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.