management success. Define the following:

Who will have overall accountability?

Someone must be responsible for monitoring all incoming and open tickets as well as assigned tickets in every queue to ensure they are routed and fulfilled appropriately. This person must have authority to view and coordinate all queues and Queue Managers.

Who will manage each queue?

Someone must be responsible for managing each queue, including assigning resources, balancing workload, and ensuring SLOs are met for the tickets within their queue. For example, the Apps Manager may be the Queue Manager for all tickets assigned to the Apps team queue.

Who is responsible for assigning tickets?

Will you have a triage team who monitors and assigns all incoming tickets? What are their specific responsibilities (e.g. prioritize, categorize, attempt troubleshooting, assign or escalate)? If not, who is responsible for assigning new tickets and how is this done? Will the triage role be a rotating role, and if so, what will the schedule be?

What are everyone’s responsibilities?

Everyone who is assigned tickets should understand the ticket handling process and their specific responsibilities when it comes to queue management.

#5 Establish clear ownership & accountability over all queues

If everyone is accountable, then no one is accountable. Ownership for each queue and all queues must be clearly designated.

You may have multiple queue manager roles: one for each queue, and one who has visibility over all the queues. Typically, these roles make up only part of an individual’s job. Clearly define the responsibilities of the Queue Manager role; sample responsibilities are on the right.

Info-Tech Insight

Lack of authority over queues – especially those outside Tier 1 of the service desk – is one of the biggest pitfalls we see causing aging tickets and missed SLAs. Every queue needs clear ownership and accountability with everyone committed to meeting the same SLOs.

The Queue Manager or Coordinator is accountable for ensuring tickets are routed to the correct resources service level objectives or agreements are met.

Specific responsibilities may include:

• Monitors queues daily
• Ensures new tickets are assigned to appropriate resources for resolution
• Verifies tickets have been routed and assigned correctly and reroutes if necessary
• Reallocates tickets if assigned resource is suddenly unavailable or away
• Ensures ticket handling process is met, ticket status is up to date and correct, and ticket documentation is complete
• Escalates tickets that are aging or about to breach
• Ensures service level objectives or agreements are met
• Facilitates resource allocation based on workload
• Coordinates tickets that require collaboration across workgroups to ensure resolution is achieved within SLA
• Associates child and parent tickets
• Prepares reports on ticket status and volume by queues
• Regularly reviews reports to identify and act on issues and make improvements or changes where needed
• Identifies opportunities for improvement

#6 Always keep ticket status and documentation up to date

Anyone should be able to quickly understand the status and progress on a ticket without needing to ask the technician working on it. This means both the ticket status and documentation must be continually and accurately updated.

Ticket Documentation
Ticket descriptions and documentation must be kept accurate and up to date. This ensures that if the ticket is escalated or assigned to a new person, or the Queue Manager or Service Desk Manager needs to know what progress has been made on a ticket, that person doesn’t need to waste time with back-and-forth communication with the technician or end user.

Ticket Status
The ticket status field should change as the ticket moves toward resolution, and must be updated every time the status changes. This ensures that anyone looking at the ticket queue can quickly learn and communicate the status of a ticket, tickets don’t get lost or neglected, metrics are accurate (such as time to resolve), and SLAs are not impacted if a ticket is on hold.

Common ticket statuses include:

• New/open
• Assigned
• In progress
• Declined
• Canceled
• Pending/on hold
• Resolved
• Closed
• Reopened

For more guidance on ticket handling and documentation, download Info-Tech’s blueprint: Standardize the Service Desk.

• For ticket handling and documentation, see Step 1.4
• For ticket status fields, see Step 2.2.

#7 Shift left to reduce queue volume

Enable processes such as knowledge management, self-service, and problem management to prevent tickets from even coming into the queue.

Shift left means enabling fulfilment of repeatable tasks and requests via faster, lower-cost delivery channels, self-help tools, and automation.

Shift to Level 1

• Identify tickets that are often escalated beyond Tier 1 but could be resolved by Level 1 if they were given the tools, training, resources, or access they need to do so.
• Provide tools to succeed at resolving those defined tasks (e.g. knowledge article, documentation, remote tools).
• Embed knowledge management in resolution workflows.

Shift to End User

• Build a centralized, easily accessible self-service portal where users can search for solutions to resolve their issues without having to submit a ticket.
• Communicate and train users on how to use the portal regularly update and improve it.

Automate & Eliminate

• Identify processes or tasks that could be automated to eliminate work.
• Invest in problem management and event management to fix the root problem of recurring issues and prevent a problem from occurring in the first place, thereby preventing future tickets.

#8 Build in automation to improve efficiency

Manually routing every ticket can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Once you’ve established the process, automate wherever possible.

Automation rules can be used to ensure tickets are assigned to the right person or queue, to alert necessary parties when a ticket is about to breach or has breached SLA, or to remind technicians when a ticket has sat in a queue or at a particular status for too long.

This can improve efficiency, reduce error, and bring greater visibility to both high-priority tickets and aging tickets in the backlog.

However, your processes, queues, and responsibilities must be clearly defined before you can build in automation.

For more guidance on implementing automation and AI within your service desk, see these blueprints:

For examples of rules, triggers, and fields you can automate to improve the efficiency of your queue management processes, see the next slide.

Sample automation rules

Criteria or triggers you can automate actions based on:

• Ticket type
• Specific field in a ticket web form
• Ticket form that was used (e.g. specific service request form from the portal)
• Ticket category
• Ticket priority
• Keyword in an email subject line
• Keywords or string in a chat
• Requester name or email
• Requester location
• Requester/ticket language
• Requester VIP status
• Channel ticket was received through
• SLAs or time-based automations
• Agent skill
• Agent status or capacity

Fields or actions those triggers can automate

• Priority
• Category
• Ticket routing
• Assigned agent
• Assigned queue
• SLA/due date
• Notifications/communication

Sample Automation Rules

• When ticket is about to breach, send alert to Queue Manager and Service Desk Manager.
• When ticket comes from VIP user, set urgency to high.
• When ticket status has been set to “open” for ten hours, send an alert to Queue Manager.
• When ticket status has been set to “on hold” for five days, send a reminder to assignee.
• When ticket is categorized as “Software-ERP,” send to ERP queue.
• When ticket is prioritized as P1/critical, send alert to emergency response team.
• When ticket is prioritized as P1 and hasn’t been updated for one hour, send an alert to Incident Manager.
• When an in-progress ticket is reassigned to a new queue, alert Queue Manager.
• When ticket has not been resolved within seven days, flag as aging ticket.

#9 Configure your ITSM tool to support and optimize queue management processes

Configure your tool to support your needs; don’t adjust your processes to match the tool.

• Most ITSM tools have default queues out of the box and the option to create as many custom queues, filters, and views as you need. Custom queues should allow you to name the queue, decide which tickets will be sent to the queue, and what columns or information are displayed in the queue.
• Before you configure your queues and dashboards, sit down with your team to decide what you need and what will best enable each agent to manage their workload.
• Decide which queues each role should have access to – most should only need to see their own queue and their team’s queue.
• Configure which queues or views new tickets will be sent to.
• Configure automation rules defined earlier (e.g. automate sending certain tickets to specific queues or sending notifications to specific parties when certain conditions are met).
• Configure dashboards and reports on queue volume and ticket status data relevant to each team to help them manage their workload, increase visibility, and identify issues or actions.

Info-Tech Insight

It can be overwhelming to support agents when their view is a long and never-ending queue. Set the default dashboard view to show only those tickets assigned to the viewer to make it appear more manageable and easier to organize.

Configure queues to maximize productivity

Info-Tech Insight

The queue should quickly give your team all the information they need to prioritize their work, including ticket status, priority, category, due date, and updated timestamps. Configuration is important - if it’s confusing, clunky, or difficult to filter or sort, it will impact response and resolution times and can lead to missed tickets. Give your team input into configuration and use visuals such as color coding to help agents prioritize their work – for example, VIP tickets may be clearly flagged, critical or high priority tickets may be highlighted, tickets about to breach may be red.

#10 Don’t lose visibility of the backlog

Be careful not to focus so much on assigning new tickets that you forget to update aging tickets, leading to an overwhelming backlog and dissatisfied users.

Track metrics that give visibility into how quickly tickets are being resolved and how many aging tickets you have. Metrics may include:

• Ticket resolution time by priority, by workgroup
• Ticket volume by status (i.e. open, in progress, on hold, resolved)
• Ticket volume by age
• Ticket volume by queue and assignee

Regularly review reports on these metrics with the team.

Make it an agenda item to review aging tickets, on hold tickets, and tickets about to breach or past breach with the team.

Take action on aging tickets to ensure progress is being made.

Set rules to close tickets after a certain number of attempts to reach unresponsive users (and change ticket status appropriately).

Schedule times for your team to tackle aged tickets or tickets in the backlog.

Info-Tech Insight

It can be easy for high priority work to constantly push down low priority work, leaving the lower priority tickets to constantly be ignored and users to be frustrated. If you’re struggling with aging tickets, backlog, and tickets breaching SLA, experiment with your team and queue structure to figure out the best resource distribution to handle your workload. This could mean rotating people through the triage role to allow them time to work through the backlog, reducing the number of people doing triage during slower volume periods, or giving technicians dedicated time to work through tickets. For help with forecasting demand and optimizing resources, see Staff the Service Desk to Meet Demand.

Activity 1.1: Define ticket queues

1 hour

Map out your optimal ticket queue structure using the Service Desk Queue Structure Template. Follow the instructions in the template to complete it as a team.

The template includes several examples of service desk queue structures followed by space to build your own model of an optimal service desk queue structure and to document who is assigned to each queue and responsible for managing each queue.

Note:

The template is not meant to map out your entire service desk structure (e.g. tiers, escalation paths) or ticket resolution process, but simply the ticket queues and how a ticket moves between queues. For help documenting more detailed process workflows or service desk structure, see the blueprint Standardize the Service Desk.

Input

• Current queue structure and roles

Output

• Defined service desk ticket queues and assigned responsibilities

Materials

• Org chart
• ITSM tool for reference, if needed

Participants

• Service Desk Manager
• IT Director
• Queue Managers

Document in the Service Desk Queue Structure Template.

Related Info-Tech Research

Standardize the Service Desk

This project will help you build and improve essential service desk processes including incident management, request fulfillment, and knowledge management to create a sustainable service desk.

Optimize the Service Desk With a Shift-Left Strategy

This project will help you build a strategy to shift service support left to optimize your service desk operations and increase end-user satisfaction.

Improve Service Desk Ticket Intake

This project will help you streamline your ticket intake process and identify improvements to your intake channels.

Staff the Service Desk to Meet Demand

This project will help you determine your optimal service desk structure and staffing levels based on your unique environment, workload, and trends.

Works Cited

“What your Customers Really Want.” Freshdesk, 31 May 2021. Accessed May 2022.